Bilingual children demonstrate varying levels of proficiency in each of the two languages to which they are exposed. Even though it is widely acknowledged that bilingual children are not a homogenous group, existing studies on dual-language profiles in bilingual children have focused on expressive language profiles. In this study, we used the…

This study extended an existing crosslinguistic model of verb-marking errors in children's early multiword speech (MOSAIC) by adding a novel mechanism that defaults to the most frequent form of the verb where this accounts for a high proportion of forms in the input. Our simulations showed that the resulting model not only provides a better…

This dissertation investigates how bilinguals use their two grammars to comprehend written intra-sentential codeswitches. I focus on adjective/noun constructions in Spanish and English where I manipulate the congruence of grammatical word order in the two languages across the codeswitch boundary. This allows me to test three codeswitching…

Purpose: This study investigated the dimensionality of language in bilingual children using measures of semantics and morphosyntax in English and Spanish. Method: Participants included 112 Spanish-English bilingual children ages 4-8 years from a wide range of language abilities and dominance profiles. Using measures of semantics and morphosyntax…

In this Methods Showcase Article, we illustrate mixed-effects modeling with a multinomial dependent variable as a means of explaining complexities in language. We model data on future-time reference in second language Spanish, which consists of a nominal dependent variable that has three levels, measured over 73 participants. We offer step-by-step…

Age of Acquisition (AoA) scores approximate the age at which a language speaker fully understands a word's semantic meaning and represent a quantitative measure of the relative difficulty of words in a language. AoA word lists exist across various languages, with English having the most complete lists that capture the largest percentage of the…

This dissertation analyzes the production and perception of lexical stress in trilinguals' first, second, and third languages (L1, L2, and L3) to evaluate how the cue-weighting transfer hypothesis applies to L3 acquisition. According to this hypothesis, acoustic cues to stress have different weights across languages, and results from both…

This dissertation investigates language-specific acoustic and aerodynamic phenomena in language contact situations. Whereas most work on second language and bilingual phonology has focused on individual consonants and vowels, this project examines patterns of coarticulation in the two languages of Spanish-English and French-English bilingual…

Age of Acquisition (AoA) scores approximate the age at which a language speaker fully understands a word's semantic meaning and represent a quantitative measure of the relative difficulty of words in a language. AoA word lists exist across various languages, with English having the most complete lists that capture the largest percentage of the…

Within educational research, there has been an increased interest in recent years to develop learners' language awareness (LA) in the context of plurilingual education. Recommendations and intentions are given pointing to the benefits, but there are few concrete tools for how it can be carried out in practice. The article seeks to contribute to…

The use of linking or glottalization contributes to the characteristic sound pattern of a language, and the use of one in place of the other may affect a speaker's comprehensibility and fluency in certain contexts. In this study, native speakers of Czech, a language that is associated with a frequent use of glottalization in vowel-initial word…

A new technique to teach language grammar is proposed. It consists of the blending of two previously existing techniques--VanPatten's (1996) Processing Instruction (PI) and Adair-Hauck and Donato's (2002) Presentation, Attention, Co-construct, and Extension (PACE) Model. The result is the S-PACE Model, which incorporates the whole-language…

(1) Background: based on the constantly increasing requirements for modern university graduates, we have developed an educational model that allows us to introduce content and language integrated learning into classes with a multilingual approach, which will allow students to use several foreign languages in the process of professional…

The primary purpose of the current pilot study was to test the effects of an adapted and collaborative intervention model with a systematic teaching approach on Latina Spanish-speaking caregivers' use of "EMT en Español Para Autismo" strategies with their young children on the autism spectrum. A multiple baseline across behaviors single…

The heightened importance of foreign languages (L2) in the post 9-11 world demands more L2 listening research as listening is considered the most critical skill for most American military linguists. Some larger studies show that lexical knowledge can positively affect L2 listening (Chang, 2007; Mehrpour & Rahimi, 2010; Staehr, 2009), yet…