It remains an open question whether second language (L2) learners can process linguistic properties at the syntax-discourse interface. This study examines this issue in the context of the L2 processing of Korean dative sentences under different information structure requirements. Given that discourse constraints associated with information…

Short term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) performance consistently predict language abilities in children with developmental language disorders. However, causality is not fully established. Moreover, evidence from the fine-grained analysis of STM/WM tasks and comprehension of complex sentences, suggests that long term memory (LTM)…

Purpose: This study investigated the relationship between non-orthographic language abilities and reading in order to examine assumptions of the primary systems hypothesis and further our understanding of language processing poststroke. Method: Performance on non-orthographic semantic, phonologic, and syntactic tasks, as well as oral reading and…

Purpose: General language abilities of children with cochlear implants have been thoroughly investigated, especially at young ages, but far less is known about how well they process language in real-world settings, especially in higher grades. This study addressed this gap in knowledge by examining recognition of sentences with complex syntactic…

This paper presents a Vygotskian research device that focuses on collaborative activities based on the manipulation of linguistic objects in a primary school classroom, with 8-9-year-old children. Through social exchanges among the different points of view, the children were engaged in a dynamic process of building and negotiating mathematical…

Linguistic alignment--the contingent reuse of our interlocutors' language at all levels of linguistic structure--pervades human dialogue. Here, we design unique measures to capture the degree of linguistic alignment between interlocutors' linguistic representations at three levels of structure: lexical, syntactic, and semantic. We track these…

Early language competence is a reliable and powerful predictor of children's success in school, and word gaps linked to socioeconomic status disparities have cascading effects on academic outcomes. While early research -- such as the work of Hart and Risley (1995) -- focused on gaps in vocabulary, growing evidence reveals wide gaps in syntax as…

As readers struggle to coordinate various reading- and language-related skills during oral reading fluency (ORF), miscues can emerge, especially when processing complex texts. Following a miscue, students often self-correct as a strategy to potentially restore ORF and online linguistic comprehension. Executive functions (EF) are hypothesized to…

Listening has been widely characterised as a multifaceted process encompassing a range of linguistic and psycholinguistic components (see Rubin, 1994). However, for learners at different levels of L2 proficiency, there is uncertainty over the relative importance of the various sub-skills. To address this issue, a number of linguistic and…

Syntactic bootstrapping facilitates children's initial learning of verb meanings based on syntactic information. A challenging case is the argument-drop languages, where the number of argument NPs is not a reliable cue for distinguishing between transitive and intransitive verbs. Despite this fact, the availability of syntactic bootstrapping in…

The assessment of argumentative writing generally includes analyses of the specific linguistic and rhetorical features contained in the individual essays produced by students. However, researchers have recently proposed that an individual's ability to flexibly adapt the linguistic properties of their writing may more accurately capture their…

The authors assessed 4,865 middle and high school students for the ability to recognize and understand written and spoken morphologically simple words, morphologically complex words, and the syntactic structure of sentences and for the ability to answer questions about facts presented in a written passage and to make inferences based on those…

Children born preterm are at risk for deficits in language and reading. They are also at risk for injury to the white matter of the brain. The goal of this study was to determine whether performance in language and reading skills would be associated with white matter properties in children born preterm and full-term. Children born before 36 weeks…

Purpose: This study explores the hypothesis that vocabulary growth can have 2 types of effects in morphosyntactic development. One is a general effect, where vocabulary growth globally determines utterance complexity, defined in terms of sentence length and rates of subordination. There are also specific effects, where vocabulary size has a…

Purpose: In this study, the authors aimed to examine the long-term effects of prenatal cocaine exposure (PCE) on the language development of 12-year-old children using a prospective design, controlling for confounding prenatal drug exposure and environmental factors. Method: Children who were exposed to cocaine in utero (PCE; "n" = 183)…