As one of the most widespread linguistic phenomena, code-switching has attracted increasing attention nowadays. Inspired by previous studies in this field, this paper addresses code-switching under the guidance of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), with the primary goal of analysing the interpersonal meanings of code-switching in three TV…

This single-case study explored the experiences of a U.S. professional working in China by focusing on his discursive performance in negotiating a third space at work with people from the target culture. The results revealed that the foreign professional demonstrated a strong desire to creatively appropriate the target language as his own use,…

The importance of authentic communicative practices in foreign language (FL) learning has long been recognized. However, most FL learners lack adequate access to authentic communicative environments in the target language. In this article, we propose the use of telepresence robots as a potential solution to bridge this gap. Telepresence robots can…

Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) is one of the most ethnically diverse territories in China, with the Muslim Uyghurs forming the largest minority group. Given its importance in national unity, stability and economic development, as well as its strategic role in the Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese government enacted policies to…

Infants must develop both flexibility and constraint in their interpretation of acceptable word forms. The current experiments examined the development of infants' lexical interpretation of non-native variations in pitch contour. Fourteen-, 17-, and 19-month-olds (Experiments 1 and 2, N = 72) heard labels for two novel objects; labels…

Selecting appropriate texts for L2 (second/foreign language) learners is an important approach to enhancing motivation and, by extension, learning. There is currently no tool for classifying foreign language texts according to a language proficiency framework, which makes it difficult for students and educators to determine the precise…

Dynamic assessment (DA) derives from the sociocultural theory of mind as elaborated by Russian psychologist L. S. Vygotsky. By offering mediation when individuals experience difficulties and carefully tracing their responsiveness, Vygotsky (1998) proposed that diagnoses may uncover abilities that have fully formed as well as those still in the…

This study was intended to examine the overall quality of 31 recently published bilingual children's picture books in English/simplified Chinese, English/simplified Chinese with pinyin, and English/traditional Chinese. These books were analyzed from six aspects, which were genre, topic, cover and body, the credibility of authors, illustrators and…

Eye-tracking was used to investigate the attentional processes whereby different types of focus on form (FonF) instruction assist learners in overcoming learned attention and blocking effects in their online processing of second language input. English native speakers viewed Latin utterances combining lexical and morphological cues to temporality…

Direct and indirect/mediated relations of (a) children's and parents' cultural orientations and (b) parent-child gaps in cultural orientations to children's psychological adjustment were examined in a socioeconomically diverse sample of 258 Chinese American children (age = 6-9 years) from immigrant families. Parents reported on children's and…

To learn words, infants must be sensitive to native phonological contrast. While lexical tone predominates as a source of phonemic contrast in human languages, there has been little investigation of the influences of lexical tone on word learning. The present study investigates infants' sensitivity to tone mispronunciations in two groups of…

This study investigated 4-year-old children's knowledge of the structural constraints on ellipsis constructions in Mandarin Chinese, focusing on the structural difference between verb phrase (VP) ellipsis and null object constructions. In Mandarin Chinese, if the antecedent clause of a VP-ellipsis structure contains an adverbial modifier,…

On the French Guiana-Suriname border, a hybrid space, members of the same population groups engage in circular mobility but little is known about the practices of these transnational communities. We explore how traditional emic social distinctions, modern states' language ideologies and emerging discourses in the urban context shape Maroon's…

Pointing out that language policy negotiations in classroom discourse are an understudied kind of "language-related episode", and proposing that Tim Ingold's notion of "meshwork" dissolves a boundary that typically encloses their analysis, this paper examines how a rich and indicative example of student group interaction on a…

This study employs the Specificity Principle to examine the relative impacts of external (input quantity at home and at school, number of books and reading frequency at home, teachers' degree and experience, language usage, socioeconomic status) and internal factors (children's working memory, nonverbal intelligence, learning-related…