We reexamine the distribution of nonfinite root forms (NRFs) in Child French on the basis of two novel spontaneous speech corpora focusing on two issues that have increasingly dominated recent analyses of French on the one hand and NRFs/RIs on the other. First, we argue that the level of NRF production peaking at ~24% is in line with the…

The aims of this article are to document the types of signs that young children make to represent their mathematical thinking, and to determine the extent to which features of usage-based language acquisition are evident in children's early graphical communications made in mathematical contexts. Studies of young children's symbolic principles in…

Mands for information (MFIs) play an important role in language development and are important for successfully acquiring new information from one's environment. Yet many individuals with autism do not acquire mands for information without direct teaching. Research has demonstrated effective procedures for teaching all "wh" forms, except…

Children learn high phonological neighbourhood density words more easily than low phonological neighbourhood density words (Storkel, 2004). However, the strength of this effect relative to alternative predictors of word acquisition is unclear. We addressed this issue using communicative inventory data from 300 British English-speaking children…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to determine the diagnostic accuracy of the four Sampling Utterances and Grammatical Analysis Revised (SUGAR) metrics, including total number of words, mean length of utterance[subscript SUGAR], words per sentence, and clauses per sentence in differentiating children with language impairment (LI)…

Many studies have addressed the effect of neighborhood density (phonological similarity among words) on word learning in quiet listening conditions. We explored how noise influences the effect of neighborhood density on children's word learning. One-hundred-and-two preschoolers learned nonwords varied in neighborhood density in one of four…

George Herbert Mead was an early-twentieth century American psychologist, who work on social psychology has been especially influential in sociology. Although Mead wrote a good deal on language, his work has had much less influence on linguistics and applied linguistics. Outlining key ideas from Mead's work on the emergence of language and mind…

The looking-while-listening (LWL) paradigm is frequently used to measure toddlers' lexical processing efficiency (LPE). Children's LPE is associated with vocabulary size, yet other linguistic, cognitive, or social skills contributing to LPE are not well understood. It also remains unclear whether LPE measures from two types of LWL trials…

This longitudinal study explores how the language proficiency of eight (N = 8) US-affiliated university students developed relative to their smartphone usage during study abroad (SA) in Paris. Phone usage was tracked daily with Space, proficiency weekly using NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do statements, and language use monthly via a Language Engagement…

Gender associations have been a long-standing research topic in psychological and social sciences. Although it is known that children learn aspects of gender associations at a young age, it is not well understood how they might emerge through the course of development. We investigate whether gender associations, such as the association of dresses…

Communication is best understood as occurring along three dimensions: interactional, conceptual, and linguistic. However, few studies have examined early parent-child communication along all three dimensions simultaneously. This study examines these three dimensions of communication in Norwegian parent-child interactions during play. Thirty-nine…

Book-sharing with young children is an established vehicle for promoting early language development and pre-literacy skills. Although parents are widely encouraged to read to their child and existing interventions provide instruction on book-sharing strategies, there is a prominent lack of guidance for parents on how to choose the book itself.…

We test the comprehension of transitive sentences in very young learners of Mandarin Chinese using a combination of the weird word order paradigm with the use of pseudo-verbs and the preferential looking paradigm, replicating the experiment of Franck et al. (2013) on French. Seventeen typically-developing Mandarin infants (mean age: 17.4 months)…

Background: Speech and language acquisition can be a challenge for young children with Down syndrome (DS), and while early intervention is important, we do not know what early interventions exist and how effective they may be. Aims: To systematically review existing early speech, language and communication interventions for young children with DS…

Linguistic interactions between parents and their children are frequently studied to investigate how children acquire language. From observations, researchers have identified interaction strategies that foster children's language development. In turn, interventions to support children's early language skills employ styles of interaction derived…