Sociolinguistic variation (SLV) entails that language is affected by social context (i.e. register, pragmatics). Interest in the acquisition of sociolinguistic variation in a second language (L2-SLV), as a key component of communicative competence, has grown exponentially over the past thirty years (Geeslin & Long, 2014). Researchers have…

I argue that the variation within and across contexts detailed by Shin & Miller is indicative of a broader phenomenon in which morphosyntax and the discourse context are intertwined, including elements like perspective, discourse relations, information structure, and common ground. Appealing to independent evidence highlighting the role of…

The well-known sampling limitation of most longitudinal corpus data can be even more consequential in the study of morphosyntactic variation in child language. An analysis of caregiver input suggests that variable use in overlapping contexts may be hard to find by solely relying on corpus data collected under the sampling procedures that are…

There is a long-standing debate in the literature about the benefits that acoustic components of Infant Directed Speech (IDS) might have for infants' language acquisition. One of the highly contested features is vowel space expansion, which refers to the enlargement of the acoustic space between the corner vowels /i, u, a/ in IDS compared to Adult…

C-Test is a gap-filling test designed to measure first and second language proficiency. Over the past four decades, researchers have shown the fit of C-Test data to parametric item response theory (IRT) models, but no study so far has shown the fit of C-Tests to nonparametric IRT models. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the ongoing…

Joint attention and imitation are thought to facilitate a developmental cascade of language and social communication skills. Delays in developing these skills may affect the quality of children's social interactions and subsequent language development. We examined how responding to joint attention and object imitation skills predicted rate of…

This research aims at exploring in an irregular orthographic system like French, if spelling is related to written composition. French spelling is particularly interesting because it includes phonographic irregularities (i.e., inconsistencies), lexical difficulties and numerous morphological silent marks (e.g., plural noun, adjective, and verb…

In word learning, learners need to identify the referent of words by leveraging the fact that the same word may co-occur with different sets of objects. This raises the question, what do children remember from "in the moment" that they can use for cross-situational learning? Furthermore, do children represent pictures of familiar animals…

This study is aimed to analyze the readability level of the fourth grade textbooks in Javanese language used in Madiun, East Java, Indonesia then connect with student learning outcomes. The data were obtained from 18 students, comprising 6 male and 12 female students between 10 and 12 years old. The secondary data were obtained from textbooks and…

The environment in which infants learn language is multimodal and rich with social cues. Yet, the effects of such cues, such as eye contact, on early speech perception have not been closely examined. This study assessed the role of ostensive speech, signalled through the speaker's eye gaze direction, on infants' word segmentation abilities. A…

Interactive book reading (IBR) is an effective method to foster children's language development. Previous studies pointed at smaller gains for children at risk for language and literacy impairments due to socio-economic, ethnic, or minority background or due to home language. However, possible differences in interaction patterns with children at…

Word learning depends on attention -- children must focus on the right things at the right times. However, autistic children often display restricted interests, limiting their intake of stimuli during word learning. This study investigates how category interests influence word learning in autism and neurotypical development. Autistic and…

The application and investigation of various virtual world experiences in language learning have been on the rise. However, mixed reality (MR) has received limited attention due to its ambiguous concepts, unclear affordances, and insufficient incorporation of theoretical frameworks. To promote the investigation and implementation of MR-enhanced…

Music has been shown to improve social interaction and attention to verbal stimuli in autism. We report a feasibility randomised controlled trial of an online intervention using music-assisted programmes, compared with best-practice treatment (Social Communication Intervention for Pre-schoolers-Intensive) for language learning in preschool…

Statistical learning (SL), the ability to detect and extract regularities from inputs, has been considered as an early-maturing and domain-general mechanism that is critical for typical language development. However, recent evidence in neurotypical adults and children have found that individuals can vary in their SL abilities across linguistic and…