Languages
Journal Data
| Type | JOURNAL |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) (CH) |
| ISSN | 2226-471X |
| Scopus | 21101020136 |
| Wikidata | Q50816272 |
| OpenAlex | S4210239940 |
| MAG | 4210239940 |
| Website | http://www.mdpi.com/journal/languages |
| Total publications | 1.941 |
| Coverage period | 2015 - 2026 |
| Country | CH |
| Language | EN |
| Access | Open Access |
| Indexing | DOAJ indexed • Scopus indexed |
| Cited by | 1.637 |
| Impact factor | 0.777 |
| SJR | 0.509 (Q1) |
| SNIP | 1.117 |
| CiteScore | 2.3 |
| h-index | 9 |
| i10-index | 9 |
| 2-year mean citedness | 0.0721 |
| Female authorship share | 57.8% |
"Languages" is a journal dedicated to linguistics and language studies. Linguistic anthropology is a core subfield of anthropology, making this a closely cognate venue that frequently publishes work relevant to social anthropologists
Linguistics and Language · Categorization, perception, and language · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning · Gender Studies in Language · Hearing Impairment and Communication · Language and Linguistics · Language Development and Disorders · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition
A Comparative Study of Lexical Inferencing During Text Reading: Evidence from Chinese–English–Japanese Trilinguals
Lexical inferencing (LIF) draws on multiple knowledge sources (KSs), but little is known about how the same multilingual readers report using these sources across different reading tasks. This exploratory study examined 31 Chinese–English–Japanese trilinguals who completed think-aloud inferencing tasks in three language-and-material conditions. Nine KS Types were coded, and trial-level ordinal mixed-effects models related KS use to rater-coded LI…
Responses to Communication Trouble in English, Spanish, and Chinese: Cross-Cultural Variation in Pragmatic Strategies and Implications for L2 Instruction
When speakers encounter errors or misunderstandings in others’ talk, how they respond carries both pragmatic and interpersonal consequences that vary systematically across languages and cultures, yet this area remains underexplored in cross-cultural pragmatic research. This study examines how native speakers of English, Spanish, and Chinese respond to communication trouble across comparable sociopragmatic situations, and how social distance and s…
Want-Constructions as Non-Canonical Imperatives: A Case Study of a Bilingual English–Russian Child with Pronoun Reversal
This article presents a longitudinal case study of want-constructions in an English–Russian bilingual child whose early language was characterized by prolonged pronoun reversal (i.e., using you for self-reference). The analysis focuses on want-constructions used during a period in which canonical English imperatives were not documented (e.g., want tear it). Drawing on detailed diary records (ages 2;8–5;5), the study examines the morphosyntactic f…
Breakthrough, Overload, or Stability: Evidence-Based Mixed-Methods Analysis of the Think-Aloud Protocol on L2 Japanese Writing
Developing Japanese writing ability as a second language (L2) requires learners to simultaneously manage linguistic, cognitive, and metacognitive resources. Although the Think Aloud Protocol (TAP) has been widely employed to access writers’ cognitive processes, its pedagogical impact on L2 Japanese writing remains underexplored. This study investigates the effects of TAP on the writing performance of Indonesian learners of Japanese at the A2–B1 p…
Dialectal Month Names in Estonian and Related Finnic Languages
Official month names in Estonian and other Finnic languages (except for Finnish), as well as in many other languages, originate from Latin. In addition to these, folk names are also used; these date back to long before the emergence of the Christian calendar and currently appear as parallel variants in calendars, fiction, and specialised literature. The aim of this study is to provide a comprehensive overview of Finnic folk month names, their dis…
Similar Sound Change, but Different Linguistic Repertoires: Increasing Aspiration of Initial Fortis Stops in Austrian and Swiss Standard German
The phonetic realization of word-initial stops used to diverge between Austrian and Swiss Standard German, and neither pattern closely aligned with that of German Standard German (GSG). Recently, however, it has been reported to be undergoing change in both varieties. Of particular interest is that this change has unfolded in the same direction, converging on realizations characteristic of GSG, despite two key differences: (1) the two standard va…
The Topicalization Comparative Construction—Evidence from Sinitic and Beyond
In this paper, we discuss topicalization comparatives, an underrecognized subtype within the Heinean event-schema framework. Drawing on data from Nyanja, Malay, and Sinitic languages, the analysis corroborates the existence of a construction marked by a fronted topic with an obligatory standard of comparison and an optional comparee. Topicalization creates a cognitive domain that facilitates contrast between the standard of comparison and the com…
Mandarin Children’s Acquisition of Event Culmination
This paper investigates how Mandarin-speaking children acquire event culmination in causative change-of-state verbs, focusing on the contrast between resultative verb compounds (RVCs; e.g., shā-sǐ ‘kill-dead’), which entail culmination, and monomorphemic causative verbs (e.g., shā ‘kill’), which trigger a cancellable culmination inference. We provide the first acquisition study of two factors argued to license non-culminating interpretations in t…
Babble and First Word Learning: The Articulatory Filter Revisited
Production and perception of speech develop in tandem during the first year of life, shaping one another in ways that have only recently been experimentally tested. Canonical babbling, which emerges robustly between 6 and 8 months across languages, is grounded in neuromotor maturation but also depends critically on audition. To account for how production experience might shape word learning, in 1993 Vihman proposed an ‘articulatory filter’ that s…
The Finnic Background of the Estonian Proto-Dialects
The present article will discuss the diachronic background of the six Estonian proto-dialects: South Estonian, Coastal Estonian (proper), Vaivara (Coastal) Estonian, East Estonian, Northeast Estonian, and (remaining) North Estonian. Since the author has already extensively discussed the three former groups before, special reference will be given to the three latter ones.
Resultativity as a Marker of Nativeness in Kazakh: Evidence from the Homeland and Diaspora
This study examines resultativity in Kazakh as a linguistic marker of nativeness by comparing diasporic speakers exposed to the social pressures of dominant languages with speakers in Kazakhstan, where the ongoing revitalization of Kazakh is reshaping its use. Nativeness is conceptualised as a linguistic construct referring to speakers’ command of a salient and typologically distinctive grammatical feature of Kazakh, namely resultative auxiliary …
The Spread of German Loanwords in Standard Estonian and Estonian Dialects
The article provides an overview of the introduction of German loanwords into the Estonian language from the 13th to the 20th century, as well as their spread in Standard Estonian and dialects. German has functioned as a donor language in both its Low German and High German forms; however, Estonian has also had two written standards based on its major dialects—the Tallinn and Tartu literary languages, which were developed on the basis of the Nort…
Collocational Patterns and Semantic Prosodies of “Saudization” in Modern Standard Arabic Discourse: A Corpus-Based Analysis
Since its intensification in the early 2000s, Saudization, perceived as Saudi Arabia’s labor nationalization policy, has profoundly shaped the socio-economic and socio-political discourse in the Arab world. In spite of the extensive policy and economic research on Saudization, it remains linguistically underexplored, particularly through corpus-based analysis of Arabic language discourse. The current study, hence, investigates the collocational p…
Dialects and Daughter Languages of South Estonian
South Estonian has traditionally been classified in Estonian dialectology as a dialect group of Estonian, whereas historical-comparative linguistics has increasingly recognised it as an early-diverging Finnic language. At the same time, its contemporary varieties—Võro, Seto, Mulgi, and Tartu—have followed different sociolinguistic trajectories and are increasingly regarded by their speakers as separate languages. This article presents a conceptua…
Agent-First Bias in Children’s Sentence Comprehension: Evidence from Mandarin
The article investigates children’s agent-first bias in sentence comprehension. Agent-first bias refers to the phenomenon in which children (or adults) tend to assign the agent role to the first noun phrase (NP) in a sentence. Previous studies suggest that children acquiring Indo-European languages like English exhibit the agent-first bias from early on, while children acquiring other languages may do so only during later stages of language devel…
Between Decline and Revival: A Case Study of Reading Habits in Võro and Seto
This study examines reading opportunities and practices in the Võro and Seto languages in the context of ongoing language shift and limited intergenerational transmission. Literacy in local languages is important for language revitalisation. Minority-language literacy, especially where majority-language societies have high literacy, expands the functional domains of the language, enhances its prestige, and provides additional input for language l…
Phase Asymmetry in Mandarin Chinese Nominals
This paper argues that nominal domains in Mandarin Chinese instantiate phases and exhibit the characteristic asymmetry between edge and complement. Evidence comes from both binding asymmetry and raising asymmetry. A possessor can bind the logophor ziji only when it occupies the highest position within the nominal domain, indicating that only this position is accessible to higher discourse-related structure. In addition, possessor raising is sensi…
Is L2 the Least Stable System? The Dynamics of VOT Trilingual Production in Polish–English–Norwegian Read and Spontaneous Speech
This study analyses the production of voiceless and voiced plosives (/p, t, k, b, d, g/) in both read and spontaneous speech produced by L1 Polish, L2 English, L3 Norwegian multilingual learners and native control speakers. The goal is to examine whether L2/L3 learners maintain distinct phonological categories in all their languages or exhibit cross-linguistic influence, as well as to identify which voicing series and places of articulation are m…
Children’s Language Use on the Playground: Peer Interaction and Language Policy in Practice in Kazakhstan
This study examines children’s language use in spontaneous playground interaction in Kazakhstan, focusing on how language choice varies across play activities and how these practices relate to family language orientations. The study uses non-participant observation and audio recordings of nine playgroup sessions involving 23 children aged 4–9, complemented by caregiver questionnaires. The analysis follows an interactional approach and uses qualit…
Technology-Supported Japanese Learning in Pre-Departure Migration Preparation: Learning Challenges and Digital Practices Among Vietnam’s Japan-Bound Technical Intern Trainees
Technical intern trainees (TITs) preparing to depart for Japan study Japanese within a compressed four- to six-month pre-departure period, during which they must acquire language skills for workplace communication, daily life, and social adaptation. This cross-sectional study examined Japanese-learning challenges and technology use among Vietnam’s Japan-bound TITs, with working adults studying Japanese in Vietnam included as an unmatched descript…
Pragmatic Variation in Greeting and Farewell Formulae in Rural Austria
Greeting and farewell formulae are highly conventionalized routines that index social relations, regional norms and situational formality. This paper investigates pragmatic variation in greetings and farewells in rural Austria, focusing on age, region, setting and prosodic design. We analyze greeting and farewell formulae and metalinguistic comments produced by 152 adults from 13 rural locations across two project phases. The dataset combines spo…
The Acquisition of Verb Argument Realization in Mandarin Chinese
Discourse-information structure has been found to shape the realization of verb argument structure. This study investigates the effects of grammatical roles, information status, and animacy of verb arguments on verb argument realization in the speech of Mandarin-speaking children, in comparison with that of their caregivers. The data are drawn from two naturalistic longitudinal corpora of two monolingual Mandarin-learning children (ages 1;07–3;09…
Non-Prototypical Heritage Speakers: Italian as L2 in a Sri Lankan Community
This case study investigates specific language phenomena and dominance patterns among second-generation speakers of Sri Lankan origin in Naples within the framework of the HELLO Campania Project. While second generations are typically assumed to be dominant in the societal majority language, the Sri Lankan community—characterized by exceptionally high rates of heritage language maintenance—offers a critical testing ground for this assumption. Dra…
Perceiving Grammar Through Ideology: Exploring Deaf Perspectives on ASL Word Order Acceptability
This quantitative study explores divergent beliefs about word order in American Sign Language (ASL) within the U.S. Deaf community. Although the academic literature commonly characterizes ASL as following a Subject–Verb–Object (SVO) structure, certain Deaf individuals maintain that ASL predominantly uses a Subject–Object–Verb (SOV) order. This perception reflects an ideological positioning of ASL as fundamentally distinct from English and may ali…
Three Generations, Two Languages, One Family: The Case of Turkish in France
According to recent estimates, France is home to approximately 700,000 individuals of Turkish origin, encompassing first-, second-, and third-generation immigrants. Scholars have extensively investigated the language practices, maintenance, and shift, as well as the cultural practices and identity construction, of Turkish migrant families in France, employing both sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic approaches. However, the majority of these stu…
Exploring Phonological Aspects of Australian Indigenous Sign Languages
Spoken languages make up only one aspect of the communicative landscape of Indigenous Australia-sign languages are also an important part of their rich and diverse language ecologies. Australian Indigenous sign languages are predominantly used by hearing people as a replacement for speech in certain cultural contexts. Deaf or hard-of-hearing people are also known to make use of these sign languages. In some circumstances, sign may be used alongsi…
Differential Access: Asymmetries in Accessing Features and Building Representations in Heritage Language Grammars
In this article, we propose that elements of heritage language grammars-both in the form of axiomatic features and larger combined representational units-are not easily lost over the course of the lifespan. This view contrasts with alternative explanations for the steady-state representation of these grammars that suggest truncated acquisition or erosion are the primary culprits of perceived language loss. In production and comprehension processe…
An Exploratory Study of EFL Learners' Use of ChatGPT for Language Learning Tasks: Experience and Perceptions
ChatGPT, a general-purpose intelligent chatbot developed by OpenAI, has introduced numerous opportunities and challenges in the field of language education. With its remarkable ability to generate diverse forms of text, answer questions, and provide translations within minutes, ChatGPT has become an influential tool in the era of advanced AI technology. However, to what extent ChatGPT can be used to assist students in completing language learning…
Gender Agreement and Assignment in Spanish Heritage Speakers: Does Frequency Matter
Gender has been extensively studied in Spanish heritage speakers. However, lexical frequency effects have yet to be explored in depth. This study aimed to uncover the extent to which lexical frequency affects the acquisition of gender assignment and gender agreement and to account for possible factors behind heritage language variability. Thirty-nine English-dominant heritage speakers of Spanish completed a lexical knowledge screening task (Multi…
The Representation of People in the Ibibio Anthroponymic System: A Socio-Onomastic Investigation
In the African cultural context and beyond, personal names are not just unique forms of identifying and individuating their bearers; they also provide relevant windows that resonate with the people's worldviews, values, and cosmology. From a socio-onomastic perspective, this article examines the representation of people and their description in the Ibibio cultural namescape, which is a source of their traditional epistemology. Personal names are …
Code-Switching in Linguistics: A Position Paper
This paper provides a critical review of the state of the art in code-switching research being conducted in linguistics. Three issues of theoretical and practical importance are explored: (a) code-switching vs. borrowing; (b) grammaticality; and (c) variability vs. uniformity, and I take a position on all three issues. Regarding switching vs. borrowing, I argue that not all lone other-language items are borrowings once more subtle measures of int…
Bilingual Alignments
The issue of how to distinguish bilingual syntactic representations from processing preferences or strategies is addressed by postulating the concept of permeable bilingual alignments as memory storage devices that include information from different language components. Supporting evidence from phenomena such as the emergence of innovative mappings across different components (phonology, morphology, syntax, the lexicon, and information structure)…
Revisiting (Non-)Native Influence in VOT Production: Insights from Advanced L3 Spanish
A growing body of research investigating cross-linguistic influence on the acquisition of a third phonological system suggests that first (L1) and second (L2) languages concur in influencing oral production in the target third language (L3). Yet, there are also claims of either a more noticeable effect of the L2 on the L3, or a prevailing influence from the L1. This study further explores whether the L1 and the L2 compete or converge on exerting …
The Effect of Instructed Second Language Learning on the Acoustic Properties of First Language Speech
This paper reports on a comprehensive phonetic study of American classroom learners of Russian, investigating the influence of the second language (L2) on the first language (L1). Russian and English productions of 20 learners were compared to 18 English monolingual controls focusing on the acoustics of word-initial and word-final voicing. The results demonstrate that learners' Russian was acoustically different from their English, with shorter v…
Mixed Verbs in Contact Spanish: Patterns of Use among Emergent and Dynamic Bi/Multilinguals
The present study provides a quantitative analysis of mixed verbs in the naturalistic speech of 20 Northern Belize bi/multilinguals of two different age groups (ages 14-20 and ages 21-40). I examined the relative frequency of Spanish/English mixed verbs vis-à-vis syntactic verb type and phrasal verbs in mixed verbs. Results showed that the token frequency of mixed verbs was a predictive measure of the relative frequency of 'hacer + V' in code-swi…
Language Beliefs of English Teachers in Norway: Trajectories in Transition
Language teachers struggle to shift from monolingual ideologies and pedagogical practices, as advocated for in the promotion of multilingualism and inclusive pedagogy. Additionally, the role of English as a multilingua franca pushes English teachers to rethink their beliefs about the language and its use. Even when positive about multilingualism, teachers are often uncertain of how to address the complexities of multilingual ideals due to varying…
Understanding Heritage Language Learners' Critical Language Awareness (CLA) in Mixed Language Programs
Despite the prevalence of mixed language programs across the United States, their impact on the unique socio-affective needs of heritage language (HL) students has not been researched sufficiently. Therefore, the present study examines HL learners' critical language awareness (CLA) in a mixed Spanish undergraduate program at a small private university in the eastern United States. Sixteen HL learners enrolled in different Spanish upper-level cour…
Longitudinal Developments in Bilingual Second Language Acquisition and First Language Attrition of Speech: The Case of Arnold Schwarzenegger
The purpose of this investigation was to trace first (L1) and second language (L2) segmental speech development in the Austrian German-English late bilingual Arnold Schwarzenegger over a period of 40 years, which makes it the first study to examine a bilingual's speech development over several decades in both their languages. To this end, acoustic measurements of voice onset time (VOT) durations of word-initial plosives (Study 1) and formant freq…
Immersive Virtual Reality as an Effective Tool for Second Language Vocabulary Learning
Learning a second language (L2) presents a significant challenge to many people in adulthood. Platforms for effective L2 instruction have been developed in both academia and the industry. While real-life (RL) immersion is often lauded as a particularly effective L2 learning platform, little is known about the features of immersive contexts that contribute to the L2 learning process. Immersive virtual reality (iVR) offers a flexible platform to si…
Language Interaction in Emergent Grammars: Morphology and Word Order in Bilingual Children's Code-Switching
This paper examines the morphological integration of nouns in bilingual children's code-switching to investigate whether children adhere to constraints posited for adult code-switching. The changing nature of grammars in development makes the Matrix Language Frame a moving target; permeability between languages in bilinguals undermines the concept of a monolingual grammatical frame. The data analysed consist of 630 diary entries with code-switchi…
Mobilizing Instruction in a Second-Language Context: Learners' Perceptions of Two Speech Technologies
We report the results of two empirical studies that investigated the use of mobile text-to-speech synthesizers (TTS) and automatic speech recognition (ASR) as tools to promote the development of pronunciation skills in L2 French. Specifically, the study examined learners' perceptions of the pedagogical use of these tools in learning a French segment (the vowel /y/, as in tu 'you') and a suprasegmental feature (across-word resyllabification/liaiso…
From Bilingualism to Multilingualism: Mapping Language Dynamics in the Linguistic Landscape of Hispanic Philadelphia
This study explores the linguistic landscape (LL) of three Hispanic neighborhoods in Philadelphia, PA, aiming to document and measure the presence of the Spanish language in public spaces and understand the influence of time, location, and establishment type on language use. Based on 3437 signs analyzed from 2021 to 2023, our findings reveal that English dominates the LL at 61.65%, while Spanish constitutes 24.16%. The study employs chi-squared t…
Sampling and Generalizability in Lx Research: A Second-Order Synthesis
As in many other social sciences, second/additional language (Lx) researchers are often interested in generalizing their findings beyond the samples they collect data from. However, very little is known about the range of learner backgrounds and settings found in Lx research. Moreover, the few papers that have addressed the range of settings and demographics sampled in Lx research paint a disappointing picture). The current study examines the ext…
Teaching English to Linguistically Diverse Students from Migration Backgrounds: From Deficit Perspectives to Pockets of Possibility
This article reports on an interview study with six secondary school LX English teachers working in a part of Austria where there is an above-average number of residents-and thus also students-who are multilingual and come from migration backgrounds. It attempts to extend research on deficit perspectives of multilingual learners from migration backgrounds to the area of LX English learning and to provide insights into a language learning context …
Island Extractions in the Wild: A Corpus Study of Adjunct and Relative Clause Islands in Danish and English
Adjuncts and relative clauses are traditionally classified as strong islands for extraction across languages. However, the Mainland Scandinavian (MSc.) languages have been reported to differ from e.g., English in allowing extraction from adjunct and relative clauses. In order to investigate the distribution of possible island extractions in these languages based on naturally produced material, we conducted two exploratory corpus studies on adjunc…
Extraction from English RCs and Cross-Linguistic Similarities in the Environments That Facilitate Extraction
In the first two decades following Ross's Constraints on Variables in Syntax, a picture emerged in which the Mainland Scandinavian (MS) languages appeared to systematically evade some of the locality constraints proposed by Ross, including the relative clause (RC) part of the complex NP constraint. The MS extraction patterns remain a topic of debate, but there is no consensus as to why extraction from RCs should be so degraded in English (compare…
Segmental and Prosodic Evidence for Property-by-Property Transfer in L3 English in Northern Africa
In this paper, I argue in favour of property-by-property transfer in the third language acquisition of English by L1 Arabic and L2 French speakers in Northern Africa (Algeria and Tunisia) based on a reanalysis of previous work. I provide a phonological analysis of their spontaneous production data in the domains of consonants, vowels, stress, and rhythm. The L3 phonology shows evidence of influence from both L1 Arabic and L2 French, with mixed in…
Home and School Language Practices and Their Effects on Heritage Language Acquisition: A View from Heritage Italians in Germany
This paper intends to provide some speculative remarks on how consistency and continuity in language use practices within and across contexts inform heritage language acquisition outcomes. We intend "consistency" as maintenance of similar patterns of home language use over the years. "Continuity" refers to the possibility for heritage language speakers to be exposed to formal education in the heritage language. By means of a questionnaire study, …
Does Teaching Your Native Language Abroad Increase L1 Attrition of Speech? The Case of Spaniards in the United Kingdom
The present study examines the perceived L1 accent of two groups of native Spaniards in the United Kingdom, Spanish teachers, and non-teachers, alongside monolingual controls in Spain. While the bilingual groups were carefully matched on a range of background variables, the teachers used Spanish significantly more at work where they constantly need to co-activate it alongside English. This allowed us to test the relative effect of reduced L1 use …
Language Mixing and Diachronic Change: American Norwegian Noun Phrases Then and Now
This article investigates the diachronic development of language mixing within noun phrases in the heritage language American Norwegian. By comparing data collected in the 1930s and 1940s with recently collected data, I present and discuss patterns showing systematic changes, specifically concerning the categories number and definiteness. Moreover, I propose two potential analyses of these patterns based on an exoskeletal approach to grammar. Thi…
Multimodal Cue Competition in Adults' Novel Verb Generalization
In addition to identifying the referents of novel words, language learners also have to learn to generalize newly acquired words to the appropriate range of referents. Here we ask: what is the relative importance of visual, auditory, and linguistic information in influencing how adult learners generalize newly acquired verbs to novel contexts? In our study, participants learned two novel verbs associated with distinct auditory, visual, and lingui…
Language Mixing and Diachronic Change: American Norwegian Noun Phrases Then and Now
This article investigates the diachronic development of language mixing within noun phrases in the heritage language American Norwegian. By comparing data collected in the 1930s and 1940s with recently collected data, I present and discuss patterns showing systematic changes, specifically concerning the categories number and definiteness. Moreover, I propose two potential analyses of these patterns based on an exoskeletal approach to grammar. Thi…
Maximizing L2 Speaking Practice through iPads
This study investigates the effects of additional out-of-class speaking practice, using a simple iPad application, on students' overall speaking proficiency, fluency, and syntactic complexity. Students in the experimental and control groups (N = 52) completed an adapted Simulated Oral Proficiency Interview (SOPI) at the end of the semester, which was rated by two independent raters. Results of an independent-samples t-test revealed statistically …
Clausal Subordination and the Structure of the Verbal Phrase
In his first approach to recursion in clausal embedding, Chomsky (1957) postulates a proform in the matrix clause linked to an independently constructed clause that, via an application of the generalised transformation, eventually becomes the matrix verb's complement. Chomsky (1965) replaces this with a direct clausal embedding analysis, with clausal recursion in the base component of the grammar. I argue here that, while direct clausal recursion…
I Text English to Everyone: Links between Second-Language Texting and Academic Proficiency
This article reports on research investigating the relationship between text messaging and academic literacy among Spanish-dominant emergent bilingual young adults in New York City (acquiring English). Through assessments of academic language and analysis of a corpus of 44,597 text messages, this study found that emergent bilinguals who send more messages in English and choose English for the settings on their mobile phones tend to have higher ac…
I Can't Program! Customizable Mobile Language-Learning Resources for Researchers and Practitioners
Combining insights from Activity Theory (Engeström, 2014), mobile-assisted language-learning (MALL) (Stockwell and Hubbard, 2013), and computer-assisted language learning (CALL) research (Chapelle, 2001), this paper proposes three levels of teacher involvement in the adaptation and/or creation of MALL resources to enhance learner interaction with the target language and potentially contribute to the field of learner-computer interactions. Specifi…
Code-Switching by Phase
We show that the theoretical construct "phase" underlies a number of restrictions on code-switching, in particular those formalized under the Principle of Functional Restriction (González-Vilbazo 2005) and the Phonetic Form Interface Condition (MacSwan and Colina 2014). The fundamental hypothesis that code-switching should be studied using the same tools that we use for monolingual phenomena is reinforced
The Role of Functional Heads in Code-Switching Evidence from Swiss Text Messages (sms4science.ch)
This study aims to test two principles of code-switching (CS) formulated by González Vilbazo (2005): The Principle of the Functional Restriction (PFR) and the Principle of Agreement (PA). The first states that a code-switch between the morphological exponents of functional heads belonging to the same extended projection of a lexical category (N° or V°) is not possible. The second claims that inside a phrase, agreement requirements have to be sati…
Mobilizing Instruction in a Second-Language Context: Learners' Perceptions of Two Speech Technologies
We report the results of two empirical studies that investigated the use of mobile text-to-speech synthesizers (TTS) and automatic speech recognition (ASR) as tools to promote the development of pronunciation skills in L2 French. Specifically, the study examined learners' perceptions of the pedagogical use of these tools in learning a French segment (the vowel /y/, as in tu 'you') and a suprasegmental feature (across-word resyllabification/liaiso…
Visually-Impaired Brazilian Students Learning English with Smartphones: Overcoming Limitations
The aim of this research was to investigate the role of smartphones in teaching the English language to a population of fifteen, visually-impaired Brazilian students. Classroom ethnography was chosen as the methodological design and data generated from classroom observations, didactic materials that were made and posted on apps, and two questionnaires were used. We resorted to descriptive and interpretive analyses as we intended to find linguisti…
Rapid Automatic Naming Performance of Young Spanish-English Speaking Children
The aim of this preliminary study was to examine the feasibility of a rapid automatic naming (RAN) task for young Spanish-English speaking dual language learners (DLLs) and to examine the relationship between children's performance on RAN and other standardized language and literacy assessments. A total of 275 Spanish-English speaking children in kindergarten and first grade attempted a RAN task and completed assessments of language and early lit…
Cross-Linguistic Transfer of Object Clitic Structure: A Case of L3 Brazilian Portuguese
This study examines the role of previously known language in L3 Brazilian Portuguese (BP) object expression acquisition. It investigates the claims of the main models of L3 transfer, the cumulative enhancement model (CEM) (Flynn et al. 2004), the L2 status factor (Bardel and Falk 2007) and the typological proximity model (TPM) (Rothman 2011) in both comprehension and production tasks. It also aims at measuring the extent of transfer effects in co…
"Language Is the Place from Where the World Is Seen"-On the Gender of Trees, Fruit Trees and Edible Fruits in Portuguese and in Other Latin-Derived Languages
Trees have always been important as natural entities carrying a strong symbolic and metaphorical weight, not to mention their practical uses. Therefore, words and their gender, used to name natural entities as important as trees and particularly fruit-trees and their fruits, are also important. Starting from the finding that Portuguese and Mirandese, the second official spoken language of Portugal, are Latin-derived languages in which 'tree' has …
A New Outlook of Complementizers
This paper investigates clausal complements of factive and non-factive predicates in English, with particular focus on the distribution of overt and null that complementizers. Most studies on this topic assume that both overt and null that clauses have the same underlying structure and predict that these clauses show (nearly) the same syntactic distribution, contrary to fact: while the complementizer that is freely dropped in non-factive clausal …
A View of the CP/DP-(non)parallelism from the Cartographic Perspective
The aim of this paper is to reconsider some aspects of the so-called clause/noun-phrase (non-)parallelism (Abney 1987 and much subsequent work). The question that arises is to find out what is common and what is different between the clause as a Complementizer Phrase (CP)-structure and the noun as a Determiner Phrase (DP)-structure in terms of structure and derivation. An example of structural parallelism lies in the division of the clause and th…
Improving Motivation to Learn English in Japan with a Self-Study Shadowing Application
The scarcity of opportunities to communicate in English in Japan proves a challenge for learners, as significant improvements in English as a Foreign Language) (EFL) listening and speaking will not materialize without consistent practice and a motivation to study. Furthermore, analysis of standardized test scores shows that university students' scores tend to decrease after their first year of study (Sumida 2015; Mikada 2016). In order to overcom…
Determiner Asymmetry in Mixed Nominal Constructions: The Role of Grammatical Factors in Data from Miami and Nicaragua
This paper focuses on the factors influencing the language of determiners in nominal constructions in two sets of bilingual data: Spanish/English from Miami and Spanish/English creole from Nicaragua. Previous studies (Liceras et al. 2008; Moro Quintanilla 2014) have argued that Spanish determiners are preferred in mixed nominal constructions because of their grammaticised nature. However, those studies did not take the matrix language into accoun…
On the Acceptability and Use of -ra and -se in Conditional Phrases in Galician Spanish
The verb forms ending in -ra and -se in modern Spanish both correspond to the imperfect subjunctive, but their use is far from equal throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Rojo (1996) documents that the -se form is all but obsolete in the majority of American nations, and Kempas (2011) records rates of use in Spain ranging from 11% to 44%. The highest rate corresponds to usage patterns in Galicia, where contact with the regional language, Galicia…
Are Lions Green: Child L2 Learners' Interpretation of English Generics and Definite Determiners
The aim of this small-scale study (22 participants) was to analyze how L1-Spanish L2-English children interpret English noun phrases (NPs) by taking into consideration two variables: children's age and amount of input. These two variables were studied in relation to children's developmental tendencies and language transfer. Children begin with an innate predisposition for the generic interpretation, which leads them to incorrectly interpret some …
Cross-Linguistic Orthographic Effects in Late Spanish/English Bilinguals
Through the use of the visual world paradigm and eye tracking, we investigate how orthographic-phonological mappings in bilinguals promote interference during spoken language comprehension. Eighteen English-dominant bilinguals and 13 Spanish-dominant bilinguals viewed 4-picture visual displays while listening to Spanish-only auditory sentences (e.g., El detective busca su banco 'The detective is looking for his bench') in order to select a target…
Indian English Evolution and Focusing Visible Through Power Laws
New dialect emergence and focusing in language contact settings is difficult to capture and date in terms of global structural dialect stabilization. This paper explores whether diachronic power law frequency distributions can provide evidence of dialect evolution and new dialect focusing, by considering the quantitative frequency characteristics of three diachronic Indian English (IE) corpora (1970s-2008). The results demonstrate that IE consist…
Sibilant Merger in the Variety of Basque Spoken in Amorebieta-Etxano
Basque has an apico-alveolar /s̺/, a lamino-alveolar /s̻/, and a prepalatal sibilant /ʃ/ that are represented by the letters , , and , respectively. The apico-alveolar and the lamino-alveolar sibilants have merged in some areas of Biscay, Guipuzcoa, and the Basque-speaking territories of Alava (e.g., Hualde 2010), and Spanish has been hypothesized as a factor driving this merger (Jurado Noriega 2011). On the other hand, complex sibilant systems l…
The Effects of Code-Switching and Lexical Stress on Vowel Quality and Duration of Heritage Speakers of Spanish
The quantity of research on Heritage Speakers (HS) of Spanish phonetics has increased over the last decade, including studies on the possible effect of code-switching on Spanish phonetics. Following this line of research, the present study investigates the role of code-switching and lexical stress on Spanish HS vowel production, specifically if the introduction of English reduces the vowel quality and duration of Spanish vowels after a code-switc…
Introducing the Special Issue: Clausal and Nominal Complements in Monolingual and Bilingual Grammars
To introduce this Special Issue entitled Clausal and Nominal Complements in Monolingual and Bilingual Grammars, we begin by explaining what originally motivated this Special Issue
Introducing the Special Issue: Bilingualism in the Hispanic and Lusophone World
This Special Issue of Languages includes nine selected and peer-reviewed papers from the second meeting of Bilingualism in the Hispanic and Lusophone World (BHL), an international conference that took place at Florida State University, in Tallahassee, Florida, USA, in January 2017