Prior to the early 1960s, the idea that children in bilingual contexts were somehow disadvantaged for linguistic and cognitive development was popularly held. Without consideration of socio-economic inequalities across groups, often co-occurring with ethnic/racial minority status, it was argued that simultaneous language exposure resulted in confusion, delaying the process of language acquisition ...

Introduction: There exists a great degree of variability in the documentation of multilingual experience across different instruments. The present paper contributes to the “methods turn” and individual differences focus in (heritage) bilingualism by proposing a comprehensive online questionnaire building on existing questionnaires and the experience of using them to document heritage bilingualism: ...

The relative conformity with which (typically developing) children attain adult grammatical competence—ultimate attainment—and the similarity in developmental paths along which they progress is remarkable (e.g., Ambridge & Lieven, 2011; Clark, 2003; Guasti, 2002; Synder, 2007). This achievement is, however, so ubiquitous and mundane that we seldom marvel at it. Of course, monolingual adult grammars ...

Child first language acquisition (L1A) and adult second language acquisition (SLA) have observably different outcomes. Considering how distinct the two acquisition contexts often are, divergence is perhaps not surprising. Only adults acquiring a second language (L2) (i) are typically not surrounded by high quantities of native input, (ii) receive and must filter through significant amounts of ...

Individual variation in heritage language (HL) outcomes does not seem to be random. Instead, this variation can be related to the specific exposure and use patterns heritage speakers (HSs) have with their languages in the contexts they reside. In this study, we present data from 38 child HSs of Persian in English dominant contexts (in New Zealand and the UK), their mothers as well as a control group ...

Herein, we contextualize, problematize, and offer some insights for moving beyond the problem of monolingual comparative normativity in (psycho) linguistic research on bilingualism. We argue that, in the vast majority of cases, juxtaposing (functional) monolinguals to bilinguals fails to offer what the comparison is supposedly intended to do: meet the standards of empirical control in line with the ...

Herein, we provide counterargumentation to some of Domínguez, Hicks, and Slabakova's claims that the term <i>incomplete acquisition</i> is conceptually necessary on theoretical grounds for describing the outcome grammars of heritage language bilingualism. Specifically, we clarify their claim that previous challenging of the term in our and others’ work is primarily based on a misconceived belief ...