Project Description
This interdisciplinary research program examines effects of quantity, quality and timing of input on learner development in various groups: bilingual children, children with language impairment, internationally adopted children, heritage speakers and L2 learners. The emphasis is on determining the extent to which diverse groups exhibit effects of cognitive plasticity in their approaches to language learning, despite variation in input. Key questions include the following: (i) What is the typical developmental trajectory for language learners under diverse learning conditions and how is this shaped by the input to which they are exposed? (ii) Which cognitive factors impact language acquisition and use, and is their impact the same under different input conditions? At the same time, we question whether monolinguals provide the appropriate benchmark for all learners. We expect that plasticity will be better recognized if groups are evaluated by means other than solely through comparisons with monolinguals. By focusing on multiple groups, we aim to show that learners are often successful in attaining a level of proficiency that allows for communicative competence, if not total grammatical accuracy.

Project Description