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        <title>Frontiers in Language Sciences | New and Recent Articles</title>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/language-sciences</link>
        <description>RSS Feed for Frontiers in Language Sciences | New and Recent Articles</description>
        <language>en-us</language>
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        <pubDate>2026-09-28T03:19:51.567+00:00</pubDate>
        <ttl>60</ttl>
        <item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1792224</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1792224</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Enduring cognate facilitation: evidence for form-based transfer in bilingual word recognition]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-09-24T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Evy Woumans</author><author>Wouter Duyck</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Cognates are words that share meaning across languages alongside all or most of their orthography. They are generally processed faster than control words, an effect known as cognate facilitation. The current study set out to investigate whether long-term cognate facilitation in a multi-day practice paradigm is driven by shared mental representations or graded cross-linguistic similarity effects. Dutch-English participants completed a visual lexical decision paradigm over five consecutive days, with testing on the first and fifth day in one language (L1 or L2) and practice on the intervening days in the other language. Target words included identical and non-identical cognates, non-cognate translation equivalents, controls, and non-words. While results showed a robust procedural practice effect across all word types, both identical and non-identical cognates exhibited a significantly larger cross-linguistic performance transfer than translation equivalents and control words. Crucially, the transfer effects for identical and non-identical cognates did not statistically diverge, and no additional transfer was observed for purely semantic translation equivalents. These patterns suggest that shared semantic representations alone cannot account for enduring cognate facilitation. Rather than proving isolated shared structural representations, the findings demonstrate that cross-linguistic transfer in visual word recognition is heavily modulated by graded form-based similarity, reflecting tightly coupled orthographic and phonological processing pathways.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1688982</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1688982</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Semantic labeling with fulfillers in multilingual contexts]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-09-16T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Kiran Pala</author><author>Vasudevan Nedumpozhimana</author><author>S. Shalu</author><author>Punam Silu</author><author>Kamal Kumar Choudhary</author>
        <description><![CDATA[This article introduces a novel approach to semantic labeling grounded in the fulfiller concept—a cognitive-semantic theory that highlights the role of absent but contextually inferred elements in meaning construction. We argue that the prevailing semantic labeling practices often neglect this essential aspect of meaning, especially in typologically diverse languages where semantic roles may be implicit, elided, or heavily reliant on contextual inference. Drawing on a small pilot multilingual corpus, we undertake a qualitative, manually annotated study to identify and classify fulfillers—semantic roles that are not overtly expressed but are grammatically, discursively, or culturally implied. Our analysis focuses on languages with pro-drop characteristics, argument ellipsis, and context-dependent expression, revealing systematic patterns in how meaning is fulfilled through absence. The findings suggest that accounting for fulfillers can deepen our understanding of cross-linguistic variation in argument realization and semantic structure. The authors discuss the implications for typological theory, annotation methodology, and potential future integration into computational models. This work opens a new direction in semantic labeling by foregrounding the cognitive and typological relevance of semantic absences.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1813257</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1813257</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Narrative point of view as an instructional variable in English reading classrooms: Differential patterns of multidimensional reading performance]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-09-09T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Jagdeep Panchal</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Narrative point of view is a feature of narrative texts, yet its role as a text characteristic in English language teaching remains insufficiently understood. This study examined whether first-person and third-person omniscient narration were associated with differential patterns of multidimensional reading performance among upper-primary English language learners. Drawing on a framework distinguishing processing-oriented dimensions from comprehension-oriented outcomes, the study investigated performance across Inferential Processing, Structural Coherence Processing, Micro-Level Comprehension, and Macro-Level Comprehension. A classroom-based quasi-experimental design was employed with 115 Grade 4 and Grade 5 learners. Using a counterbalanced design, participants completed reading tasks under first-person and third-person omniscient narration conditions. Reading performance was assessed through a multidimensional framework and analyzed using mixed-design analyses of variance. The findings revealed a significant overall effect of narration condition, with third-person omniscient narration associated with a modest advantage in composite reading performance. Significant interactions also emerged across assessment dimensions. First-person narration was associated with stronger Inferential Processing and Micro-Level Comprehension, whereas third-person omniscient narration was associated with stronger Structural Coherence Processing and Macro-Level Comprehension. A significant interaction between narration condition and grade level indicated that developmental differences were expressed differently across narrative contexts. The findings suggest that narrative point of view may represent a meaningful component of text design associated with differential patterns of multidimensional reading performance. By distinguishing processing-oriented dimensions from comprehension-oriented outcomes, the study contributes to a nuanced understanding of how narrative perspective relates to reading performance among English language learners and highlights the relevance of narrative design in reading contexts.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1929126</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1929126</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Convergence between AI chatbot-calculated microstructure measures and SALT analysis of child language samples]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-09-07T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Richy Lewis Hayes</author><author>Pui Fong Kan</author>
        <description><![CDATA[This study examined the association and agreement between microstructure calculations from four large language model (LLM) chatbots and those generated by Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) software. Eighty-four typically developing children (35 girls; ages 2–9) participated, with 30 Japanese-English bilinguals and 54 English monolinguals. Narrative language samples were collected and coded with SALT conventions. Transcripts were randomly ordered and analyzed using two prompts. Using a general prompt, transcripts were entered into each LLM chatbot (ChatGPT, Copilot, MagicSchool, and Gemini), microstructure outputs were recorded, then the process was repeated with the same order using the more specific prompt. Results showed that across LLM chatbots, measures requiring relatively simple word or morpheme counts (MLUw, MLUm, NTW, NDW) generally exhibited stronger associations with SALT than the subordination index (SI), which showed greater variability. While intraclass correlation coefficients within measures were more variable, association and agreement coefficients were generally consistent with each other. Children's age and language backgrounds were associated with differences in the magnitude of some LLM–SALT coefficients. Finally, prompt specificity did not strengthen microstructure calculations for any of the LLM chatbots. Findings provide preliminary methodological evidence that some SALT-calculated microstructure measures may be more amenable to LLM chatbot-assisted calculation than others, with substantial associations and generally strong agreement observed for several measures; however, due to the exploratory nature of the current study, their clinical utility, decision-level accuracy, and workflow implications require further investigation.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1879834</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1879834</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Pragmatic multifunctionality of Indonesian swearing in google play app reviews: a mixed-method corpus study]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-09-03T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Ratna Soraya</author><author>Nurlela Nurlela</author><author>T. Thyrhaya Zein</author><author> Prihantoro</author><author>Mulyadi Mulyadi</author><author>Mahriyuni Mahriyuni</author>
        <description><![CDATA[BackgroundSwearing in digital communication is conventionally viewed as a straightforward marker of offensiveness, but its pragmatic value is systematically reshaped by platform norms, interactional goals, and sociocultural inference, challenging the adequacy of binary offensive-language models.MethodsThis study adopts a mixed-method corpus-pragmatic design to examine Indonesian swearing in Google Play comments from League of Legends: Wild Rift, Netflix, and X/Twitter, using lexicon-based detection across 500,599 non-empty comments, keyword-in-context interpretation, and contextual coding of six pragmatic categories: cognitive devaluation, animalized reference, corporeal taboo, death/dirt/disgust, moral abuse, and expletive intensification.ResultsIndonesian digital swearing performs catharsis, complaint, humor, solidarity, evaluative intensification, and ideological stance-taking, showing it is not reducible to aggression; platform differences are systematic, with gaming reviews foregrounding competence-based blame and cathartic release, streaming reviews concentrating service dissatisfaction and complaint intensification, and social-media reviews mobilizing public stance and identity positioning, while a Cohen's kappa of 0.3858 between lexicon-based and contextual detection confirms that lexical detection alone cannot explain pragmatic force.ConclusionThe study contributes a culturally situated, data-grounded model for interpreting Indonesian digital swearing beyond binary offensive-language classification and offers practical implications for platform-sensitive annotation, sentiment analysis, and content moderation.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1798627</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1798627</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Neural connectivity changes related to vocabulary knowledge effects during second language comprehension]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-08-26T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Brief Research Report</category>
        <author>Takara Kenza Allal-Sumoto</author><author>Hiroaki Mizuhara</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Vocabulary knowledge is a key factor of second language listening success. Our previous behavioral and electrophysiological studies showed faster processing for sentences containing vocabulary with productive knowledge, accompanied by changes in neural activity during sentence listening tasks. However, it is still unclear how vocabulary knowledge shapes functional connectivity across regions during online comprehension. To address this issue, we estimated phase-based connectivity using the weighted phase lag index, identified between level subnetworks with the Network-Based Statistic, and examined whether vocabulary-level effects emerge as changes in overall network strength, clustered organization, or bridging roles. Connectivity differences were most consistent for productive knowledge, appearing mainly as localized increases in bridging or intermediary roles rather than as broad increases in within-module hubness. However, none of these differences survived family-wise correction, and the findings are best treated as exploratory targets for confirmatory replication.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1782730</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1782730</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Toward linguistically-fair screening and assessment of primary progressive aphasia: a transdiagnostic approach for understudied and minority languages]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-08-21T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Opinion</category>
        <author>Mohamed Taiebine</author>
        <description></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1911194</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1911194</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Identification of consonant length in L2 Italian: the role of cross-linguistic influence]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-08-21T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Andrea Pešková</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Italian contrasts singleton and geminate consonants, a distinction that often poses difficulties for second language (L2) learners. The present study examines how first-language (L1) background shapes the perception of Italian consonant length by comparing learners from five linguistic backgrounds. A total of 104 adult learners of Italian (Finnish, Czech, German, Slovak, Spanish) and 21 L1 Italian listeners as a control group completed a perception identification task with 54 pseudowords controlled for consonant type and stress position. Participants categorized each auditory stimulus by selecting between the singleton and geminate orthographic response options (e.g., sàppolo vs. sàpolo). The results reveal high overall identification accuracy (81%), but substantial differences across learner groups. Learners whose L1 encodes consonantal and/or vocalic quantity contrasts (Finnish, Czech, Slovak) produced identification patterns closer to those of Italian listeners, while learners from languages without systematic length contrasts (Spanish, German) showed less accuracy. The observed hierarchy of accuracy confirms the importance of cross-linguistic influence in the perception of duration-based contrasts. While stress position and proficiency played more limited roles, consonant type also influenced performance. In particular, sonorants were identified more accurately than obstruents, and several consonant-specific tendencies reflected differences in the learners' L1 phonological inventories. A comparison with a previous discrimination study, conducted with the same participants, revealed higher accuracy in identification across all groups, suggesting that identification performance reflects phonological categorization processes and may additionally have been facilitated by the written responses available during the task. The findings highlight the role of cross-linguistic influence in the perception of Italian consonant length and contribute to a broader understanding of how L2 learners map continuous acoustic variation onto phonological categories.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1872761</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1872761</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Familiarity and literal plausibility, not transparency, drive idiom comprehension in adult readers with low literacy skills in Easy German]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-08-11T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Lena Wieland</author><author>Ingo Reich</author>
        <description><![CDATA[IntroductionEasy German (Leichte Sprache) is a rule-guided variety of German intended to increase the accessibility of written information for people with cognitive disabilities and adults with low literacy skills. Although existing guidelines often discourage the use of idioms, experimental evidence on idiom processing in these target groups remains scarce. We investigated how literacy, functional familiarity, transparency, and literal plausibility jointly shape idiom comprehension and preferences in adult low-literacy readers.MethodsIn a norming study with literate German speakers (Experiment 1; Prolific; 71 verb-phrase idioms), we obtained seven-point ratings of transparency and literal plausibility (reverse-coded so that higher values indicate a more plausible literal scene) and selected 24 idioms to instantiate a 2 × 2 design (high/low transparency × high/low plausibility). Literacy in the target group was assessed with otu.lea (Experiment 2) and transformed into a quasi-continuous index (0–100). In Experiment 3 (no context), 30 low-literacy adults explained each idiom, providing a measure of functional familiarity. In Experiment 4 (same cohort after ~6 months; n = 26), idioms were embedded in Easy German contexts and tested using an endorsement task (idiom vs. paraphrase vs. distractor) and a ranking task (gold/silver/bronze).ResultsMixed-effects models showed that, in Experiment 3, figurative accuracy increased with literacy (β = 0.028, p = 0.0019) and was related to literal plausibility (β = 0.569, p < 0.001), with a strong transparency × plausibility interaction (β = −1.457, p < 0.001): idioms that were both transparent and literally plausible yielded the lowest figurative accuracy. In Experiment 4, idiom endorsement was predicted by functional familiarity from Experiment 3 (β = 0.702, p = 0.025), while ranking responses showed robust distractor rejection and no reliable disadvantage for idioms relative to meaning-consistent paraphrases.DiscussionOverall, idiom accessibility in low-literacy adults appears to be driven primarily by literacy, functional familiarity, and literal-figurative competition indexed by plausibility, whereas transparency does not emerge as a reliable stand-alone facilitator. These findings challenge Easy German recommendations that prioritize transparency and instead support applied strategies centered on audience familiarity, low literal plausibility, and contextual or paraphrastic scaffolding.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1846406</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1846406</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Convergent representations of linguistic constructions in human and artificial neural systems]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-08-06T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Pegah Ramezani</author><author>Thomas Kinfe</author><author>Andreas Maier</author><author>Achim Schilling</author><author>Patrick Krauss</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Understanding how the brain processes linguistic constructions is a central challenge in cognitive neuroscience and linguistics. Recent computational studies have shown that artificial neural language models spontaneously develop internally differentiated representations of Argument Structure Constructions (ASCs), generating specific predictions about when and how construction-level information should emerge during language processing. The present study tests these predictions in human neural activity using electroencephalography (EEG). Data were recorded from 12 native English speakers, with 11 participants retained for all reported analyses after preprocessing. Construction-related activity was analyzed using time-frequency analysis, statistical feature extraction, and machine learning classification. The results reveal construction-specific neural signatures that emerge primarily at sentence-final positions, where argument structure information becomes fully disambiguated, and are most prominent in the alpha frequency band. Pairwise classification further demonstrated reliable differentiation between specific construction pairs, particularly ditransitive and resultative constructions, while other pairs exhibited overlapping neural signatures. Importantly, the temporal emergence and similarity structure of these neural effects closely mirror patterns previously observed in recurrent and transformer-based language models, in which constructional representations arise during integrative stages of processing. Together, these findings provide converging evidence that linguistic constructions are neurally encoded as distinct form-meaning mappings, supporting core assumptions of Construction Grammar and suggesting that both biological and artificial learning systems converge on similar representational solutions during predictive language processing. More broadly, this convergence is consistent with the idea that learning systems may discover stable regions within an underlying representational landscape - recently referred to as a Platonic representational space - that constrains which linguistic abstractions emerge as cognitively and computationally efficient forms.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1880735</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1880735</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Overaccommodating language toward older adults: an interpretation based on theories of communication accommodation and system justification]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-08-05T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Perspective</category>
        <author>Maria Àngels Viladot</author><author>Howard Giles</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Prior research on so-called “elderspeak” or patronizing talk directed at older adults—often interpreted by communication accommodation theory (CAT) as a classic example of “overaccommodation”—has shown that such communicative behaviors are viewed negatively by recipients and observers. However, we provide evidence suggesting that these evaluations are by no means uniform and may vary across contexts. To account for this variability, we draw on system justification theory to argue that attributions and evaluations of unfavorably delivered messages may, nonetheless, be accepted insofar as they align with internalized social norms and contribute to maintaining a coherent representation of the social order. We argue that this theoretical position, aligned with CAT, offers a more innovative and comprehensive way of understanding how intergenerational communication may reproduce age-based inequalities.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1845613</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1845613</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Lonely wallets: differences in comprehending anthropomorphic language in Japanese and English]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-07-30T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Franklin Chang</author><author>Tomoko Tatsumi</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Japanese speakers appear to use anthropomorphic language in a way that is different from English speakers (e.g., my wallet is lonely). Some of these expressions are not conventionalized, yet seem to be spontaneously produced. To test whether these types of anthropomorphic forms are readily understood, we presented English and Japanese readers with stories where the fourth sentence was either an anthropomorphic sentence or a literal sentence. In two experiments, English speakers found the anthropomorphic sentences to be more difficult to process than the literal sentences, but there was no difference in difficulty for the Japanese readers. The results are not explained by existing comprehension or personification theories but instead suggest that culture-specific conceptual factors can change comprehension processes in English and Japanese.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1799931</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1799931</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Monitoring oral language development in young children: psychometric evaluation of a learning progress assessment]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-07-29T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Melanie Besca</author><author>Marco Ennemoser</author>
        <description><![CDATA[IntroductionLearning Progress Assessments (LPA) are widely used to monitor individual progress in various domains, enabling the continuous adjustment of interventions as needed. Although LPAs are well-established in areas such as reading and mathematics, there is a lack of tools specifically designed to assess oral language development and in early childhood education. To address this gap, two studies were conducted to provide initial evidence for the psychometric properties of a newly developed LPA. This tool aims to assess progress in oral language development in monolingual and multilingual kindergarten children aged 4–6 years.MethodsSince progress assessments rely on the use of multiple test versions, 11 parallel tests were developed based on the sentence repetition task. In the first study, a cross-sectional design was used, where 87 children completed the parallel tests within 2 weeks. In the second study, a longitudinal design was applied, involving 88 children who completed the parallel tests at 4-week intervals over a period of 6 months.Results and DiscussionThe results from the studies indicated that the parallel tests had similar levels of difficulty and provided reliable and valid global measures of children's language abilities. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the LPA's one-dimensional structure. Moreover, repeated-measures analyses and a latent growth curve model provide initial evidence of the LPA's sensitivity to change, particularly for children with lower initial language abilities.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1707568</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1707568</link>
        <title><![CDATA[An experimental and computational study of an Estonian single-subject word naming experiment]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-07-28T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Kaidi Lõo</author><author>Arvi Tavast</author><author>Maria Heitmeier</author><author>R. Harald Baayen</author>
        <description><![CDATA[This study reports a large-scale single-subject experiment combining the word naming task with eye-tracking. Response variables (first fixation duration, total fixation duration, number of fixations, word naming latency, and spoken word duration) were subjected to statistical analyses with generalized additive models (GAMs). We compared GAMs with classical lexical predictors such as word frequency and inflectional paradigm size with GAMs that were given predictors derived from computational implementations of the discriminative lexicon model (DLM) for the lexical route in the word naming task, using word embeddings to represent words' meanings. With the exception of word length, lexical measures and DLM-based measures were found not to predict initial fixation duration and total number of fixations. DLM-based measures were statistically well supported as predictors of total fixation duration, naming latency, and spoken word duration. GAMs with classical predictors provided more precise fits for the first two response variables, but a GAM with DLM-based predictors provided a superior fit to the spoken word durations. These results support the possibility that in the naming task, word meaning is involved. The GAMs for spoken word duration and response latency revealed a novel phenomenon, namely that when the lexical route is not functioning, due to the mapping from meaning to form being unsuccessful, response latencies increase, spoken word durations decrease, and the speaker likely resorted to naming with the non-lexical grapheme-to-phoneme naming route.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1840898</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1840898</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Who said it—and did it fit the speaker's age? How age-typicality of named objects improves source memory]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-07-22T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Brief Research Report</category>
        <author>Christiana Chaidaridou</author><author>Sara D. Beck</author><author>Andrea Weber</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Memory for who said what can help native and non-native listeners identify critical information for use in conversations. In this study, source memory for object-speaker associations was tested for listeners differing in language background and nativeness. Native and non-native participants of German first heard the voice of a child and an adult speaker name photographs of objects with age-typical characteristics (e.g., a board book for children vs. a standard hardcover novel) before they had to indicate who had previously named each object. Speakers either consistently named objects typical for their age group, or they randomly named objects from both age groups. Both listener groups associated objects with speakers successfully and showed better source memory in the age-consistent condition over the random condition. Critically, non-native listeners performed comparably to native listeners and benefited equally from age-typical patterns, suggesting that stereotypical knowledge about age can facilitate source memory encoding and retrieval even when processing a second language. The results confirm the role of source memory representations in communication and suggest that memory for object-speaker associations based on salient social categories like age remains robust in non-native listening.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1784593</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1784593</link>
        <title><![CDATA[The cognition of dialect variation: evaluating the relationship to bilingualism]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-07-16T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Perspective</category>
        <author>Zachary K. Maher</author><author>Janet G. van Hell</author>
        <description><![CDATA[In recent decades, there have been considerable advances in the area of bilingual cognition, but research on cognition across dialects remains limited. Here, we consider how the intuitive link between these experiences of linguistic diversity could drive empirical and theoretical work on the cognitive basis of dialect production. We begin with descriptive evidence to motivate contrasting hypotheses: the Difference Threshold Hypothesis, which argues for a qualitative difference between bilingual and bidialectal cognition; and the Linguistic Continuum Hypothesis, which argues that bidialectalism and bilingualism represent the same phenomenon across different degrees of linguistic overlap. To differentiate these hypotheses at the level of individual cognition, we argue that (1) research must expand beyond the lexical level to consider phonological and morphosyntactic differences across codes and (2) extra consideration is warranted for cases of bilingualism with apparent dense code-switching, which more closely approximates “bidialectal” practices.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1827262</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1827262</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Proficiency, phonological context, and distributional control in Arabic L1 learners' English stop voicing]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-07-09T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Hesham Aldamen</author><author>Mutasim Al-Deaibes</author><author>Rami Alsharefeen</author><author>Mohamad Almashour</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Arabic and English differ in how they organize stop voicing along the voice onset time (VOT) continuum. Jordanian Arabic typically contrasts prevoiced /b/ with short-lag voiceless stops, whereas General American English uses short-lag /b/ and long-lag aspirated /p/ in stressed singleton onsets, with aspiration suppressed after /s/. Within the revised Speech Learning Model (SLM-r), such learning should appear not only as shifts in mean VOT but also as changes in dispersion, overlap, perceptual boundary location, and context-sensitive control. Sixty-five adults participated: 45 Jordanian Arabic L1 learners of English and 20 General American English controls. Learners completed an institutional English placement test that excluded speaking or pronunciation, and all participants produced real-word English stimuli containing singleton /b/, singleton /p/, and /sp/ cluster /p/. Participants also completed VOT identification and context-naturalness perception probes. VOT was measured from unaltered waveforms in Praat, with strong inter-rater reliability. Learners distinguished /b/ and /p/ in production, but their singleton /p/ VOT remained shorter and more variable than that of controls. Higher proficiency predicted longer singleton /p/ VOT, reduced within-speaker dispersion, reduced /p/-/b/ distributional overlap, lower perceptual /b/-/p/ boundary values, and stronger suppression of aspiration in /sp/ clusters. Learners nevertheless continued to rate overaspirated /sp/ tokens as relatively natural, indicating residual difficulty with context-conditioned aspiration. The findings support a distribution-sensitive account of L2 stop learning: proficiency-related development is reflected in the tightening and separation of VOT distributions and in emerging phonological control, not in mean category placement alone.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1864222</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1864222</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Sound iconicity in the transition from protosign to protospeech]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-07-07T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Peter Gärdenfors</author><author>Axel Ekström</author>
        <description><![CDATA[So-called “gesture-first” accounts of language origins suggest that human language began with gestural communication, including movements of the hand and face. However, a prevailing problem for such theories has been to explain how language moved “from hand to mouth”—that is, how vocal communication may have gradually replaced gestural communication, to become the predominant mode of language. Here, we present a mechanism by which this transition may have been possible. We specify several intrinsically iconic aspects of vocal behavior, related to embodied cognitive processes. We argue that, making use of pre-existing relationships between sound and non-sound (including physical movement and internal physiological states), vocal iconicity may have paved the way for a shift from gesturing together with a relatively inflexible vocal systems to flexible, open-ended spoken language with gestural complement.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1751663</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1751663</link>
        <title><![CDATA[The interplay of prominence-lending factors and language production in children]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-07-07T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Sarah Dolscheid</author><author>Martina Penke</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Several factors influence how adult speakers produce an utterance and which element they choose to start with. For example, German-speaking adults are more likely to begin an utterance with an element if it is (a) in their focus of attention, (b) animate rather than inanimate, and (c) on the left side of a picture rather than the right. However, while such prominence-lending factors affect adult language production, little is known about their effect on child language production. The current study addresses this issue by testing German preschoolers in picture-based language production tasks while measuring gaze patterns via eye-tracking. Specifically, we examined the effect of three factors known to affect adult language production—attentional cueing, animacy, and position in a visual display. To assess how children respond to these manipulations, we zoomed in on two syntactic structures for which children demonstrate varying degrees of proficiency: conjoined noun phrases and transitive sentences. Our results revealed no effects of animacy and position, but significant effects of attention on child language production. Children were more likely to first fixate on a character that had been visually cued and were also more likely to name that character first when producing conjoined noun phrases. Furthermore, initial fixations predicted the order in which children mentioned elements, suggesting a tight link between visual attention and language production. However, visual attention exclusively affected the linearization of nouns in simple conjoined noun phrases but not the selection of starting points in children's production of transitive sentences. These findings show that children's tendency to verbalize what is in their focus of attention is influenced by syntactic complexity. Specifically, even when children's focus of attention was on the patient character, they nonetheless adhered to their preferred active SVO sentence structure. Furthermore, children's sentence planning strategies as reflected by speech-onset-times and the number of disfluencies were likewise immune to prominence-lending factors. Thus, unlike adults in comparable experiments, our findings seem to suggest that children did not show a radically linear incremental word-by-word sentence planning strategy that proceeds from the element in the focus of attention.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1808320</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1808320</link>
        <title><![CDATA[When, How, and for Whom? A narrative review contextualizing bilingual effects in ADHD]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-07-03T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Review</category>
        <author>Mary-Kate Murphy</author><author>Stephanie Durrleman</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders, characterized by symptoms of (i) inattention, (ii) hyperactivity-impulsivity or (iii) both. Atypical patterns of attention are a common phenotype in this population. To date, research on bilingualism in ADHD has not reached a consensus regarding the impact of bilingualism on executive functions (EFs) and ADHD-related behavior. This review focuses primarily on bilingualism in ADHD and highlights how outcomes within the ADHD literature, considering child, adolescent and adult populations, may vary systematically according to contextual moderators. First, socioeconomic status (SES) should be carefully controlled for, as it independently affects EFs, receptive vocabulary and attention abilities. Second, detailed profiling of language background is required to better interpret reaction time and accuracy findings, allowing performance differences to be linked to variables such as context of language usage, frequency of use, or number of languages acquired. Furthermore, implementation of tools such as the Q-BEx and LEAP-Q questionnaires is encouraged to precisely profile one's language background and capture language-experience variables, thus clarifying the role of bilingualism in cognitive performance in ADHD. Third, linguistic distance (LD) potentially imposes dynamic effects on EFs for bilinguals with ADHD with the literature showing bilingual advantages in EFs given one's proficiency and distance between languages. Co-occurring Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is acknowledged given the comorbidity's prevalence rates in ADHD groups, as well as the fact that it has been associated with additional challenges in language and/or social skills. For future research, hypotheses regarding effects of bilingualism in ADHD groups with comorbid ASD are presented. Additionally, the incorporation of longitudinal studies in bilingual ADHD research is emphasized given that cross-sectional study designs can overlook outcomes related to EFs or ADHD-related behavior and diagnosis at different developmental time-points. Together, these insights call for a shift from global comparisons toward context-sensitive approaches that capture the diversity of bilingual experience in ADHD.]]></description>
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