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        <title>Frontiers in Language Sciences | Bilingualism section | New and Recent Articles</title>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/language-sciences/sections/bilingualism</link>
        <description>RSS Feed for Bilingualism section in the Frontiers in Language Sciences journal | New and Recent Articles</description>
        <language>en-us</language>
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        <pubDate>2026-04-13T16:16:27.464+00:00</pubDate>
        <ttl>60</ttl>
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        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1705688</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1705688</link>
        <title><![CDATA[How Vietnamese tackle Japanese kanji: key factors behind handwriting competence in Japanese]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-04-10T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Katsuo Tamaoka</author><author>Hoàng Thị Lan Phương</author><author>Jingyi Zhang</author><author>Jun'ichiro Kawahara</author><author>Rinus G. Verdonschot</author>
        <description><![CDATA[This study explored kanji handwriting behavior of Vietnamese learners of Japanese as a Foreign Language (JFL), focusing on single-kanji words with Kun-readings to minimize phonological overlap between Japanese and Vietnamese. Participants completed a real-time handwriting task using a stylus and tablet. The study analyzed writing latency, duration, and accuracy, examining how these were influenced by lexical knowledge, kanji frequency, visual complexity, and difficulty level. Results showed that higher lexical proficiency and more frequent kanji led to faster initiation times. Writing duration increased with visual complexity, as kanji with more strokes took longer to execute. Accuracy decreased for complex and difficult kanji (e.g., N2 level), especially among lower proficiency learners. Notably, learners with stronger lexical knowledge could better compensate for complexity during writing. These findings highlight the distinct cognitive and motor demands of kanji production and underscore the value of combining vocabulary exposure with structured handwriting practice in JFL instruction.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1645235</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1645235</link>
        <title><![CDATA[She is playing with my car: an investigation of possessive structures in Norwegian-Italian simultaneous bilinguals]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-04-08T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Marta Velnić</author>
        <description><![CDATA[This study investigates possessive pronoun placement in Norwegian-Italian bilingual children, focusing on the potential effects of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) and the impact of heritage language status. Both Norwegian and Italian allow prenominal and postnominal possessives, but their contextual distributions are inverse across the two languages. Twenty-four bilingual children residing in Norway completed an elicitation task in both languages designed to elicit neutral and contrastive contexts. The results show that while the children produced both possessive variants in Norwegian, their Italian responses were overwhelmingly prenominal. This suggests a simplification of the Italian heritage grammar, consistent with patterns observed in other heritage languages. Regarding CLI, a non-significant trend was observed: children who spoke only Italian in the home produced more prenominal possessives in contrastive contexts in Norwegian. This pattern points to a possible influence of Italian on Norwegian, particularly among children exposed only to Italian at home.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1746588</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1746588</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Professional translators' use of CAT tools in Saudi Arabia: usability perceptions, realities and difficulties]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-03-31T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Muhammad M. M. Abdel Latif</author><author>Sami Sulaiman Alsalmi</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Though computer-assisted translation (CAT) has gained increasing popularity, profiling the realities of its uses is still under-explored in some contexts. This study investigated professional translators' perceptions and actual uses of CAT tools in Saudi Arabia, the translation text types they commonly use these applications with, their purposes for using them, and the challenges they encounter. The study also looked at the role of gender and work status (i.e., being an employee vs. a freelancer translator) in translators' CAT use. We collected quantitative and qualitative questionnaire data from 44 professional translators working in Saudi Arabia. The results showed the translators' high degree of dependence on CAT and frequent uses of multi-purpose or integrated CAT applications, simple machine translation programmes, and online dictionaries and specialized terminology databases. They reported that such uses vary depending on text types. Translators' work status rather than gender was found to influence some dimensions of their dependence on CAT; employee translators reported higher uses of CAT than freelancers. A number of purposes for using CAT were reported, including: translating specialized texts, verifying human translation accuracy, finding term meanings, ensuring terminological consistency, managing collaborative translation projects, and building glossaries. The translators also referred to some text-related challenges and gaps encountered when using CAT applications, and to their cautious use of AI programmes. The paper discusses these results and their implications to translator training.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1738371</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1738371</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Acquisition and attrition in bilingual vowel systems: evidence from Arabic and English]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-03-11T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Amirah Saud Alharbi</author><author>Lisa Kornder</author><author>Anouschka Foltz</author>
        <description><![CDATA[IntroductionThis study examined how long-term immersion in a second language (L2) affects the acquisition and maintenance of long vowels in bilinguals whose first language (L1) is Arabic or English. Focusing on Arabic /aː/, /iː/, /uː/ and English /ɑː/, /iː/, /uː/, the study investigated whether highly proficient late bilinguals produce nativelike vowels in both their L1 and L2, whether sound discrimination aptitude predicts vowel production accuracy, and to what extent L2 acquisition and L1 attrition are interrelated.MethodsVowel productions by highly proficient Arabic-English and English-Arabic late bilinguals were compared with those of monolingual control speakers. Productions were analyzed in terms of vowel height (F1) and vowel frontness (F2). Linear mixed-effects models and correlation analyses were used to assess group differences and relationships between L1 and L2 nativelikeness, as well as the contribution of sound discrimination aptitude.ResultsResults revealed vowel-specific and asymmetric patterns. Both bilingual groups produced nativelike /aː/–/ɑː/, reflecting successful L2 acquisition and stable L1 maintenance. In contrast, /iː/ and /uː/ showed cross-linguistic influences: Arabic /iː/ exhibited evidence of L1 attrition, while /uː/ displayed both non-native L2 realizations and modified L1 productions. A positive association between L2 and L1 nativelikeness emerged for /uː/, suggesting parallel proficiency across languages. Sound discrimination aptitude had little effect on vowel production accuracy.DiscussionOverall, the findings support dynamic models of bilingual speech production, such as the revised Speech Learning Model, by demonstrating that L1 and L2 vowel categories remain interdependent. The results highlight that both individual and contextual factors contribute to the phonetic stability and modification of bilingual speech, and that L2 acquisition and L1 maintenance can proceed in parallel for specific phonetic categories.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1757671</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2026.1757671</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Navigating language learning through metalinguistic beliefs: a theoretical exploration informed by multilingual narratives]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-03-06T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Constanza Quinteros Ortiz</author>
        <description><![CDATA[This article reconceptualizes metalinguistic beliefs in multilingual learning by examining how they are constructed and mobilized in learners' narratives. Rather than treating self-reports as evidence of stable internal knowledge structures, the study approaches beliefs as discursively enacted interpretations that emerge through storytelling. Drawing on six multilingual life-story interviews conducted in Germany, the analysis combines narrative inquiry with reflexive thematic analysis to identify both the discursive mechanisms through which beliefs are expressed and their recurrent content across cases. The findings show that metalinguistic beliefs are constructed through epistemic positioning, modality, metaphor, and narrative sequencing. Three recurring domains were identified: beliefs about language (e.g., language as structured system, cultural world, or representation of cognition), beliefs about learners (e.g., inherent dispositions, self-regulatory tendencies, and heterogeneity), and beliefs about learning processes (e.g., experiential, cumulative, pattern-driven, and condition-dependent development). These beliefs function as interpretive resources that organize experience, stabilize explanations of progress and difficulty, and shape perceived agency across multilingual trajectories. Situated within a Complex and Dynamic Systems Theory framework, metalinguistic beliefs are understood as emergent and temporarily stabilizing components of multilingual meaning-making. This perspective refines their conceptualization and highlights the value of multilingual narratives for examining how such belief systems develop and operate.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1603764</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1603764</link>
        <title><![CDATA[From L2 acquisition to L1 restructuring: phonotactics in perception and production]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-02-12T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Jennifer Cabrelli</author><author>Jason Cruz</author><author>John Escalante Martínez</author><author>Irene Finestrat</author><author>Alicia Luque</author>
        <description><![CDATA[IntroductionResearch on first-language (L1) perceptual attrition indicates that second-language (L2) learners can acquire syllabic structures that are dispreferred in the L1 and that such acquisition can yield L1 phonotactic restructuring in phonetic and phonological processing and production. In the current study, we examine the production of coda stops in the L1, Brazilian Portuguese, and the adult L2, English, of a bilingual sample of speakers in an L2 immersion environment. Our first objective is to determine how these bilinguals' languages interact across perception and production. Specifically, we address the following questions within and between languages, respectively: (1) to what degree of accuracy do these speakers produce coda stops in the L2, and does L2 perception accuracy predict L2 production accuracy?; (2) to what degree of accuracy do these speakers produce coda stops in the L1, and does L1 perception accuracy predict L1 production patterns?; (3) does L2 production accuracy predict L1 production patterns? Our second objective is to model potentially asymmetric perception and production relationships in the L1 and L2 after extensive L2 exposure while accommodating variable production patterns within and across speakers.MethodsFifteen adult bilinguals completed a syllable concatenation task in both languages in which they concatenated disyllabic forms from monosyllabic nonce-word pairs. Productions were coded for coda stop realization and repair strategies. Production data were analyzed using mixed-effects logistic regression models, and previously published ABX perception data were used to examine perception-production relationships within and across languages.ResultsParticipants reliably produced a syllabic target free from epenthesis in English and did so 66 percent of the time in Portuguese. However, they avoided coda stops in 19% of L2 productions and 46% of L1 productions. In cases of coda avoidance, speakers largely favored epenthesis of the coda stop, followed by palatalization and deletion.DiscussionPerception accuracy did not predict production accuracy in either language. In contrast, second-language production accuracy predicted first-language production patterns. To model the speakers' asymmetric comprehension and production grammars, variable coda repair strategies, and the variable relationship between the grammars over time, we adopt the Bidirectional Phonetics and Phonology framework.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1768943</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1768943</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Editorial: The role of literacy and schooling in heritage language maintenance and growth]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-01-22T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Editorial</category>
        <author>Silvina Montrul</author><author>Jacopo Torregrossa</author><author>Johanne Paradis</author><author>Evangelia Daskalaki</author>
        <description></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1712405</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1712405</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Translation as language contact: a multidimensional perspective of syntactic variation]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-01-12T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Yanmeng Liu</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Translators produce translations via consistent contact with at least two languages. Contact with different languages is a main factor influencing language changes at all levels. However, quantitative exploration of syntactic variation in translation as a language contact event remains underexplored. This study explains translation changes through the lens of language contact and quantifies the influence of language contact on translation syntax in fiction and non-fiction genres. Univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted to examine linguistic variations at the syntactic level in Chinese-English translations by two groups of undergraduate student translators (Grade 4, with a higher degree of language contact; and Grade 3, with a lower degree), with expert translations serving as a benchmark for acceptable language changes. The results reveal four primary dimensions of syntactic variation: (1) structure diversity, (2) production length, (3) sentence complexity, and (4) information fragmentation. Genre-specific effects were observed, with translations in both genres exhibiting statistically significant syntactic changes across four dimensions, while fiction translation insignificant regarding the dimension of structure diversity. The findings imply that contact-induced linguistic changes amplify simplification and explicitation in translation, and manifest more prominently in genres oriented toward information transfer than in those prioritizing stylistic distinctiveness and immersive storytelling. These findings suggest that language contact offers a valuable lens for understanding linguistic changes in translation and imply that genre and language change mechanism are important factors in this perspective.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1696101</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1696101</link>
        <title><![CDATA[The need for a triangle comparison among Chinese characters, Pinyin, and English: from behavioral and neurophysiological perspectives]]></title>
        <pubdate>2025-12-18T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Review</category>
        <author>Tian Zhang</author><author>Zhongmin Chen</author>
        <description><![CDATA[The current study reviewed previous research comparing Chinese and English from behavioral and, emphatically, neurophysiological perspectives. We found that previous studies have identified the time course and brain activation locations involved in processing Chinese and English. At the same time, most of them focus on comparing Chinese characters with English or Chinese characters with Hanyu Pinyin, leaving a gap in the comparison between Pinyin and English, which is essential in understanding the relationship between Chinese and English cognition. By summarizing the indices of previous fMRI and EEG studies, we conceived the idea of comparing Hanyu Pinyin and English using a future experimental paradigm. Meanwhile, Pinyin's role in character input and reading development in Chinese children was also an intriguing topic for future research.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1728907</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1728907</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Evidence from priming on how L2 sentence processing impacts L3 production and cross-linguistic awareness]]></title>
        <pubdate>2025-12-02T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Anna Michelotti</author><author>Helen Engemann</author>
        <description><![CDATA[In the present study we investigate L2-to-L3 priming of motion event (ME) constructions in L1 German learners of English (L2) and Italian (L3). This is a domain in which foreign language (FL) learners often have difficulties adapting to target language norms, especially when the preferential typological encoding patterns of source and target language differ. We adopted a pre-/post-test design to address the question of whether priming affects cross-linguistic awareness of the L3 target structure. This design allowed us to investigate whether and how L2 processing impacts L3 production and cross-linguistic awareness in the learners' L3. The results provide strong evidence that processing ME constructions in the L2 leads to activation of the relevant constructions in the target L3. Our findings provide less conclusive evidence for the occurrence of implicit learning. Concerning cross-linguistic awareness, a numerical trend suggests a weak improvement from the pre-test to the post-test, although no significant effect of priming intervention was found. Our findings indicate that targeted exposure to the L2 has a significant impact on learners' L3. We consider this as further evidence that previously acquired L2s can be used as a strategic resource in the acquisition of additional languages. These findings are thus relevant not only for psycholinguistic research but also for foreign language didactics.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1671807</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1671807</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Investigating patterns of language dominance and mixed dominance among Farsi-German bilingual children in Germany]]></title>
        <pubdate>2025-11-17T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Tina Ghaemi</author><author>Jenny Thillmann</author><author>Anna-Lena Scherger</author>
        <description><![CDATA[IntroductionThis study aimed to operationalize language dominance based on relative language proficiency across vocabulary and morphosyntax and to classify children into dominant and balanced groups. These language dominance classifications were compared with those based on relative language experience, which is characterized by two child-external factors: relative language exposure and use in Farsi. This study further explored child-internal and -external factors contributing to mixed language dominance, defined as a divergence in dominance classification across linguistic domains.MethodsThirty-two Farsi-German bilingual children (age range: 3.10–8.9 years, mean = 6.9 years, SD = 16.8), who speak Farsi as their heritage language (HL) in Germany, participated in the study. All children were tested on vocabulary and morphosyntax in both Farsi and German using the LITMUS-Crosslinguistic Lexical Tasks (CLTs) and Sentence Repetition Tasks (SRTs). Children's relative language experience was documented based on parental ratings.ResultsThe findings indicated that the 0.5 SD-based classification is a reliable method for identifying language dominance. In contrast, relative language experience in the HL only partially predicted Farsi-dominant status when compared to German-dominant and balanced children across domains. Mixed dominance was observed in 45% of the children and was influenced by relative language use in the HL and length of exposure (LoE) to German.DiscussionOverall, this study highlighted that using a 0.5 SD threshold provides a more consistent approach to determining relative language proficiency and that mixed dominance is a characteristic feature of bilingualism. Recognizing this feature and its contributing factors may help reduce the risk of misdiagnosing developmental language disorder (DLD) in bilingual children.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1495607</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1495607</link>
        <title><![CDATA[The relevance of instruction, language exposure and age for heritage children's development of complex morphosyntax: triangulating data from narratives and cloze-tests]]></title>
        <pubdate>2025-11-11T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Jacopo Torregrossa</author><author>Cristina Flores</author><author>Esther Rinke</author>
        <description><![CDATA[For children speaking a heritage language, the onset of schooling may induce a shift in dominance of language exposure from the heritage language to the societal language. This shift may affect the acquisition of morphosyntactic structures in the heritage language, especially of those that, due to their morphosyntactic complexity, tend to be acquired in school age even by monolingual children. The present study investigates the morphosyntactic abilities of 59 children aged 7 to 16 living in Switzerland, speaking European Portuguese as heritage language and German as societal language. Children's morphosyntactic abilities were measured using a written cloze-test and a narration task. By triangulating the results from both tasks, we examined which factors influenced morphosyntactic development in the heritage language, focusing on the role of task type, age, amount of heritage language instruction and variety of heritage language exposure at home, and their interaction with the complexity of the target structures. The results revealed a clear effect of complexity, with more complex structures being produced less accurately, and a task effect, with narratives yielding fewer accurate productions than cloze-tests. Additionally, we found a general effect of age, particularly for less complex structures. Crucially, the amount of years attending heritage language classes emerged as a key factor in the mastery of the most complex structures, whereas the variety of exposure to the heritage language at home showed no significant effect. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of exposure to formal registers of European Portuguese, provided by the heritage language courses in Switzerland, for the consolidation of more complex morphosyntactic abilities.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1652436</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1652436</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Back to Russian monolingualism? Discursive reflections on the 2017 educational reform in Russian- and Tatar-language media]]></title>
        <pubdate>2025-11-07T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Alfinaz Gimadieva</author><author>Vladislava Warditz</author>
        <description><![CDATA[AimsThis paper examines recent developments in Russian-language policy through a case study of the Republic of Tatarstan, with a focus on the abolition of compulsory Tatar-language instruction in 2017. Previous studies predominantly analyzed Russian-language media; our study aims to explore how this policy shift has been discursively framed and contested in both Russian- and Tatar-language media. Positioned within broader discussions of language ideologies in multilingual and post-imperial contexts, the study examines how such reforms reflect enduring tensions between centralizing state narratives and regional demands for linguistic and cultural recognition. Drawing on theoretical insights from Critical Discourse Studies and language ideology research, the paper examines how media discourses shape and reflect the ideological landscape of bilingualism and minority language rights in the Russian Federation.MethodsUsing a qualitative Critical Discourse Analysis approach, we analyse a corpus of 42 articles−20 from Russian-language and 22 from Tatar-language online media outlets—published in response to the 2017 educational reform. These sources were selected to represent the most prominent discursive reactions to the abolition of mandatory Tatar-language instruction in schools. The analysis focused on identifying evaluative language, argumentation strategies, and thematic framing of the policy change. Articles were coded for stance (positive, negative, neutral) and categorized by themes such as cultural identity, legal arguments, educational rights, and national unity. The study draws on CDA frameworks (Fairclough, van Dijk, Blommaert). It applies the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse to uncover how underlying ideologies and power relations inform media representations of language policy. The comparative analysis enables an examination of divergent narratives between linguistic communities.ResultsThe findings reveal a stark contrast in the discursive framing between Russian- and Tatar-language media. Tatar-language outlets predominantly emphasize the symbolic and cultural significance of Tatar instruction, framing the reform as a threat to ethnic identity and linguistic heritage. In contrast, Russian-language media tend to highlight legal compliance, civic unity, and educational pragmatism, positioning the reform as a step toward reinforcing national cohesion and equality. These divergent perspectives illustrate how language policies are deeply embedded in ideological struggles over identity, power, and statehood. The study demonstrates that public debates in Tatarstan are not merely about language instruction but about competing visions of federalism, minority rights, and the role of regional languages in the post-Soviet space. This case study underscores the tense and fluctuating nature of language relations in post-imperial contexts like Russia, where historical legacies of both linguistic empowerment and suppression continue to shape contemporary policy debates. The findings contribute to a broader understanding of how language ideologies are constructed and contested in multilingual states, highlighting the need for more balanced research that incorporates both dominant and minority language perspectives.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1671297</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1671297</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Language development in bimodal bilingual autistic children: a case series of hearing children with deaf signing parents]]></title>
        <pubdate>2025-10-27T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Aaron Shield</author>
        <description><![CDATA[IntroductionIt is often assumed that sign language may be a more accessible alternative to speech for autistic children who have minimally expressive spoken language. However, this hypothesis remains largely untested in children exposed to both modalities from birth. This case series describes the developmental, cognitive, and language profiles of seven hearing autistic children of Deaf parents (CODAs) with native exposure to American Sign Language (ASL) and English.MethodsStandardized assessments of receptive language, nonverbal cognition, and autism characteristics were collected alongside observational and parent-report data.ResultsResults revealed substantial individual variation: some children showed delays in both ASL and English; others showed slightly better ASL comprehension; and still others were clearly dominant in English, despite early access to ASL. Notably, no child demonstrated a consistent sign-language advantage.DiscussionThese findings challenge the assumption that sign is inherently more accessible to autistic children and highlight the need for individualized, modality-sensitive assessment. This study provides the first in-depth look at bimodal bilingualism in autism, offering a novel perspective on bilingual language acquisition in autism.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1604196</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1604196</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Enhancing heritage and additional language learning in the preschool years: longitudinal implementation of the Little Multilingual Minds program]]></title>
        <pubdate>2025-10-10T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Paola Escudero</author><author>Gloria Pino Escobar</author><author>Chloé Diskin-Holdaway</author><author>John Hajek</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Little Multilingual Minds (LMM) partners with universities, communities, and early childhood centers to offer a language exposure program for heritage language (HL) and additional language (AL) speakers in a naturalistic, play-based environment. This paper reports on two program implementations conducted in a Spanish-English bilingual preschool in Sydney, Australia. Implementation 1 focused on HL Spanish children (n = 11; Mage = 4.24) for HL maintenance over 8 months, while Implementation 2 included both HL and AL children (n = 27; Mage = 2.93) with a new cohort over 1 year. Both implementations were quantitatively evaluated in three key areas: HL Spanish linguistic proficiency (vocabulary, listening, speaking, literacy/numeracy), alignment with educational principles (disposition, interaction, interest), and task-related precursors of school readiness (attention, cooperation, engagement), using Bayesian modeling for reliable statistical testing. Results from Implementation 1 showed significant improvements in HL children's linguistic skills from the first to the last assessment, effectively strengthening HL Spanish proficiency while preventing a shift toward English. In Implementation 2, despite challenges, the program was successfully adapted to accommodate both HL and AL children in the same session, yielding encouraging outcomes for both groups. We discuss these findings in terms of their implications for successful HL maintenance and AL learning within preschool classes with mixed language backgrounds.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1633610</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1633610</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Word-likeness ratings of English-like non-words by Arabic and Chinese learners of English: implications for assessing proficiency]]></title>
        <pubdate>2025-09-24T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Faisal M. Aljasser</author><author>Yusen Wang</author><author>Michael S. Vitevitch</author>
        <description><![CDATA[The present study investigated English learners' subjective word-likeness ratings of English-like non-words. For both native Arabic and Mandarin speakers learning English, the subjective word-likeness ratings correlated with objective phonotactic probability measures of those non-words. Although there were no differences between the subjective word-likeness ratings of Beginner and Advanced English learners, the word-likeness ratings of Beginner and Advanced learners did differ from the ratings provided (in a previous study) by native English speakers, suggesting that subjective ratings of phonotactic knowledge may be useful in measuring the extent to which phonological knowledge approaches native-like levels. The results of the present study underscore the important role of phonotactic knowledge in language proficiency. Implications of these findings to second language learning are discussed, with an emphasis on how the non-word rating task might be used as a novel and efficient method to assess one aspect of language proficiency.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1601352</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1601352</link>
        <title><![CDATA[The semantic depth of Japanese-English bilingual children]]></title>
        <pubdate>2025-09-02T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Richy Lewis Hayes</author><author>Pui Fong Kan</author>
        <description><![CDATA[This study examined semantic organization in Japanese-English bilingual children, focusing on the syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift, cross-linguistic relationships between syntagmatic and paradigmatic associations, and the influence of lexical diversity on semantic organization. Participants were 30 Japanese-English bilingual children aged 2 to 8 (M = 70.8, SD = 22.14). A Word Association Task (WAT) assessed semantic knowledge in both languages, with responses coded for type, errors, and code switching. Lexical diversity (Number of different words) was measured using the Multilingual Assessment Instrument of Narratives (MAIN), and language input was measured using a questionnaire. Regression models revealed: No evidence of a syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift, but a gradual increase in both syntagmatic/paradigmatic responses with age and lexical diversity; and proficiency in generating paradigmatic and syntagmatic responses in one language predicted proficiency in the other, controlling for age and language input. This study highlights cross-linguistic influences in Japanese-English bilingual children's semantic organization, with implications for educators emphasizing the beneficial impact of language instruction in one language on the other.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1624840</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1624840</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Exploring the phonetic sources of the North Korean dialect accent produced by North Korean refugees in Seoul]]></title>
        <pubdate>2025-09-01T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Hwanmin Jung</author><author>Jeahyuk Oh</author><author>Jeong-Im Han</author>
        <description><![CDATA[This study explored the acoustic characteristics of second-dialect speech that give rise to its accent perception. Specifically, North Korean (NK) dialect speech samples were collected from NK refugees in Seoul, South Korea. The simple sentences to evaluate potential phonetic predictors of NK accent were constructed and then six of them to test the vowel contrasts of /o-ʌ/ and /u-∔/, acoustic cues for stops, place cues for affricates, and intonation features were selected by trained phoneticians. Forty-nine native Korean speakers of the Seoul South Korean (SK) dialect rated the accentedness of the sentences produced by 34 NK participants. The results of the accent ratings as well as the acoustic measurements revealed that the contrast of the vowel pair /o-ʌ/, which had the opposite spectral relationship to that in the SK dialect, played the most important role in robustly predicting NK dialect accent. The contrast between lenis and aspirated stops showed its lowest rating, and NK speakers used both Voice Onset Time (for NK) and F0 (for SK) cues. The current results contribute to second-dialect acquisition by providing invaluable empirical data from NK refugees, which are still underexplored in this field.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1624184</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1624184</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Semantic accessibility effects of character semantic radicals in Chinese phonograms' recognition]]></title>
        <pubdate>2025-07-17T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Meng Jiang</author><author>Ting Cao</author><author>Ya Tan</author><author>Jixiang Duan</author><author>Daiyue Qu</author>
        <description><![CDATA[IntroductionPrior research concentrated on testifying to the presence of the semantic activation of semantic radicals as well as the separate role of a couple of modulating factors like Transparency of phonograms, Genuineness of phonograms, and Position of semantic radicals.MethodThe present study first proposed a hierarchy on the ease of semantic activation, namely, a hypothesis on the semantic accessibility of character semantic radicals in Chinese phonogram recognition, and empirically investigated the hypothesis. Specifically, the three modulating factors were manipulated in a lexical decision task.Results and discussionThe highest semantic accessibility was observed for the character semantic radicals seated in the high-frequency positions of opaque phonograms, followed by the character semantic radicals seated in the high-frequency positions of transparent phonograms, and the lowest semantic accessibility was observed for the character semantic radicals seated in the high-frequency or low-frequency positions of pseudo-phonograms. Results partially supported the hypothesis, suggesting that the semantic behavior of character semantic radicals was shaped by the host phonograms, which embodied the configuration of such modulating factors as phonograms' transparency, genuineness, and semantic radicals' position.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1622057</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/flang.2025.1622057</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Editorial: Formal approaches to multilingual phonology]]></title>
        <pubdate>2025-06-12T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Editorial</category>
        <author>John Archibald</author><author>Jennifer Cabrelli</author><author>Barış Kabak</author>
        <description></description>
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