Catalonia is an interesting site for language ideology research for several reasons. It is a multilingual and multicultural territory, where both Catalan and Spanish enjoy the status of co-official language. Adding to this, over the course of the last two decades there has been a growing movement that has called for the independence of Catalonia…

This study delves into the syntactic parsing abilities of children and infants exposed to Catalan as their first language. Focusing first on ages 3 to 6, we conducted two sentence-picture matching tasks. In experiment 1, 3 to 4-year-old children failed in identifying singular third-person subjects within null-subject sentences, although they…

We presented 28 Spanish monolingual and 28 Catalan-Spanish close-language bilingual 5-year-old children with a video of a talker speaking in the children's native language and a nonnative language and examined the temporal dynamics of their selective attention to the talker's eyes and mouth. When the talker spoke in the children's native language,…

Research on the effects of bilingualism on third language (L3) development set in bilingual communities is scarce, outdated, and has provided mixed results. This study investigated the effects of exposure and age of onset of acquisition (AOA) of L3-English, as well as first and second language (L1/L2) skills and use, in the development of…

Purpose: Though the frequency of gesture use by infants has been related to the development of different language abilities in the initial stages of language acquisition, less is known about whether this frequency (or "gesture rate") continues to correlate with language measures in later stages of language acquisition, or whether the…

Previous studies of linguistic "mudes" in minority language contexts, this is, biographical junctures where speakers enact changes in their linguistic repertoire, have contributed to our understanding of how linguistic codes are appropriated across the lifespan using a largely temporal frame of reference. However, our research in Catalan…

Three experimental studies are presented testing the choice of a left or a right dislocation in Catalan, depending on the bridging relation between the dislocate and its antecedent. We make the hypothesis that the stronger the anaphoric link between the dislocate and its antecedent, the more appropriate a right dislocation is, whereas the opposite…

Second Language Pragmatics (L2 pragmatics) research focused on the study abroad (SA) context points out the benefits of this context for second language (L2) pragmatic development while also illustrating the non-linearity of this development, as it is shaped by different contextual factors and individual differences. Nevertheless, this research…

In recent years, a discourse of Spanish exceptionalism has arisen, whereby Spain has managed to integrate over five million immigrants in a very short period of time without the kind of social upheaval witnessed in other European countries over the past several decades. Overtly racist and xenophobic discourses have generally been, with notable…

Children achieve their first language milestones initially in gesture and prosody before they do so in speech. However, little is known about the potential precursor role of those features later in development when children start using more complex linguistic skills. In this study, we explore how children's ability to reflect on their degree of…

After years of controversy and terminological debate, the plurilingual approach is now well accepted by language teaching communities. Still, doubts concerning how the plurilingual approach can shape the way we teach languages remain. The aim of this article is to describe a pedagogical and sequential approach that can be followed by teachers who…

Children and young people from migrated families often learn host languages faster than their parents might do, and from very young ages they help their parents, families or community members by translating or interpreting, known as child language brokering (CLB). Language brokers need to mediate with different languages in different contexts and…

It is generally taken for granted that teaching the language of the region to newcomers will prevent social stratification and will enable them to participate in the society and economy. Nevertheless, there are significant drawbacks with regard to the coordination of these language classrooms. This article will problematise the fact that these…

Purpose: Research has shown that observing hand gestures mimicking pitch movements or rhythmic patterns can improve the learning of second language (L2) suprasegmental features. However, less is known about the effects of hand gestures on the learning of novel phonemic contrasts. This study examines (a) whether hand gestures mimicking phonetic…

Multilingual and multicultural societies in Europe pose new challenges for schools and have led to the expansion of the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach to foreign language teaching. English teachers in Catalan primary schools frequently face the challenge of integrating science teaching with foreign language teaching. This…