Complex systems of inflectional morphology provide a useful testing ground for input-based language acquisition theories. Two analyses were performed on a high-density (12%) naturalistic sample of two Polish-English children's (2;0 and 3;11) and their parents' use of Polish noun inflection: first, each child's use of inflectional affixes and their…

Purpose: The objective of this study was to compare vocabulary size and composition in 2-year-olds learning Polish or English as measured by the Language Development Survey (LDS; Rescorla, 1989). Method: Participants were 199 Polish toddlers (M = 24.14 months, SD = 0.35) and 422 U.S. toddlers (M = 24.69 months, SD = 0.78). Results: Test-retest…

We examined case-marking variation in heritage Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian. Comparing heritage to homeland Polish and Ukrainian speakers, we found only a few types and a few tokens of systematic distinction between heritage and homeland varieties. A total of 6,291 instances of nouns and pronouns were extracted from transcribed conversations…

There is a need to provide bilingual assessments and reference data to identify those who struggle to acquire their heritage language (L1) or the language spoken in the country of residence (L2). However, bilingual assessments and data are still sparse. Therefore, the aim was to use a tablet application to screen receptive vocabulary in different…

The two main models of children's acquisition of inflectional morphology--the Dual-Mechanism approach and the usage-based (schema-based) approach--have both been applied mainly to languages with fairly simple morphological systems. Here we report two studies of 2-3-year-old Polish children's ability to generalise across case-inflectional endings…

Rapid acquisition of linguistic categories or constructions is sometimes regarded as evidence of innate knowledge. In this paper, we examine Polish children's early understanding of an idiosyncratic, language-specific construction involving the instrumental case--which could not be due to innate knowledge. Thirty Polish-speaking children aged 2; 6…

Many offline studies on third language acquisition suggest strong connections between speakers' L3 and L2 rather than between their L3 and L1, especially if the foreign languages are typologically related (Cenoz, Hufeisen, & Jessner, 2001; Singleton, 2001). However, a recent online study investigating trilingual processing did not provide evidence…