Abstract Language allows us to efficiently communicate about the things in the world around
us. Seemingly simple words like this and that are a cornerstone of our capability to refer, as …

Language is an essential part of what makes us human. Where did it come from? How did it
develop into the complex system we know today? And what can an evolutionary perspective …

This chapter reviews the literature on preschool children's sensitivity to cognitive
accessibility in selecting linguistic forms to realize referents in speech. Both spontaneous …

Constraints on linguistic variation are consistent across adult speakers, yielding probabilistic
and systematic patterns. Yet, little is known about the development of such patterns during …

This paper examines the way children younger than two use non-verbal devices (ie, deictic
gestures and communicative functional acts) and pay attention to discourse status (ie, prior …

Languages differ in their realization of the subject argument: non-null-subject languages,
like English, require subjects to be phonologically overt; rather, null-subject languages, like …

According to the communicative efficiency hypothesis, speakers should produce more
linguistic material when comprehension difficulty increases. Here, we investigate a potential …

This paper introduces a new experimental paradigm for studying children's real-time
language processing of their parents' unscripted speech. Focusing on children's processing …

This paper compares the production of different types of direct objects by Portuguese–
German and Polish–German bilingual school-aged children in their heritage languages …

Many studies have examined when children are (in) competent in making appropriate
referential choices based on their listeners' requirements. Traditionally, child-level social …