Later language development in monolingual and bilingual children and adolescents
Later language development is a rich and dynamic period of growth, characterised by continuing advances in vocabulary, syntax, discourse, pragmatics, literacy, and bilingual competence. While early language acquisition has traditionally attracted the greatest research attention, the school-age and adolescent years represent a critical phase during which language supports increasingly complex academic, social, and cognitive demands. This special issue brings together international research examining language development from later childhood through adolescence and into adulthood across a wide range of linguistic domains and populations.
The contributions explore how children and adolescents refine their understanding of pragmatic meaning and their knowledge of semantics; how vocabulary, morphosyntax, phonology, and syntactic complexity continue to develop in spoken and written language; and how language processing evolves across diverse learning contexts. The collection includes a subset of papers focusing on monolingual development and another subset highlighting specific aspects of later bilingual development. Together, these papers demonstrate that language development extends well beyond the early years, providing new perspectives on the mechanisms, variability, and environmental influences that shape communication across the later stages of development.
The special issue was guest edited by: - Ciara O'Toole, University College Cork, Ireland - Ana Lúcia Santos, University of Lisbon, Portugal