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Purpose This article explored the predictive values of three main language delay (LD) trajectories (i.e., persistent, late onset, and transient) across 3–5 years on poor literacy at 8 years. Additionally, the effect of gender was assessed, using both gender-neutral and gender-specific thresholds. Method The data comprised mother-reported questionnaire data for 8,371 children in the Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Cohort Study. Analyses were conducted using binary logistic regression in SPSS to make predictions about risk. Results LD reported at preschool age was associated with excess risk of poor literacy at 8 years with odds ratios ranging from 3.19 to 9.75 dependent on trajectory, persistent LD being the strongest predictor. The odds ratio of transient LD was similar to that of late-onset LD. Gender was not found to play an important role in the association between oral language and literacy, as the gender difference disappeared when gender-specific deficit criterion was used. Conclusion Our study supports the longitudinal association between preschool oral language and school-aged literacy skills and highlights the importance of different LD trajectories across preschool ages in predicting later literacy. Furthermore, practitioners are recommended to consider gender-specific cutoffs in relation to language and literacy measures.

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Mainstream core grammar theory, still to some extent relying on the idealized speaker in a homogeneous speech community, is ill equipped to handle different kinds of periphery data, like code-switching data and other types of language mixing data. In this paper, we defend a model of grammar that we argue is able to handle different types of both core and periphery data. Empirically, we focus on single-word code-switching data obtained from a small corpus of the Chinese production of a bilingual Mandarin Chinese -Norwegian child. We develop the beginnings of a generative frame model of grammar exploiting insights both from late insertion neo-constructional models and from code-switching theories assuming a matrix -embedded language asymmetry. We will be paying special attention to the lexicon -syntax interface.

This study examines the mother-reported language practice in bilingual English/German-Norwegian, two-parent families in Norway, and explores the effects of (1) parental input patterns, (2) parental gender, and (3) status of the heritage languages (HL), on success of HL transmission and on children's language use with siblings when the children were age five. Using mother-reported questionnaire data from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa; a national birth cohort in Norway), we collected information about the languages spoken by the children and the home language use of 204 English-Norwegian and 99 German-Norwegian families. The success rate of HL transmission was reported to be 79.9% in English-Norwegian families, and 72.2% in German-Norwegian families. However, less than half of the bilingual children interacted in HL with their siblings. Different parental input patterns were found to have different effects on HL transmission and on children's HL use with siblings. Additional HL input from the Norwegian parent seemed not only to promote HL transmission, but also increase the probability of children's HL use with siblings. Mothers being the HL user was associated with higher rates of HL transmission and higher rates of children's HL use with siblings.