The present study investigates how emotional states (positive, negative, neutral) and language-switching contexts with different switching frequencies (low: 25%, medium: 50%, high: 75%) jointly modulate executive control among unbalanced Chinese-English bilinguals. By combining a language-switching task with a Flanker task within response trials, we found that compared to low- and high-switching contexts, negative states enhanced executive control in medium switching contexts by optimizing resource allocation, as reflected by reduced N2 and increased P3 effects. In high-switching contexts, positive states facilitated proactive control, with greater P3 effects in incongruent than congruent trials. However, negative states favored reactive control, with greater P3 effects in congruent than incongruent trials. We propose the Emotion Adaptive Control (EAC) model, a framework which offers a more comprehensive perspective on how bilingual language control adapts to domain-general cognitive control under emotional states.

This study investigates whether child-directed speech (CDS) exhibits enhanced segmentability compared to adult-directed speech (ADS) and explores how specific linguistic properties of each register influence computational word segmentation performance in Korean. Employing a speaker-matched corpus of naturalistic Korean CDS and ADS, we observed that Korean CDS features shorter utterances and words, lower lexical diversity, fewer hapax legomena and interjections, a greater proportion of onomatopoeia and word play, a higher frequency of one-word utterances, and lower lexical ambiguity than ADS. Computational algorithms revealed significantly higher word segmentation F-scores for CDS than ADS, suggesting that child-oriented linguistic adaptations in CDS facilitate segmentation. This observation is further supported by statistical modelling, which indicates that the enhanced segmentability in CDS is modulated by the linguistic properties of the register. We discuss the nuanced roles of these properties in shaping the performance of segmentation algorithms.

In this study, we explored the social predictors of an ongoing sound change in the Twi Advanced Tongue Root harmony system by acoustically examining production variation in a sample of 105 speakers representing urban and traditional localities in Ghana. In the urban locality, the change was evident in all age-groups and near completion in the youngest generation. In the traditional locality, by contrast, the change was evident only in some younger speakers. The effect of gender differed between localities: urban men were more advanced in the change than urban women, whereas traditional speakers showing the change were predominantly women. By reflecting the gender dynamics of societal engagement and contact in Ghana, these findings highlight the importance of local social context for the manifestation of variation and the unique insights of non-Western communities for sociolinguistic theory.

While pedagogical translanguaging (PT) has gained prominence as an approach for bridging learners’ multilingual repertoires and monolingual teaching paradigms, secondary English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts remain underexamined, particularly following recent shifts in classroom diversity. This systematic review synthesizes 25 empirical studies of PT in secondary EFL education published between January 2023 and August 2025. Based on Reflexive Thematic Analysis, four interconnected themes were identified: (1) barriers to PT implementation due to structural, ideological, and teacher preparation constraints within institutional environments; (2) pedagogical rationales that integrate cognitive, affective, and sociocultural justifications; (3) observable classroom practices organized by pedagogical function, revealing strategic deployment of more-enabled and less-enabled languages; and (4) learning outcomes across cognitive, affective, and sociocultural domains. These themes reveal a fundamental tension: although translanguaging proves pragmatically necessary for effective EFL teaching, it remains systematically unsupported at the institutional level. Teachers justify and enact sophisticated multilingual practices, but without formal preparation, they tend to implement PT covertly within unsupportive structures, relying on knowledge that remains tacit and difficult to share. The review shows that PT has outpaced institutional recognition, calling for systems that treat it as professional expertise rather than tolerated improvisation.

The FrameNet project is a large-scale frame-semantic database with a seemingly usage-based core: It draws on 200,000 annotated sentences from representative corpora and offers the most comprehensive description of semantic valency patterns in English to date. Nevertheless, its empirical validity is weakened by the lack of statistical information on the distribution of lexical units, frames and frame elements. Similarly, the characterisation of frame elements as core, core-unexpressed, peripheral or extra-thematic – intended to indicate their essentiality to a frame – is primarily motivated on theoretical grounds. This raises the question of whether these labels are consistent with actual language use. After exhaustively extracting frequency data from Python’s NLTK FrameNet Corpus for all attested combinations of verbs, frames and frame elements, hierarchical gradient boosting models were trained on information-theoretic measures and word embeddings to predict the coreness of frame elements. The models provide strong usage-based evidence for a general core versus non-core distinction but cast doubt on further subdivisions such as core versus core-unexpressed or peripheral versus extra-thematic. While further validation is necessary, this contribution offers the first statistical perspective on the current state of FrameNet and its compatibility with usage-based approaches.