This volume presents sixteen new articles on the acquisition of Romance languages by both well-established researchers and vital new contributors to the field. Under a generative umbrella, the articles in this collection investigate the acquisition of French, Romanian, Spanish, Catalan, Italian and Portuguese across different contexts including first language acquisition, bilingual acquisition, specifically impaired first language acquisition, child L2 acquisition, second language acquisition, as well as first language attrition. This volume advances our understanding of how languages are acquired and how the study of Romance languages contributes to clarifying challenging open questions on the acquisition of key functional categories and other related phenomena. In particular, the articles included assess complexity as a relevant factor shaping children’s acquisition of syntactic and phonological structures, they refine crucial theoretical constructs such as parameter setting and language transfer, and propose language change as another crucial factor affecting the process of language acquisition and attrition.

For decades, international researchers and educators have sought to understand how to address cultural and linguistic diversity in education. This book offers the keys to doing so: it brings together short biographies of thirty-six scholars, representing a wide range of universities and countries, to allow them to reflect on their own personal life paths, and how their individual life experiences have led to and informed their research. This approach highlights how theories and concepts have evolved in different contexts, while opening up pedagogical possibilities from diverse backgrounds and enriched by the life experiences of leading researchers in the field. Beyond these questions, the book also explores the dynamic relationships between languages, power and identities, as well as how these relationships raise broader societal issues that permeate both global and local language practices. It is essential reading for students, teacher educators, and researchers interested in the impact of multilingualism on education.

Typological differences in the formation of multiple Wh-questions are well-known. One option is fronting all Wh-phrases to the sentence periphery. The contributions to this volume all explore this option from a number of perspectives. Topics covered include finer investigations of the “classic” multiple Wh-fronting languages (such as the South Slavic languages Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian), extensions to less well studied languages (Basque, Malagasy, Persian, Yiddish), explorations for languages that don’t obviously fall into this category (German, Hungarian), peripheral effects (optionality of fronting, Superiority vs. Anti-Superiority etc.), interface issues (with semantics, pragmatics, and phonology), and simply theoretical approaches aiming to capture the mechanisms involved in multiple Wh-fronting strategies. The theoretical framework adopted throughout is the Minimalist Program, viewed from different angles. This volume brings together some of the leading experts on the syntax of Wh-questions and offers up-to-date analyses of the topic. It will be indispensable for scholars investigating multiple Wh-questions, and will find an appropriate audience in advanced students and faculty alike.