A comprehensive theory of child language acquisition requires an evidential base that is representative of the typological diversity present in the world’s 7000 or so languages. However, languages are dying at an alarming rate, and the next 50 years represents the last chance we have to document acquisition in many of them. Here, we take stock of the last 45 years of research published in the four main child language acquisition journals: Journal of Child Language, First Language, Language Acquisition and Language Learning and Development. We coded each article for several variables, including (1) participant group (mono vs multilingual), (2) language(s), (3) topic(s) and (4) country of author affiliation, from each journal’s inception until the end of 2020. We found that we have at least one article published on around 103 languages, representing approximately 1.5% of the world’s languages. The distribution of articles was highly skewed towards English and other well-studied Indo-European languages, with the majority of non-Indo-European languages having just one paper. A majority of the papers focused on studies of monolingual children, although papers did not always explicitly report participant group status. The distribution of topics across language categories was more even. The number of articles published on non-Indo-European languages from countries outside of North America and Europe is increasing; however, this increase is driven by research conducted in relatively wealthy countries. Overall, the vast majority of the research was produced in the Global North. We conclude that, despite a proud history of crosslinguistic research, the goals of the discipline need to be recalibrated before we can lay claim to truly a representative account of child language acquisition.

Evan Kidd

Rowena Garcia

First Language

First Language is an international peer reviewed journal that publishes the highest quality original research in child language acquisition. Child language research is multidisciplinary and this is reflected in the contents of the journal: research from diverse theoretical and methodological traditions is welcome. Authors from a wide range of disciplines - including psychology, linguistics, anthropology, cognitive science, neuroscience, communication, sociology and education - are regularly represented in our pages. Empirical papers range from individual case studies, through experiments, observational/ naturalistic, analyses of CHILDES corpora, to parental surveys.

First Language is an international peer-reviewed journal dedicated to publishing high-quality original research in the field of child language acquisition. Child language research is multidisciplinary, which is reflected in the journal's content: we welcome studies from diverse theoretical and methodological traditions. Our pages regularly feature contributions from authors across a wide range of disciplines, including psychology, linguistics, anthropology, cognitive science, neuroscience, communication, sociology, and education. Empirical papers range from individual case studies and experiments to observational/naturalistic studies, analyses of CHILDES corpora, and parental surveys.

《First Language》是一本国际同行评审期刊，致力于发表儿童语言习得领域的高质量原创研究。儿童语言研究是一个多学科的领域，这一点在期刊的内容中得到了体现：我们欢迎来自不同理论和方法传统的研究。我们的页面上定期刊登来自心理学、语言学、人类学、认知科学、神经科学、传播学、社会学和教育等多个学科的作者的研究。实证论文的范围从个案研究、实验、观察/自然主义研究，到对CHILDES语料库的分析和家长调查。

Category	Quartile
文学	2
文学, 语言与语言学	3
文学, 语言学	4
文学, 心理学发育	4

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Journal Info

Category	Quartile
PSYCHOLOGY, DEVELOPMENTAL	4