Journal Articles

Advance online publication

Brookes, H., Southwood, F., Makaure, P., White, M. J., Mössmer, M., Defty, C., Yalala, S. L., Brink, N., Kruger, H., Matfunjwa, M., Ndhambi, M., Ndlangamandla, S., Bhuda, M. T., Buthelezi, N., Jiyana, W., Khumalo, P., Miriri, L., Skosana, N., & The South African CDI Team. (2026). A crosslinguistic study of gesture and lexical development in South African infants. First Language. Special Issue: The Acquisition of African Languages. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237251388512

Published

Brookes, H., Southwood, F., Mössmer, M., Makaure, P., White, M. J., Coetsee, C., Yalala, S. L., Kruger, H., Ndhambi, M., Ndlangamandla, S., Bhuda, M. T., Brink, N., Buthelezi, N., Jiyana, W., Khumalo, P., Ludidi, B., Miriri, L., Matfunjwa, M., Skosana, N., & The South African CDI Team. (2026). Instrument adaptation for measuring early child language development across multilingual and socio-culturally diverse settings. Developmental Psychology, 62(1), 288–302. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001935

Brookes, H., Makaure, P., Yalala, S., Danvers, H., Mössmer, M., Little, F., Ndhambi, M., Southwood, F., Ludidi, B., & The South African CDI Team. (2025). Mean Length of Utterance: A study of early language development in four Southern Bantu languages. Journal of Child Language, 52(2), 244–269. https://doi.org/mpq3

Southwood, F., White, M., Brookes, H., Pascoe, M., Ndhambi, M., Yalala, S., Mahura, O., Mössmer, M., Oosthuizen, H., Brink, N., & Alcock, K. (2021). Sociocultural factors affecting vocabulary development in young South African children. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 642315. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.642315

Mössmer, M. (2019). The rise and fall of Xri: The history of a completed language shift in the Northern Cape, South Africa. Anthropological Linguistics, 60(4), 44–74. https://doi.org/10.1353/anl.2019.0009

In preparation

Coetzee, A.W., Henriksen, N., García‑Amaya, L., Mackay, B. & Mössmer, M. Supplementing historical evidence with linguistic evidence: On the regional provenance of Patagonian Afrikaans.

Coetzee, A.W., Mackay, B. & Mössmer, M. Afrikaans word recognition: Do listeners adjust to the socio‑ethnic identity of the speaker?

Coetzee, A. W., Mackay, B., Mössmer, M., & Sneller, B. Intersectional identities: Regional and socio-ethnic variation in Afrikaans.

Gowlett, D.F. & Mössmer, M. The development of syllabic consonants in Sotho-Tswana and Nguni.