We are a network of South African scientists working on language development. Our aims are:

  1. To help build a research infrastructure to promote research and the digitalisation of all child language development data for all South African languages.
  2. To build collaborations with research institutions representative of the different regions and languages across South Africa.
  3. To conduct research and provide data on children’s language development from 8 months to adolescence in all 11 official South African languages.
  4. To create a digital database on development in all South African languages with the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) that is freely available to all scientists.
  5. To promote research on child language development in understudied languages by working with other universities to build capacity in Speech Language Therapy, and related disciplines such as Linguistics, Education and Developmental Psychology through collaboration, research and training of postgraduate students.
  6. To assist in developing interventions to diagnose problems and promote language development in the health, childcare and education sectors.
  7. To build up new research collaborations with national partners and ensure that research into children’s language development in the South African context has a firmly established agenda and is prioritised by relevant stakeholders (the Universities, Health Professions Council of South Africa, Department of Basic Education and South African Speech Language and Hearing Association).​