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<jats:p> As members of the editorial team at Language Acquisition, we read Kidd and Garcia’s target article with enthusiasm. In our commentary, we outline some specific ideas for how journals can help to alleviate the issues raised by Kidd and Garcia, some of which are in progress or in place at Language Acquisition, and some of which we hope to undertake alongside other journals in the field. We focus on concrete steps, acknowledging that systemic changes, too, will be required to ensure that our science reflects the diversity of languages learned. </jats:p>

<jats:p> The commentary opens by pointing out why Kidd and Garcia’s study is an important milestone in research on child language. The commentary goes on to survey insights from crosslinguistic research in the domain, focusing on the author’s work in acquisition and development of Israeli Hebrew as a first language, from toddlers via schoolchildren to adolescents. And it calls for further research to enhance our understanding of what is universally shared by children across the world compared with developmental factors filtered by the impact of a particular target language. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Kidd and Garcia demonstrate a dire lack of diversity in language acquisition research. We present a concrete proposal to improve language and area coverage in the field. Our approach outlines key questions in an understudied area, that is, prosody, methods for collecting and analyzing data, resources for training and tools, and a means to foster research collaboration and publication of crosslinguistic findings. The proposal, if implemented on a publicly accessible website, will facilitate crosslinguistic research on prosody acquisition. </jats:p>

<jats:p> The study by Kidd and Garcia is long overdue. Their analyses of published research on language acquisition highlight the lack of typological diversity in studies of how children acquire their native tongue. We concur with their conclusion that more research on understudied languages is urgently needed. However, we argue that what the field needs is not just wider cross-linguistic coverage but a systematic comparative approach to language acquisition – one in which investigations of well-studied languages still has much to contribute. </jats:p>

<jats:p> It is not always the case that an endangered language goes through a revitalisation programme. For most endangered languages, there are no attempts for revitalisation, and we may never hear of them, nor understand their child language acquisition process. Currently, our understanding of sign language acquisition by children is framed by the research on the few sign languages that have child language acquisition research projects. There is a dearth of research on child language acquisition of indigenous African sign languages. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Having recognized the need for diversity spotlighted by Kidd and Garcia – but given that sampling all the world’s languages is infeasible – we focus on which dimensions of variability researchers should prioritize. We consider three major approaches to the study of child language learning, namely, language as a (1) cognitive puzzle, (2) clinical/educational object, and (3) window onto socialization. We discuss how what is important about ‘diversity’ from each of these perspectives dictates the sociolinguistic communities from which researchers should sample. </jats:p>

<jats:p> This commentary argues that to increase diversity in language acquisition research, the field should define specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-defined goals, and prioritize solutions based on their importance, tractability, and neglectedness, ideally in collaboration with a variety of other agents outside the research community. </jats:p>

<jats:p> This commentary on Kidd and Garcia takes a language documentation perspective on diversifying language acquisition research. Following a brief summary of relevant research in Papuan languages, it sketches out current developments to extend into child language documentation. It is argued that these developments constitute a unique opportunity to engage with on-going discussions on best practice in order to ensure that the resulting documentations are of use to both fields: language documentation and language acquisition. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Research on early language abilities, much like psychology more broadly, has focused almost exclusively on infants from English and Indo-European languages, thereby limiting understanding of the role of varying linguistic experience that supports language abilities. We underscore Kidd and Garcia’s call to expand, diversify, and globalize language research. Using examples from motor development in which universality has long been assumed, we argue that embracing a cross-cultural perspective enriches theories of development more broadly. We conclude with suggestions for future directions. </jats:p>

<jats:p> In response to Kidd and Garcia’s survey that shows the paucity of authors and languages from the Global South in four leading journals of language acquisition, I argue that Mayan language acquisition has contributed in important ways to test theories in the field at large. I specifically outline major contributions from Mayan Tzotzil acquisition to topics of input, lexical, semantic and morphological development. Research on Mesoamerican languages is invaluable in understanding the implications of linguistic typology in language acquisition. </jats:p>