Frenette Southwood studied Speech Pathology and Audiology and holds a Master’s degree in Clinical Linguistics (Stellenbosch University) and a PhD in Linguistics (Radboud University Nijmegen). She has been a lecturer and researcher at the Department of General Linguistics, Stellenbosch University, since 2000. She teaches linguistics and language acquisition at undergraduate and Honours level and supervises postgraduate research in the broad field of child language acquisition. Prof Southwood is the co-director of the national SADiLaR-funded Child Language Development Node. Her research focuses on the development of culturally appropriate and dialect-neutral instruments with which to measure language development in South African children, on child language development in multilingual contexts and on language development and language disorder in Afrikaans-speaking children. She is the recipient of national and international research grants and fellowships and works as child language acquisition specialist on a range of multidisciplinary research projects. Prof Southwood is involved in an advisory capacity in the development of curriculum material for the school subject South African Sign Language as home language.