Although the Forum has grown in size over the years, its informal nature has remained an essential characteristic. From the start, students have played a central role in the meeting, in its organization, in the selection of abstracts, and in the presentation of research. Paper sessions have been supplemented by workshops on specific topics, by keynote speakers, by invited panels, and by poster sessions.

The keynote speakers alone illustrate the range of perspectives that have been represented at the Forum over the years: Hermine Sinclair-de Zwart (University of Geneva), Dan I. Slobin (University of California, Berkeley), Lois Bloom (Columbia University), Susan Ervin-Tripp (University of California, Berkeley), Elizabeth Bates (University of California, San Diego), Courtney B. Cazden (Harvard University), Eve V. Clark (Stanford University), Melissa Bowerman (Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics), Ursula Bellugi (Salk Institute for Biological Studies), Annette Karmiloff-Smith (Cognitive Development Unit, Medical Research Council, London), Elissa Newport (University of Rochester), Shirley Brice Heath (Stanford University), Steven Pinker (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Jean Berko Gleason (Boston University), Lila R. Gleitman (University of Pennsylvania), Elinor Ochs (University of California, Los Angeles), Peter Jusczyk (State University of New York, Buffalo), and Barbara Landau (University of California, Irvine). The papers presented at the Forum have frequently anticipated new directions in research, and much of the work first presented there has gone on to appear in major journals, and has set the agenda for research in acquisition.

The Forum has also provided a model for other conferences in the field, including the Boston University Conference on Child Language, the UCLA Conference on Second Language Acquisition, and the University of Wisconsin Conference on Language Disorders, all three now annual meetings.