Given that both spoken and written language are subject to corruption from speech errors, disfluencies, and environmental noise, successful language comprehension sometimes requires deriving a non-veridical understanding of the linguistic input. Recent work has demonstrated that these non-veridical understandings are not merely semantic, but that,…

In recent years, converging evidence has suggested that prediction plays a role in language comprehension, as it appears to do in information processing in a range of cognitive domains. Much of the evidence for this comes from the N400, a neural index of the processing of meaningful stimuli which has been argued to index the extent to which a word…

A significant body of research has focused on the impact of immersive virtual reality (IVR) on vocabulary retention, but little is known about how to integrate language learning theories in IVR-mediated vocabulary learning. This study aims to examine the effect of IVR that integrate input processing model on vocabulary retention for elementary…

A number of academic disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, are deeply interested in language acquisition. The process of acquiring a language is complicated and includes learning vocabulary, linguistic structures, and communication techniques. The most crucial factor in developing diverse cooperative networks for the…

This dissertation is about the learnability of different generative, Separationist approaches to nominal morphosyntax. The core of my investigation is number, gender, and declension class, as manifested across nouns, adnominals (adjectives, numerals, demonstratives, and quantifiers), and articles. An extreme position would require that all of…

Research on "parentese," the acoustically exaggerated, slower, and higher-pitched speech directed toward infants, has mostly focused on maternal contributions, although it has long been known that fathers also produce parentese. Given recent societal changes in family dynamics, it is necessary to revise these mother-centered models of…

There is substantial evidence that children's apparent omission of grammatical morphemes in utterances such as "She play tennis" and "Mummy eating" is in fact errors of commission in which contextually licensed unmarked forms encountered in the input are reproduced in a context-blind fashion. So how do children stop making such…

Speakers display considerable variability in language use and representations: they may have different pronunciations of the same word, different intended meanings for the same phrases, and different sets of syntactic constraints in their internalized grammars. Comprehenders adapt to such variability by constantly updating their expectations for…

Multilingualism presents both a challenge and an opportunity for Natural Language Processing, with code-switching representing a particularly interesting problem for computational models trained on monolingual datasets. In this paper, we explore how code-switched data affects the task of Machine Translation, a task which only recently has started…

Research on second language (L2) pronoun use in null-argument languages has traditionally focused on whether or not a speaker's first language (L1) also allows null pronouns. However, recent studies have pointed out that it is equally important to consider the specific linguistic properties of overt pronouns in the L1 and L2, which may differ even…

Background: Parental input plays a central role in typical language acquisition and development. In autism spectrum disorder (ASD), characterized by social communicative and language difficulties, parental input presents an important avenue for investigation as a target for intervention. A rich body of literature has identified which aspects of…

We provide an account of the developmental trajectory of Emirati Arabic negation particles. We treat the non-verbal predicate negator (NVPN) "mub" as a negative copula, in contrast to the verbal predicate negator (VPN) "maa," which encodes sentential negation in verbal and existential contexts. The analysis is supported by…

This study investigated how input frequency (i.e., type frequency and token frequency) and proficiency levels enhanced the perception of English nominal suffixes by first language (L1) Thai learners. Based on the Usage-based Account (Tomasello, 2003), it was hypothesized that input frequency, i.e., token frequency (frequency of derived forms…

Second language acquisition theory has traditionally focused on the cognitive and psycholinguistic processes involved in additional language (L2) learning. In addition, research on learner psychology has primarily centered on learners' cognitive abilities (e.g., aptitude and working memory) and internal traits or states (e.g., dispositions,…

Statistical learning is a core ability for individuals in extracting and integrating regularities and patterns from linguistic input. Yet, the developmental trajectory of visual statistical learning has not been fully examined in the orthographic learning domain. Employing an artificial orthographic learning task, we manipulated three levels of…