For many people, learning a second language as an adult is a challenging endeavor. Much interest in the study of adult second language learning has concerned the type of input that learners receive in their second language, with findings suggesting that second language learners are often exposed to a register of speech called 'foreigner talk' that…

In this article, I argue that first language (L1), second language (L2) and third language (L3) acquisition are fundamentally the same process, based on learning by parsing. Both child and adult learners are sensitive to fine linguistic distinctions, and language development takes place in small steps. While the bulk of the article focuses on…

Languages spoken in larger populations are relatively simple. A possible explanation for this is that languages with a greater number of speakers tend to also be those with higher proportions of non-native speakers, who may simplify language during learning. We assess this explanation for the negative correlation between population size and…

Adult learners know that language is for communicating and that there are patterns in the language that need to be learned. This affects the way they engage with language input; they search for form-meaning linkages, and this effortful engagement could interfere with their learning, especially for things like grammatical gender that often have at…