Purpose: Adults recognize words that are acquired during childhood more quickly than words acquired during adulthood. This is known as the Age of Acquisition (AoA) effect. The AoA effect, according to the integrated account, manifests in tasks necessitating greater semantic processing and in tasks with arbitrary input-output mapping. Compound…

According to rational adaptation approaches of language processing, readers adjust their expectations of upcoming information depending on the distributional properties of the preceding language input. However, adaptation to sentence structures has not been systematically attested, especially not in second-language (L2) processing. To further our…

We investigate whether second language (L2) learners of English rely on first language (L1) transfer and atomicity in the acquisition of the count/mass distinction by examining L1-French and L1-Chinese learners of English. Atomicity encodes whether a noun contains 'atoms' or minimal elements that retain the property of the noun. As a semantic…

Human word learning is remarkable: We not only learn thousands of words but also form organized semantic networks in which words are interconnected according to meaningful links, such as those between "apple," "juicy," and "pear." These links play key roles in our abilities to use language. How do words become…

This study examines whether semantic relatedness facilitates or impedes the acquisition of English collocations by conducting two experiments respectively on Chinese undergraduates. Each experiment was composed of a reading session, a productive test, and a receptive test. Experiment 1 began with the reading session of 28 paired-up words and their…

This study builds on prior research on second language (L2) Spanish psych verbs, which has centered on morphosyntactic properties, by examining their syntactic distribution, which relies on lexical semantic knowledge. The fact that certain forms are licensed for some verbs, but not others, is the result of an underlying lexical semantic difference…

Interface properties have been found to exhibit protracted instability in advanced bilingualism and L2 learning (Sorace, 2000, 2005; Sorace & Filiaci, 2006). This study examines the role of learning context in modulating this instability in an interface property, namely the interpretation of definite plurals in L2 Arabic. Generic readings in…

The current study focuses on an e-learning platform called Furago designed to provide language instructors with exercises complementing activities already implemented in their classes. Its objective was to assess the impact the use of Furago could have on the listening skills of first-year Japanese university students. Statistical analyses that…

Cognitive organizers (COs) are text aids which represent objects, concepts, and their relations by the use of symbols and spatial arrangements without adding to semantic content. The present study examines language learners' text comprehension through outlines, a popular CO, compared with text-only condition, and further investigates the effect of…

The present study aims to investigate the role of L1 transfer effects on L2 sentence processing strategies during the interpretation of relative clause (RC) attachment ambiguities. The main body of the study is divided into two sections. The first section describes Experiment 1, which is designed to test the resolution of RC attachment ambiguities…

The paper seeks to demonstrate how academic Content Obligatory Language can be potentially organized in teacher talk applying semantic gravity waving from Legitimation Code Theory. The questions asked are: Which concepts do I teach from my discipline in this session? How do I teach these to ensure effective comprehension? Research was conducted…

The connective 'but' mainly represents two different contrastive relations (Lakoff, 1971; Van Dijk, 1979; Blakemore, 1989). One of them is semantic, which shows semantic opposition and where no expectation is denied. The other is pragmatic, which shows a denial of expectation. This study aimed to investigate the use of 'but' by Turkish EFL…

Adopting a decompositional approach to items in the lexicon, this article reports on an empirical study investigating Chinese speakers' second language (L2) acquisition of English "wh-on-earth" questions (i.e. questions with phrases like what on earth or "who on earth"). An acceptability judgment task, a discourse-completion…

Within Asian EFL contexts such as South Korea, large class sizes, poor sources of input and an overreliance on the Grammar-Translation Method may negatively impact semantic and pragmatic development of writing content. Since formulaic language is imbued with syntactic, semantic and pragmatic linguistic features, it represents an ideal means to…

Form-focused discovery activities allow language learners to grasp various aspects of a target language by contributing implicit knowledge by using discovered explicit knowledge. Moreover, such activities can assist learners to perceive and discover the features of their language input. In foreign language teaching environments, they can be used…