Counterfactual reasoning is the ability to reason about how the world might have been if past events or states had been different. It is helpful for making sense of past experiences to create future blueprints. Languages like English apply subjunctive forms to directly mark counterfactual premises. In contrast, Chinese does not apply subjunctive…

Purpose: Transcription of conjoined independent clauses within language samples varies across professionals. Some transcribe these clauses as two separate utterances, whereas others conjoin them within a single utterance. As an inquiry into equitable practice, we examined rates of conjoined independent clauses produced by children and the impact…

The Italian linguistic space has radically changed through the onset of the new millennium due to the presence of innovative multiple linguistic practices that have taken place as a consequence of deterritorialization processes. Furthermore, Latino diaspora in recent years have fostered the appearance of new forms of Global Spanishes (García and…

This paper presents an experimental study of the rarely explored question of how input through instruction interacts with L2 acquisition at the level of modular linguistic knowledge. The investigation focuses on L2 knowledge of the English polarity item "any," whose properties are only partially covered by typical language-teaching…

This paper is a follow-up on our 2017 study of the effect of Age of Onset of learning English (AO) on the academic performance of University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) students in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (SHSS). It investigates the relationship between three factors in the students' Early Language Education {Age of Onset of…

The Norwegian language has two written standards, Bokmål (majority variety) and Nynorsk (minority variety), and children receive their schooling in one or other of them. Pupils schooled in Nynorsk acquire the Bokmål variety simultaneously through extracurricular exposure and thus develop what may be termed "bidialectal literacy". In this…

According to generative linguistic theory, certain principles underlying language structure are innately given, accounting for how children are able to acquire their mother tongues (L1s) despite a mismatch between the linguistic input and the complex unconscious mental representation of language that children achieve. This innate structure is…

Studies of copular forms are extremely relevant to issues in philosophy, psychology, and linguistics. Psychologists have recently argued that the most distinctive aspect of human language is its combinatorial nature (e.g., Gentner, 2003; Spelke, 2003). They argue that this linguistic component might be what separates human from animal cognition.…

Explored preschoolers' inferences about language and group membership. Found preschoolers believe minorities and people with unfamiliar clothing/dwellings are more likely to speak a foreign language; do not map social group differences to language for all categories; do not derive inferences from intelligibility; and identify common property in…

Examines the effects of literacy on cultural traditions, linguistic behavior, socioeconomic organization, cognitive processes, and child development. Considers the implications for anthropological, psychological, and linguistic theories from the increased attention given to the study of literacy. Includes suggestions for socially and culturally…

This article focuses on a change affecting Spanish in contact with English in the United States: simplification and loss of subjunctive mood morphology. Analysis of conversational data from 17 Mexican American bilinguals representing 3 immigrant groups living in Los Angeles reveals a reduced inclination for the obligatory use of the subjunctive in…

Presents the results of a study of Francophone pupils in the French schools of Windsor, Ontario. The article gives examples of nonstandard features pervading students' French vocabulary and syntax and concludes that a hybrid vernacular may be emerging as a result of the Canadian sociolinguistic situation, creating a challenge to the teaching of…

Investigates the availability of syntactic cues to verb meaning. In Experiments 1-3, adult subjects' judgments of verbs' semantic similarity were compared with other adults' judgments about the syntactic properties of the same verbs. In Experiment 4, subjects paraphrased sentences formed by pairing verbs with unaccustomed sentence frames. (54…

Profiles interlanguage pragmatics as an area of inquiry in second-language acquisition (SLA) research by reviewing existing studies with a focus on learning, examining research findings in interlanguage pragmatics shedding light on basic questions in SLA, exploring cognitive and social-psychological theories illuminating aspects of pragmatic…