This study aims to investigate ChatGPT's ability to comprehend input from nonnative speakers, specifically those learning English as a second language, with Japanese speakers serving as the model population. The experiment examines how ChatGPT evaluates the difficulty levels of the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC), which is…

Attempts to clarify the notion of language competence and draws on its relevance to language teaching practices. Language use competence may involve the adjustment of pre-assembled and memorized patterns and not so much the generation of expressions by direct reference to rules. (Author/CB)

Focusing on the question, "Can chimpanzees produce new sentences or merely sequences?" Terrace describes his efforts to teach the chimpanzee Nim to communicate through sign language. From his results, and the Gardners' experiments with Washoe, he concludes that no proof yet exists that chimpanzees can use language as humans do. (SJL)

Examines and compares two measures of adult second language learner performance: cued production and elicited imitation. Discusses the utility of each in terms of the contrasting results of the tasks on a carefully delineated area of grammar, namely the related structure of third person simple present and present progressive in WH-questions. (EKN)

Examination of the use of the simple present verb tense by three-year-old children (N=2) indicates that analyses in terms of tense or aspect are not adequate to account for its use. Results indicate a need to recognize the way in which the form implicitly refers to norms and thereby entails a type of impersonal motivation. (Author/CB)

Bilingualism, to be cognitively and academically beneficial, must be based on adequately developed first language skills. Two hypotheses, developmental interdependence and threshold, are integrated into a bilingual education model which treats background, child input, and educational treatment to explain educational outcomes. (Author/MH)

Describes attempts to formalize and characterize a theory of communicative competence, focusing on the advantages of a preference model (which identifies and grades learning variables in order of importance) and of models developed on the premise of parallel distributed processing (which suggest that such rule-based processing are in fact gross…

Adult and child L2 acquisition of syntax-semantics interface phenomena must be compared with monolingual L1 acquisition of the same phenomena in order to assess the possible effects of interference and transfer. However, this "L1A touchstone" can also be misleading because non-grammatical mechanisms that interact with such interface phenomena may…

Examines the idea of a mismatch between grammaticality and acceptability. Evidence is used to refute the claim that ungrammatical but acceptable sentences are theoretically plausible in the case of the sentence, "A not unhappy person entered the room." (AMH)