Shin and Mill (2021) propose four steps children go through when learning "variable form use." Although I applaud Shin and Miller's focus on morphosyntactic variation, their accrual of evidence is post hoc and selective. Fortunately, Shin and Miller recognize this and encourage tests of their ideas. In support of their work, I share data…

In revisiting Bolozky's [Bolozky, Shmuel, 1979. "On the new imperative in colloquial Hebrew." "Hebrew Annual Review" 3, 17-24] and Bat-El's [Bat-El, Outi, 2002. "True truncation in colloquial Hebrew imperatives." "Language" 78(4), 651-683] analyses of colloquial Hebrew imperatives, the article argues for restricting Imperative Truncation to the…

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.…

Contesting the monolingualist assumptions in composition, this article identifies textual and pedagogical spaces for World Englishes in academic writing. It presents code meshing as a strategy for merging local varieties with Standard Written English in a move toward gradually pluralizing academic writing and developing multilingual competence for…

Global English is under contestation. Although some consider lingua franca English (LFE) as a neutral medium or code that does not belong to any specific culture or nationality, others see the deceptive nature of this linguistic globalization. Along with Spring (2007/this issue), they see global English as embodying partisan interests and values.…

Previous investigations of the variable marking of past time by the L2 learner have given rise to a number of hypotheses which predict the patterns of acquisition and use of past time markers in interlanguage (IL). However, given the complicity between their predictions, it has been previously noted that hypotheses such as the aspect and discourse…