Adult learners of English as a second language who speak Chinese (n = 30), Japanese (n = 28) or Spanish (n = 46) as a first language (L1), and a comparison group of native speakers (n = 22) read sentences that contain: (a) ungrammatical "wh"-extractions that violate island constraints; and (b) grammatical long-distance Subject and Object…

Examines the claim that some students of English as a Second Language allow English reflexives to be bound by long-distance (LD) antecedents even when such LD binding is underdetermined for these learners with respect to their first-language grammar(s) and the second-language input. The article discusses why the claim's underlying data do not…

A study investigated differences in sentence interpretation, with case marking and lexical-semantic cues systematically manipulated, of 20 native English-speaking learners of Japanese (JFLs) (10 beginners, 10 intermediate) and 10 native Japanese-speaking learners of English. Results show: greater animacy effect with the verb "see" than "eat";…

A study investigated whether adult learners of a second language would judge grammaticality differently in visual and aural judgment tasks. Four groups were tested: English first-language, French first-language, English second-language, and French second-language. Results indicate judgments were slower and less accurate in the aural condition,…