We are encouraged by Cobb's (2022) description of changes to the Morpholex profiling tool (https://www.lextutor.ca/cgi-bin/morpho/lex/) resulting in more accurate word classifications. This addresses one point in our recent commentary on Morpholex and on Laufer and Cobb's (2020) study using Morpholex (McLean & Stoeckel, 2021). However, Cobb…

As far as the main purpose of teaching and learning of the Grammar of a language is concerned, it should tell the teachers and learners the principles and parameters of sentence construction in the given language, i.e. English Language in the context of the discussion in this paper. Incidentally, the grammatical device of tense becomes more…

Twenty years ago, a state-of-the-art review in "SSLA" marked the coming of age of the study of temporality in second language acquisition. This was followed by three monographs on tense and aspect the next year. This article presents a state-of-the-scholarship review of the last 20 years of research addressing the aspect hypothesis (AH)…

This article proposes a novel account for the overuse of free morphemes and underuse of bound morphemes in English as a second language (L2) based on the framework of Distributed Morphology. It will be argued that an Economy Principle 'Do everything in Narrow Syntax (DENS)' operates in the L2 learner's computational system. Consequently,…

Some words in English are derived words, i.e., words with an affix that changes their part of speech, like know "(v)" [right arrow] "knowable (adj)," or meaning, like "pleasant (adj)" [right arrow] "unpleasant (adj)." As a reading teacher, Tom Cobb had always believed that derived words were not particularly…

This research paper explores much of the basic and background knowledge of English and Bangla sentence patterns or structures as well as tries to compare and contrast between these two very languages, English and Bangla at the sentential levels. As it is known the concept of basic sentence structures is necessary for classroom teaching and…

This study explores how Korean-to-English machine translation (MT) systems (e.g., Google Translator, NAVER Papago) deal with Korean passive structures. Cross-linguistically, Korean and English passives show different ways to construct passive-voice sentences from active structure. English passives including with [to be + past participle] may have…

Knowledge of vocabulary is essential for learners of any language, and unfortunately, it has become clear recently the learners of English in a variety of contexts have not scored well on vocabulary tests. Low scores are problematic for language use and success in general, but they cause particular problems when it comes to the vocabulary needed…

This study examines types and characteristics of data collection tasks used in studies on scope ambiguity in English involving a universally quantified noun phrase and negation, and investigates any differences in comprehension patterns across studies using different tasks. Since Musolino's seminal 1998 study using a truth value judgment task,…

In response to McLean (2021), Laufer (2021) makes three claims which are either not supported by research or are based on studies with important limitations. First is that a vocabulary size, instead of a level, can be used to match learners with lexically appropriate materials despite test creators and research not supporting this. Second is that…

Direct object clitics in Latin American Spanish are subject to great variability in features across dialects. Variability also characterizes bilingual acquisition and especially clitic doubling structures in language contact contexts. We focus on the distribution of clitics and Differential Object Marking (DOM) in clitic doubling structures among…

In the late 1980s Batia Laufer worked with teachers who believed that to understand a text it was enough to understand 80% of the text's word tokens. In response, Laufer set out to calculate the minimal text coverage, i.e., percentage of running words in a text the reader should understand to comprehend it reasonably well. In 1992, she explored…

Early research on the Aspect Hypothesis yielded a rigid developmental sequence for the acquisition of grammatical aspect, in which developing L2 learners applied morphemes to mark aspect in accordance with the inherent lexical aspect of verbal prototypes. While studies from a variety of L2 backgrounds have amassed evidence for this hypothesis,…

The present article argues for a conceptual distinction between corrective feedback and mediation that emphasizes the status of the latter not as an instructional practice but as a defining feature of human psychology (Vygotsky, 1987) that has direct implications for how instruction might be approached. Specifically, Sociocultural Theory (SCT)…

Knowing the origin of a language helps us to determine the historical background of that language. As language itself is such a system of a society that is continuously evolving as that aforementioned society learns and technologically develops along with its roots or origins. Like many other languages, English is also a language that has roots or…