The present work presents a critical assessment of claims in recent literature that moribund language varieties exhibit accelerated language decay, and that attrition in individual grammars has a causational relationship with language shift to the majority language. We show these claims to be unfounded. Based on two empirical points taken from…

Constructivist approaches to language acquisition predict that form-function mappings are derived from distributional patterns in the input, and their contextual embedding. This requires a detailed analysis of the input, and the integration of information from different contingencies. Regarding the acquisition of morphology, it is shown which…

This book gives an overview of the linguistic development of Korean-English bilingual children living in the US. It provides a detailed longitudinal account of English and Korean acquisition in early childhood, offering a close examination of Korean-American children's code-switching and morphology and syntax development during a time when their…

Recent approaches to the "that"-trace phenomenon in English include syntactic analyses based on the principle of Anti-locality and a sentence production analysis based on the Principle of End Weight. These analyses have many similarities, but they differ in their predictions for second language (L2) speakers. In an Anti-locality…

This article investigates whether first-language (L1) Chinese-speaking learners of Japanese as a second language (L2) can acquire the knowledge that the reflexive pronoun jibun 'self' within the head noun phrase of Japanese relative clauses cannot refer to the relative clause subject. Successful acquisition would suggest that learners are able to…

The present systematic review examines what factors determine when, how and to what extent previous linguistic experience (from the first language, second language or both languages) affects the initial stages and beyond of adult third language (L3) acquisition. In doing so, we address what a bird's eye view of the data tells us regarding…

The last 15 years has seen a tremendous growth in research on structural priming among second language (L2) speakers. Structural priming is the phenomenon whereby speakers are more likely to repeat a structure they have recently heard or produced. Research on L2 structural priming speaks to key issues regarding the underlying linguistic and…

In this article, I argue that first language (L1), second language (L2) and third language (L3) acquisition are fundamentally the same process, based on learning by parsing. Both child and adult learners are sensitive to fine linguistic distinctions, and language development takes place in small steps. While the bulk of the article focuses on…

This article proposes a formal model of the human language faculty that accommodates the possibility of 'attrition' (modification or loss) of morphosyntactic properties in a first language. Modeling L1 grammatical attrition entails a quite fundamental paradox: if the structure of the language faculty in principle allows for attrition of…

In Germanic and Slavic languages, the Verb is the most extensive grammatical item, which causes most of the troubles for second language learners. It has been noticed that Slavic L1 learners of English make mistakes in using verb forms due to the transfer of their L1 grammatical system (grammar concepts) onto the English language. The goal of the…

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,…

Among focus-on-form studies, oral corrective feedback (CF) has probably received the greatest attention. The majority of studies in this area appear to support a positive role for oral CF in improving interlanguage development. However, theorists adopting a nativist view of second language acquisition continue to question its effectiveness. The…

Over the first weeks and months following birth, infants' initial, broad-based perceptual sensitivities become honed to the characteristics of their native language. In this article, we review this process of emerging specialization within the context of a cascading "critical period" (CP) framework, in which periods of maximal openness…

Indigenous children living in the more remote areas of Australia where Indigenous languages continue to be spoken often come to school with only minimal knowledge of English, but they may speak two or more local languages. Others come to school speaking either a creole, or Aboriginal English, non-standard varieties which may sound similar to…

Alexis Patterson's paper researches equity in groupwork in the science classroom by looking at micro-interactions. She points to the key features of student voice, student visibility and student authority while addressing the teachers' role in creating a more equitable and productive talk in science classrooms. This forum paper aims at continuing…