Iterated learning models of language evolution have typically been used to study the emergence of language, rather than historical language change. We use iterated learning models to investigate historical change in the accent classes of two Korean dialects. Simulations reveal that many of the patterns of historical change can be explained as…

Much empirical research on textbook analysis has been undertaken. However, little evidence with regard to the adoption of SLA findings in the textbook analysis was reported, particularly for the Indonesian EFL textbooks. To fill this void, this study aimed at analyzing a textbook endorsed by the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture,…

Two distinctive types of complex predicates found in English are separable verb-particle combinations ("particles") and adjectival resultatives ("ARs"). Snyder ties both to the positive setting of the Compounding Parameter ("TCP"). This predicts that during the acquisition of a [+TCP] language, any child who has…

We conducted a multisite replication study with aspects of preregistration in order to explore the feasibility of such an approach in second language (L2) research. To this end, we addressed open questions in a line of research that has examined whether having learners attend to form while reading or listening to a L2 passage interferes with…

In Jackendoff's Parallel Architecture, the well-formed expressions of a language are licensed by correspondences between phonology, syntax, and conceptual structure. I show how this architecture can be used to make sense of the existence of parasitic gap constructions. A parasitic gap is one that is rendered acceptable because of the presence of…

A hallmark of grammatical knowledge is the ability to parse novel syntactic structures. Previous artificial language studies have examined learning hierarchical structures, but few have involved meaningful language and shown generalization to novel structures. This study addressed this issue using the semiartificial language paradigm. The…

This article introduces two sophisticated statistical modeling techniques that allow researchers to analyze systematicity, individual variation, and nonlinearity in second language (L2) development. Generalized linear mixed-effects models can be used to quantify individual variation and examine systematic effects simultaneously, and generalized…

Across languages of the world, some grammatical patterns have been argued to be more common than expected by chance. These are sometimes referred to as (statistical) "language universals." One such universal is the correlation between constituent order freedom and the presence of a case system in a language. Here, we explore whether this…

The purpose of this research is to analyze the speech intonation of the French, Kazakh, English and Russian languages. The study considers intonation component functions (of melodics, duration, and intensity) in poetry and language spoken. It is defined that a set of prosodic means are used in order to convey the intonational specifics of sounding…

Hampton (1988) discovered that people are subject to "overextension"--they categorize some things as falling under a conjunction (e.g., they categorize chess as a "sport which is also a game") but not as falling under both of the corresponding conjuncts (e.g., they do not categorize chess as a "sport"). Although…

Previous studies have shown that older children gesture more while telling a story than younger children. This increase in gesture use has been attributed to increased story complexity. In adults, both narrative complexity and imagery predict gesture frequency. In this study, we tested the strength of three predictors of children's gesture use in…

We compare the predictions of two different accounts of first language acquisition by investigating the relative contributions of abstract syntax and input frequency to the elicited production of main and embedded questions by 36 monolingual English-speaking toddlers aged 3;00 to 5;11. In particular, we investigate whether children's accuracy…

Early foreign language (FL) programmes have grown rapidly worldwide in the past two decades, resting on the assumption that "earlier is better" for learning a FL. However, the majority of empirical studies that investigated the "earlier is better" hypothesis were conducted in naturalistic immersion contexts. Given the…

We study the learnability problem concerning the dative alternations in English (Baker, 1979; Pinker, 1989). We consider how first language learners productively apply the double-object and to-dative constructions ("give the book to library"/"give the library the book"), while excluding negative exceptions ("donate the…

The past two decades have seen ample debate about processing instruction (PI) and its various components. In this article, we first describe what PI consists of and then address three questions: about the role of explicit information (EI) in PI, the difference between PI and teaching that incorporates production-based (PB) practice, and various…