Heritage Language Instruction (HLI) is a resource used in many immigration-receiving countries that allows students with an immigrant background to continue to be in contact with their Heritage Language (HL). However, many of the psycholinguistic effects of this instruction are still unknown. This study aims to provide an in-depth view of the…

Most common words in English have multiple different meanings, but relatively little is known about why children grasp some meanings better than others. This study aimed to examine how variables at the child-level, wordform-level, and meaning-level impact knowledge of words with multiple meanings. In this study, 174 children aged 5- to 9-years-old…

A large data set of L1 psycholinguistic norms (Balota "et al." 2007) was used to assess spoken L2 English lexical proficiency in cross-sectional and longitudinal learner corpora. Behavioral norms included lexical decision and word naming latencies (i.e. reaction times) and accuracies for 40,481 English words. A frequency measure was…

John Sinclair's Idiom Principle famously posited that most texts are largely composed of multi-word expressions that "constitute single choices" in the mental lexicon. At the time that assertion was made, little actual psycholinguistic evidence existed in support of that holistic, "single choice," view of formulaic language. In…

This article reports on the findings of an empirical study that relates translation studies and research on language acquisition/attrition by looking at the interpretation of overt pronominal subjects, previously found to be problematic in both domains. The focus is on the resolution of intra-sentential anaphora and cataphora in Italian by two…

The prevalence of formulaicity in naturally occurring language use points to an important role in the way language is acquired, processed, and used. It is widely recommended that second-language instruction should ensure that learners develop a rich repertoire of formulaic sequences. If this is justified, it follows that learner failure to use…

Illuminates the psycholinguist mechanism that underlies the claim made by the output hypothesis that production makes the learner move from semantic processing prevalent in comprehension to more syntactic processing that is necessary for second language development. Reviews previous literature in language acquisition and cognitive psychology on…

Contends that a critical review of the theoretical underpinnings, measurement instruments, and current status of the construct leads to the inevitable conclusion that field dependence/independence does not have, and never has had, any relevance for second-language learning. (52 references) (Author/CB)

Recent developments in cognitive linguistics have highlighted the importance as well as the ubiquity of metaphor in language. Despite this, the ability of second language learners to use metaphors is often still not seen as a core ability. In this paper, we take a model of communicative competence that has been widely influential in both language…

Argues that the Vygotskyan hypothesis of regulation offers a psycholinguistic framework that could lend assistance in understanding more fully some of the principles underlying task-based approaches to second-language teaching. (51 references) (GLR)

Argues that the teachability of language is constrained by what the learner is ready to acquire. The Teachability Hypothesis, based on this constraint, uses a speech processing approach to explain second language acquisition and contains important psycholinguistic information on which second language teaching methods could be based. (Author/CB)

In 1993, "Applied Linguistics" published an issue on theory construction in second-language acquisition, including papers by Beretta and Crookes, Gregg, and Long. The article argues that these papers and the rationalist understanding of scientific research exemplified in them, have become the object of misguided critiques, including Block (1996).…

Proposes a framework for integrating sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, and linguistic aspects of research on second language acquisition, encompassing five levels in a learner's conversion of input to output: apperceived input, comprehended input, intake, integration, and output. (Author/CB)

Applies markedness theory to the area of error evaluation by native speakers' reactions to non-native speakers errors. The number of errors involving marked and unmarked pairs of forms and structures is tested. Errors reflecting the unmarked-to-marked direction (1st person/3rd person singular, for example) caused greater irritation in native…

Comments on Lindstromberg's (2001) article that argues that prepositional representation in dictionaries is frequently inadequate. Suggests that Lindstromberg's arguments are not exhaustive, and that he fails to include crucial psycholinguistic studies and to relate his views to current linguistic theories. (Author/VWL)