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Learning Unacceptability: Repeated Exposure to Acceptable Sentences Improves Adult Learners' Recognition of Unacceptable Sentences
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Karina Tachihara; Adele E. Goldberg – Language Learning, 2025
Adults learning a new language tend to judge unconventional utterances more leniently than fluent speakers do; ratings on acceptable utterances, however, tend to align more closely with fluent speakers. This asymmetry raises a question as to whether unconventional utterances can be statistically preempted by conventional utterances for adult…
Descriptors: Adult Students, Adult Learning, Sentences, Undergraduate Students
Multiple Constraints on Processing Ambiguous Sentences: Evidence from Adult L2 Learners.
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Ying, H. G. – Language Learning, 1996
Investigates adult second language learners' processing of English syntactically ambiguous sentences in which a prepositional phrase is interpreted as either a noun phrase or verb phrase attachment. Results reveal lexical, syntactic, prosodic, and contextual constraints on processing ambiguous sentences. (87 references) (Author/CK)
Descriptors: Adult Students, Ambiguity, Context Clues, English (Second Language)
Derivational Complexity and Item Difficulty in a Sentence Repetition Task.
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Perkins, Kyle; And Others – Language Learning, 1986
To estimate reading difficulty of items on a sentence repetition task, a study had 50 adult English as a second language (ESL) students repeat each of 26 sentences immediately after two presentations. High-difficulty items were derivationally more complex than low-difficulty items, and the most difficult items involved the processing of…
Descriptors: Adult Students, Comparative Testing, Difficulty Level, English (Second Language)
Empirical Investigations of Indirectly Conveyed Meaning: Assertion versus Presupposition in First and Second Language Acquisition.
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Carrell, Patricia L. – Language Learning, 1977
The theoretical linguistic distinction between assertion and presupposition was empirically tested with two groups of subjects, young children acquiring English as their first language and adults acquiring English as a second language. (Author)
Descriptors: Adult Students, Child Language, English, English (Second Language)
The Researcher Gave the Subject a Test about Himself: Problems of Ambiguity and Preference in the Investigation of Reflexive Binding.
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White, Lydia; And Others – Language Learning, 1997
Studies on second-language acquisition of reflexives have experienced difficulties assessing learners' knowledge of the binding principles because of problems associated with ambiguous sentences where there is more than one antecedent for a reflexive. In this study, English-as-a-Second-Language students were tested using a variety of sentence…
Descriptors: Adult Students, Ambiguity, Context Clues, English (Second Language)