This study investigated the elicited imitation task (EIT) as a tool for measuring linguistic proficiency in a second/foreign (L2) language, focusing on French. Nonnative French speakers (n = 94) and native French speakers (n = 6) completed an EIT that included 50 sentences varying in length and complexity. Three raters evaluated productions on…

Although cross-linguistic research on second language tense-aspect acquisition has uncovered universal tendencies concerning the association between verbal semantics and tense-aspect markers, it is still unclear what mechanisms underlie this link. This study investigates the acquisition of two imperfective aspect markers ("-ko iss-" and…

The tendency of intermediate and advanced second language speakers to underuse pronouns and zero anaphora has been characterized as a developmental stage of overexplicitness, yet little consideration has been given to whether learners create sufficient contexts for their use. This study analyzed references across eight degrees of accessibility,…

The loss of a childhood language, especially in adoptees, has attracted scholars' attention in the past, but a search for any memory traces has yielded conflicting results. In a psycholinguistic tradition known as the savings paradigm, a learn-and-relearn technique is employed to examine whether the relearning of lexical items once known, often in…

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of second language (L2) experience--operationalized as length of residence (LOR) in Canada--on late Japanese learners of English. Data collected from 65 participants consisted of three groups of learners (short-, mid-, and long-LOR groups) and two baseline groups of native Japanese and native…

Models of language acquisition are constrained by the information that learners can extract from their input. Experiment 1 investigated whether 3-month-old infants are able to encode a repeated, unsegmented sequence of five syllables. Event-related-potentials showed that infants reacted to a change of the initial or the final syllable, but not to…

In this quasi-experimental study, 165 learners of English for academic purposes at a university in China were randomly assigned to five experimental groups and a control group. Each experimental group encountered 19 target collocations in the same academic lecture in one of the following input modes: (a) reading, (b) listening, (c) reading while…

Drawing on usage-based linguistics and its exemplar-based path of language learning, from recurring multiword expressions to increasingly abstract, schematized constructions, this article examines evidence for the exemplar-based developmental sequences for yes/no interrogatives and WH interrogatives in English as a second language (L2). The…

I will propose a tentative framework of how words in two languages could be organized in the cerebral cortex based on neural assembly theory, according to which neurons that fire synchronously are bound into large-scale distributed functional units (assemblies), which represent a mental event as a whole ("gestalt"). For language this…

This study investigated whether children born in a second language (L2) environment pronounce their L2 with foreign accents and, if so, when foreign accents first emerge. This study also examined the latest age of onset (AO) of extensive L2 experience at which native L2 pronunciation is possible and explored several factors that affect the degree…

The present study implemented a sign-repetition task at two points in time to hearing adult learners of British Sign Language and explored how each phonological parameter, sign complexity, and iconicity affected sign production over an 11-week (22-hour) instructional period. The results show that training improves articulation accuracy and that…

In this study, we examined the efficacy of gestures for the acquisition of L2 segmental phonology. Despite teachers' frequent use of gestures in the classroom to teach pronunciation, the field lacks empirical support for this practice. We attempted to fill this gap by investigating the effects of handclapping on the development of L2 Japanese…

We investigated the influence of nonparental caregivers, such as foreign domestic helpers (FDH), on the home language spoken to the child and its implications for vocabulary and word reading development in Cantonese- and English-speaking bilingual children. Using data collected from ages 5 to 9, we analyzed Chinese vocabulary, Chinese character…

I propose that the course of development in first and second language acquisition is shaped by two types of processing pressures--internal efficiency-related factors relevant to easing the burden on working memory and external input-related factors such as frequency of occurrence. In an attempt to document the role of internal factors, I consider…

The advent of usage-/exemplar-based approaches has resulted in a major change in the theoretical landscape of linguistics, but also in the range of methodologies that are brought to bear on the study of language acquisition/learning, structure, and use. In particular, methods from corpus linguistics are now frequently used to study distributional…