This study investigates the source of second language (L2) learners' low use of conventional expressions--one part of pragmalinguistic competence--by investigating the relationship between recognition and production of conventional expressions in L2 pragmatics. Two tasks--an aural recognition task and an oral production task--were completed by 122…

This article presents an analysis of interactions in the usage, structure, cognition, coadaptation of conversational partners, and emergence of linguistic constructions. It focuses on second language development of English verb-argument constructions (VACs: VL, verb locative; VOL, verb object locative; VOO, ditransitive) with particular reference…

Constituent structure is considered to be the very foundation of linguistic competence and often considered to be innate, yet we show here that it is derivable from the domain-general processes of chunking and categorization. Using modern and diachronic corpus data, we show that the facts support a view of constituent structure as gradient (as…

This study examined two issues: (a) whether there are gains in accurate and speedy comprehension of second language (L2) pragmatic meaning over time and (b) whether the gains are associated with cognitive processing ability and the amount of language contact in an L2 environment. Forty-four college students in a US institution completed three…

The family size of the constituents of compound words, or the number of compounds sharing the constituents, affects English-speaking children's compound segmentation. This finding is consistent with a usage-based theory of language acquisition, whereby children learn abstract underlying linguistic structure through their experience with particular…

Data from three children learning Spanish are explored for the development of linguistic person in an inflectional language. Contrastive use of person, tense, and number and the presence of overt subjects and overt objects are examined. (Author/VWL)

Examines the acquisition of a typologically marked construction, preposition stranding, and its unmarked counterpart, preposition pied piping, by learners of English as a second language (ESL). Data demonstrate that preposition stranding is acquired before preposition pied piping. (Author/CB)

Presents a research agenda in which the study of interlanguage becomes more central to the study of interlanguage pragmatics, assessing the state of acquisition research in interlanguage pragmatics, surveying work in interlanguage pragmatics that either directly examines or appeals to grammatical competence, showing how acquisition studies in…

This study examined how 16 adult learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) in an intensive ESL program used tense contrast and time adverbials to produce reverse-order reports. The study found that the students marked reverse-order reports as deviations from chronological order by their use of tense contrast and time adverbials. (26…

Demonstrates the operation of the universal principles of lexical simplification, through an examination of its use in translation; second language learning and teaching, and simplified reading texts. (Author/AM)

The alleged persistence of first-language dominance for arithmetic operations in bilinguals was investigated. Thirty-two Japanese-English bilinguals aged, 19-58, years solved arithmetic problems presented auditorily. Reaction time varied for short-term and long-term U.S. residents. (16 references) (Author/LB)

According to the aspect hypothesis (Andersen & Shirai, 1996; Bardovi-Harlig, 2000), perfective morphology emerges before imperfective morphology, it is first used in telic predicates (achievements and accomplishments) and it later extends to atelic predicates (activities and states). The opposite development is hypothesized for imperfective…

This study investigated the acquisition of English slang in a foreign language context. The participants were 101 Bulgarian learners of English, 58 high school students, and 43 university students. The instrument included knowledge tests of English slang terms and questions about attitudes, sources, reasons, and methods employed in learning…

Reports on two studies examining the effects of object size, container size, sex, and language group on the use of counts in prescriptive and descriptive grammar. Results indicate that people's selection of noun forms in a measure partitive noun phrase is influenced by nonlinguistic factors, such as their gender and the food size relative to…

Examined writers' use of lexical repetition changes in relation to writing topic, cultural background, and development of writing ability. Multiple regression analysis indicates writing ability measures are the most important variables for predicting changes in repetition usage, with less significant effects found for cultural background.…