Decades of psycholinguistics research have shown that human sentence processing is highly incremental and predictive. This has provided evidence for expectation-based theories of sentence processing, which posit that the processing difficulty of linguistic material is modulated by its probability in context. However, these theories do not make…

Enabling learners to successfully use their second language (L2) in meaningful ways is a critical goal of instruction. Ultimately, most learners want to meet the L2 demands of the contexts in which they will use the language. To accomplish this, learners must develop linguistic knowledge and apply it in a manner that is contextually appropriate…

In this dissertation, the robustness of the relationship between the lexical frequency of phonotactic patterns and word-acceptability is examined for words of Amharic, an understudied Semitic language. The patterns under investigation span the whole verb root and include both under-represented and over-represented consonant distributions in the…

Second language (L2) learners of tone languages do not perceive and produce the different tones of the target language with equal ease. The most common explanation for these asymmetries is that acoustically salient tones are the easiest to learn. An alternative explanation is that tones are easiest to learn when they are highly frequent in the…

This study explored relationships between writing sample features and LMS usage patterns for 366 college students who enrolled in Theology courses, junior-level courses cross-listed with theology courses, or Senior Perspective Program courses in the fall semester of 2012. These hybrid courses were managed inside the Canvas(TM) learning management…