Typically developing (TD) children, as young as four years of age, have demonstrated enhanced noun learning when orthographic representations are presented during learning tasks. This dissertation investigated the impact of orthographic support on word learning in diverse populations, focusing on children from a variety of clinical categories…

Generalization is the ability to apply regularities to novel instances, for example, correctly guessing that the plural for the novel English word 'wug' should be 'wugs'. Early language learners make overgeneralization errors like 'mouses', applying regularities beyond their attested uses. Theories concerned with the question of how learners learn…

This study was an investigation into the aural and written receptive knowledge of the English semantics of English lexis that is loanwords in the Japanese language and the predictive strength of the variables of semantic distance, concreteness/abstractness, polysemy, phonological distance, number of syllables, number of phonemes, number of…

This thesis examines whether native, heritage, and L2 speakers of Spanish engage a morphological layer of representation in the processing of inflected words, and whether they do so with both regularly- and irregularly-inflected words. Also examined is whether this tendency towards compositional (i.e. morphological rule-based) processing is…

This study examines the second language acquisition of the evidentiality requirement in the Korean psychological state of mind expressions. When an experiencer of the psychological state of mind is different from the speaker, Korean language requires an evidential expression to the psychological predicate so that the speaker indicates the source…

In recent years, researchers in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) have become increasingly interested in the implications of sociolinguistic research for L2 learning. Among the many questions that arise are whether the development of sociolinguistic competence should be an instructional goal as early as the beginning level, and what…