The discussion in this article offers a comparison between Relevance Theory as an account of human communication and Herbert Clark's (1996) sociocognitive Action Theory approach. It is argued that the differences are fundamental and impact analysis of all kinds of naturally occurring communicative data, including that produced by non-native…

This article considers the implications of Sperber and Wilson's (1986/95) Relevance Theory for the acquisition of English "the" by second language (L2) learners whose first language (L1) does not have an article system. On the one hand, Relevance Theory provides an explicit characterization of the semantics of "the", which suggests ways of…

A study investigated differences in sentence interpretation, with case marking and lexical-semantic cues systematically manipulated, of 20 native English-speaking learners of Japanese (JFLs) (10 beginners, 10 intermediate) and 10 native Japanese-speaking learners of English. Results show: greater animacy effect with the verb "see" than "eat";…

A study investigated late emergence, in learners of English as a Second Language, of the ability to interpret object gaps in purpose clauses (PCs). Subjects were 34 adult native speakers of French. Results indicate difficulty interpreting only PCs with prepositional object gaps, supporting the hypothesis that syntactically marked construction may…

A study investigated whether adult learners of a second language would judge grammaticality differently in visual and aural judgment tasks. Four groups were tested: English first-language, French first-language, English second-language, and French second-language. Results indicate judgments were slower and less accurate in the aural condition,…