American Norwegian (AmNo), a moribund heritage variety of Norwegian spoken predominantly in the Upper Midwest of the US, licenses "wh"-infinitives (i.e. indirect questions), which are structures that are not acceptable in either standard Norwegian Bokmål or Norwegian dialects. Adopting a spanning-account of syntax (Blix, 2021; Julien,…

Syntactic priming studies in second language (L2) have contributed to understanding how L2 speakers' syntactic knowledge is represented and processed. However, little is known about social influences on L2 speakers' syntactic processing and learning. The present study investigated whether L2 speakers' syntactic priming is influenced by social…

This article reports empirical findings from an ongoing investigation into the acquisition of second-language (L2) phonemic contrasts. Specifically, we consider the status and role of the phenomenon of hypercorrection in the various stages through which L2 learners develop and internalize a target language (TL) contrast. We adopt the prevailing…

Most linguistic processes--acquisition, change, deterioration--take place in and are determined by a complex and multifactorial web of language internal and language external influences. This implies that the impact of each individual factor can only be determined on the basis of a careful consideration of its interplay with all other factors. The…

The goal of this article is to examine the factors that are proposed in the literature to explain the success--failure in the child L2 (second language) acquisition of grammatical gender in Dutch definite determiners. Focusing on four different groups of bilingual children, we discuss four external success factors put forward in the literature:…

Variationist linguistics, also called sociolinguistics, has been misunderstood and misrepresented in second-language acquisition (SLA) research. Four impediments to the development of a profitable interaction between sociolinguists and the SLA community are discussed. (36 references) (Author/LB)

Three recent books take up different positions in the on-going debate about how, and out of what, to construct a theory of second language (L2) acquisition. Johnson (2004) advocates a "dialogically based approach", inspired by Vygotsky's sociocultural theory and Bakhtin's "dialogized heteroglossia", with which she would replace what she views as a…

The applicability of transferability principles to language contact in the British Isles, especially Ireland, is shown with a detailed discussion of absolute constructions, structures with interesting relations between syntax and discourse, and with susceptibility to cross-linguistic influence. Evidence for transferability of absolutes in…

Attempting to clarify the concept of pragmatic transfer, this article proposes as a basic distinction Leech/Thomas' dichotomy of sociopragmatics versus pragmalinguistics, presenting evidence for transfer at both levels. Issues discussed include pragmatic universals in speech act realization, conditions for pragmatic transfer, communicative…