Adult learners have persistent difficulty processing second language (L2) inflectional morphology. We investigate associative learning explanations that involve the blocking of later experienced cues by earlier learned ones in the first language (L1; i.e., transfer) and the L2 (i.e., proficiency). Sagarra (2008) and Ellis and Sagarra (2010b) found…

This paper synthesizes research on the acquisition of linguistic variation by learners of French as a second language--an overview that, to our knowledge, is the first of its kind. It also presents a case study on French immersion students' acquisition of the pronouns "nous" and "on" "we," an alternation in many varieties of spoken French. The…

Focuses on the application of the Null Subject Parameter. Data reveals that some second-language learners exhibit knowledge that English is morphologically nonuniform yet still accept English null subject sentences. Findings disprove the Morphological Uniformity Hypothesis, indicating that any reformulation of the Null Subject Parameter must…

Investigates the acquisition of the unaccusative-unergative distinction in second language Japanese by English learners. Aims to establish whether learners of Japanese are sensitive to the lexical-semantic characteristics of verbs in similar ways as learners of Romance languages who were found to follow the split intransitivity hierarchy.…