Languages that have complex syllable patterns also share linguistic features with each other. These features can be identified through diachronic paths developed by these syllable patterns this study aimed to show the universality of syllabemes in Kazakh and other languages, focusing on questions like evolution of syllables in the Turkic…

Theories of reading comprehension have widely predicted a role for syntactic skills, or the ability to understand and manipulate the structure of a sentence. Yet, these theories are based primarily on English, leaving open the question of whether this remains true across typologically different languages such as English versus Chinese. There are…

This study examined the influence of cognate status and language distance on simultaneous bilingual children's vocabulary acquisition. It aimed to tease apart effects of word-level similarities and language-level similarities, while also exploring the role of individual-level variation in age, exposure, and nontarget language proficiency. Children…

Although several studies have focused on novel word learning and lexicalization in (presumably) monolingual speakers, less is known about how bilinguals add novel words to their mental lexicon. In this study we trained 33 English-French bilinguals on novel word-forms that were neighbors to English words with no existing neighbors. The number of…

The purpose of this study was to explore five developmental patterns of English letter-name knowledge for emergent bilingual children. We considered five patterns demonstrated by English monolingual children: visual similarity effect, uppercase familiarity effect, first name/first initial effects, consonant-order effect, and frequency effect. We…

Challenges in reading Chinese as a foreign language involve the large proportion of two-character compound words which have complex intra-word morphological structures and scriptal distance between learner's native language (L1) and Chinese as a second or foreign language. This study extended a previous investigation on the processing of Chinese…

Previous research has revealed that distributional information obtained from child-directed speech could be informative for children when they are learning grammatical categories. Frequent frames are distributional units proposed by Mintz and explored by researchers in many languages with different typologies. This study investigated two…

Adult second language learners arrive at the language learning situation with an already formed first language grammar system in place. The study of cross-language similarity across the first and second languages explores how the similarities and differences in the two languages make learning more or less difficult, particularly for adult…

As Chinese shows both satellite- and verb-framed properties (Slobin, 2004; Talmy, 2012, 2016), it provides a unique lens through which to observe the extent of first-language (L1) typological influence in second language (L2) acquisition of motion expressions. This study has dual purposes. First, it extends Wu's (2016) investigation on motion…

In second language learning research, L1-L2 congruency refers to the similarity in form and meaning of the way a word or phrase is said between two languages. If there is low L1-L2 congruency, the learning burden of a word or phrase can be higher, and thus, such items should be focused on more in teaching to help learners avoid errors. For…

This study presents a list of 2022 Bulgarian-Turkish cognate words that can be used to facilitate vocabulary acquisition and cross-linguistic awareness. The list was created manually through a multi-step process that involved scanning the database of an online dictionary to identify Bulgarian words that had the same or similar forms in Turkish.…

Much research has focused on the expression of voluntary motion (Slobin, 2004; Talmy, 2000). The present study contributes to this body of research by comparing how children (three to ten years) and adults narrated short, animated cartoons in English and German (SATELLITE-FRAMED languages) vs. French (VERB-FRAMED). The cartoons showed agents…

Languages in the Mesoamerican linguistic area have been reported to lack a dedicated means of expressing the privative meaning that encodes the absence of a participant in a situation. This micro-typological study identifies alternative strategies that the languages in this area employ to function without dedicated privative markers, namely…

Research on second language (L2) pronoun use in null-argument languages has traditionally focused on whether or not a speaker's first language (L1) also allows null pronouns. However, recent studies have pointed out that it is equally important to consider the specific linguistic properties of overt pronouns in the L1 and L2, which may differ even…

Urdu language is a member of Indo-European family tree and within the zone of Indo-Iranian branch, whereas Turkish language is a member of Altaic family tree. Both of these languages belong to different family trees, but these languages have many words in common. Urdu language has 41 consonant sounds and 11 vowel sounds, whereas Turkish language…