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…

Second language (L2) speakers often experience difficulties in learning words with L2-specific phonemes due to the unfaithful lexical encoding predicted by the fuzzy lexical representations hypothesis. Currently, there is limited understanding of how allophonic variation in the first language (L1) influences L2 phonological and lexical encoding.…

This study addresses whether there is anything special about learning a third language, as compared to learning a second language, that results solely from the order of acquisition. We use a computational model based on the mathematical framework of Linear Discriminative Learning to explore this question for the acquisition of a small trilingual…

Analyzes syntactic processes in three learning situations, Japanese reading English, Persians reading English and English speakers reading Hindi; discussed in terms of reading process and second language learning models. (Author/RM)

Some of the articulatory, theoretical, instrumental, and psycholinguistic evidence concerning the validity of the notion of ambisyllabicity in English is examined. Applications of the concept, including the notion of syllables being "half-closed" by ambisyllabic consonants, are considered. A set of rules is presented. (76 references) (Author/LB)

Describes a research project in which the acquisition of French by two six-year-old boys, native speakers of English, was observed longitudinally. (CFM)