Event concepts of common verbs (e.g. "eat," "sleep") can be broadly shared across languages, but a given language's rules for subcategorization are largely arbitrary and vary substantially across languages. When subcategorization information does not match between first language (L1) and second language (L2), how does this…

This study attempts to explain a systematic phenomenon that has been described in interlanguage grammars crosslinguistically: Null-Prep, which consists of omitting the obligatory preposition in certain movement constructions. We propose that Null-Prep is not related to lack of knowledge of "wh"-movement, as previously assumed, but to…

Previous research has shown that children demonstrate similar sentence processing reflexes to those observed in adults, but they have difficulties revising an erroneous initial interpretation when they process garden-path sentences, passives, and "wh"-questions. We used the visual-world paradigm to examine children's use of syntactic and…

This dissertation aims to identify the locus of L2 processing inefficiency. Previous studies suggest that non-native processing is a specific result of an inefficient predictive mechanism that limits the ability of learners to generate linguistic expectations (Gruter, Rohde, & Schafer, 2014; 2016). Thus, this study employs two distinct online…

Highly abstract predicates (e.g. "think") present a number of difficulties for language learners (Gleitman et al., 2005). A partial solution to learning these verbs is that learners exploit regularities in the syntactic frames in which these verbs occur. While agreeing with this general approach to learning verbs, we caution that this…

Competition Model studies of second language learners have demonstrated that there is a gradual replacement of first language cues for thematic role assignment by second language cues. The current study introduced two methodological innovations in the investigation of this process. The first was the use of mouse-tracking methodology (Spivey, 2007)…

Studies of bilingualism sometimes require healthy subjects to be assessed for proficiency at auditory sentence processing in their second language (L2). The Syntactic Comprehension task of the Bilingual Aphasia Test could satisfy this need. For ease and uniformity of application, we automated its English (Paradis, M., Libben, G., and Hummel, K.…

The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (CCSS/ELA) focus on building student capacity to read complex texts. The Standards provide an explicit text complexity staircase that maps text levels to grade levels. Furthermore, the Standards articulate a rationale to accelerate text levels across grades to ensure students are able to…

Explores whether the functional element effect (Muysken, 1997), often observed in production, is replicated in on-line comprehension results. Compared results of published frequency counts involving Spanish-English code switches with comprehension-timed experimental results. (Author/VWL)

This article describes the translation goals, challenges, strategies, and solutions employed in the development of a computer-based, self administered, psychiatric diagnostic instrument, the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for the Deaf (D-DIS-IV) in American Sign Language (ASL) with English captions. The article analyzes the impact of the…