This dissertation presents a series of case studies concerned with whether the signal in a given set of measurements that we take in the course of linguistic inquiry reflects grammatical competence or performance factors. We know that performance and competence do not always covary, yet it is not uncommon to assume that measurements that we take…

Poverty of the stimulus has been at the heart of ferocious and tear-filled debates at the nexus of psychology, linguistics, and philosophy for decades. This review is intended as a guide for readers without a formal linguistics or philosophy background, focusing on what poverty of the stimulus is and how it's been interpreted, which is…

This paper sets out to peruse the role of various theories or more precisely, hypotheses invoked in second language acquisition (SLA) research by surveying three empirical studies pertaining to the critical period hypothesis in the SLA of phonetics and phonology. In particular, the three studies reviewed are titled in chronological order as (1)…

It has long been recognized that there is a natural dependence between theories of knowledge representation and theories of knowledge acquisition, with the idea that the right knowledge representation enables acquisition to happen as reliably as it does. Given this, a reasonable criterion for a theory of knowledge representation is that it be…

This study examines the "ba" and "bei" constructions in Mandarin using data from the Tong corpus, a new multimedia longitudinal child language corpus. A unified aspectual account of the two constructions is proposed: both require telic predicates, and should thus correlate with the perfective rather than imperfective aspect for…

Many languages have processes which lengthen or shorten a vowel or consonant. In this dissertation, I concentrate on Open Syllable Lengthening, Closed Syllable Shortening, Monosyllabic Lengthening and Trochaic Lengthening, and present a formal model which captures these lengthenings and shortening as the insertion, deletion or reassignment of a…

This study investigates the relationship between three linguistic functions: thetics, miratives and exclamatives. Thetics are an information structure configuration that conveys that the information is new to the addressee. The thetic subtypes selected for this study are the following: existentials (e.g. "There are apples in the…

Generative approaches to language have long recognized the natural link between theories of knowledge representation and theories of knowledge acquisition. The basic idea is that the knowledge representations provided by Universal Grammar enable children to acquire language as reliably as they do because these representations highlight the…

The chapters in this volume, all written by experts in the field, present an array of new research on second language acquisition (SLA) that touches on several current theoretical debates in the field and present a rich range of new empirical data and a number of innovative findings. The studies address questions relating to ultimate attainment,…

This article presents a generative analysis of the acquisition of formulaic language as an alternative to current usage-based proposals. One influential view of the role of formulaic expressions in second language (L2) development is that they are a bootstrapping mechanism into the L2 grammar; an initial repertoire of constructions allows for…

This longitudinal case study follows a dynamic systems approach to investigate an under-studied research area in second language acquisition, the development of complexity and accuracy for an advanced untutored learner of English. Using the analytical tools of dynamic systems theory (Verspoor et al. 2011) within the framework of complexity,…

This paper, after shortly introducing "Folk Linguistics" by defining its domain of competence [cf. Preston, Dennis R., ed. 1999. "Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology." Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Niedzielski, Nancy A., and Dennis R. Preston. 2003. "Folk Linguistics." Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter], attempts to draw an…

This article explores the relationship between intuition, introspection and the observation of naturally occurring utterances in linguistic inquiry. Its focus is on the problems that this relationship poses in cognitive approaches to semantics and case theory within the framework of Cognitive Grammar. Given the increasing commitment of linguistics…

Body parts have played an important role in the development of theories describing grammaticalization processes (Heine and Kuteva, 2002, pp. 62-63 and 165-171). Within Uralic linguistics, this particular area of study has not yet received a great deal of attention, although the agglutinative character of most of these languages is known to have…

In the study conducted using qualitative research methods, one of the purposeful samplings, typical case sampling was used. The date were collected from two sources. The students were asked to prepare any topic they wanted and then delivered it. The students were observed for one month in order to detect their mistakes as they speak, through…