College-level deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students and hearing students of English as a Second Language (L2) along with hearing native speakers (NS) of English were assessed in their knowledge of English resultative and depictive sentences. In "Kevin wiped the table clean," the resultative phrase "clean" indicates that the…

This dissertation examines the acquisitional process of middle se constructions by English- and Korean-speaking L2 learners of Spanish. Although clitic se is well known for its multifunctionality, there is a general tendency in the literature to analyze any use of "se" as a reflexive marker. This tendency is especially prominent in the…

This study examines the knowledge representation of Japanese university students assessed using grammaticality judgement tests (GJTs) and a metalinguistic knowledge test (MKT). The study also investigates the role of automatised and non-automatised explicit knowledge in general L2 language proficiency. Participants were 87 late learners of English…

This study examines the learning patterns of intermediate and advanced Korean learners in the acquisition of causative expressions according to their proficiency and the causative sentence type. We measured their grammatical knowledge using three types of grammaticality judgment tasks (GJTs) and self-paced reading tasks (SPRTs) differing in time…

Students are required to master effective sentences to support their writing skills. However, students often struggle with comprehending and constructing effective sentences due to their limited proficiency and competence. This research examines the comprehension of effective sentences through grammaticality judgment tests and its implications for…

The English Resultative Construction (ERC) is a satellite-framed structure with no identical equivalent in Spanish. In a series of studies, we analyzed and compared recognition (acceptability judgment task) and comprehension (sentence comprehension task) of three ERC subtypes with the English Depictive Construction (EDC) (which has a Spanish…

The current study explores the effects of processing demands and proficiency on second language (L2) learners' acceptability judgment of wh-island sentences. A total of 65 adult Korean learners of English and ten native speakers (NSs) of English participated in an experiment that combined self-paced reading and acceptability judgment. They were…

Scope ambiguity arises when a sentence contains scope-bearing logical operators like quantifiers and negation (Fox, 2003). For instance, in English, the sentence 'Every horse didn't jump over the fence' can be interpreted as either 'None of the horses jumped over the fence' (surface scope) or 'Not all of the horses jumped over the fence' (inverse…

Development of child language is tremendously complex, remarkable and wondrous. In a second language acquisition context, a child can acquire his second language in either acquiring both languages at the same time or learning the second language after mastering the first one. This present research is concerned to describe the syntactical…

How languages are acquired and what stages learners go through has been the focus in language teaching area, and this cross-sectional study investigated the use of English adverbs by elementary, pre-intermediate and intermediate level Turkish EFL students at Anadolu University School of Foreign Languages by analyzing it from acquisitional…

Second language (L2) acquisition research has explored the acquisition of various syntactic constraints by L2 learners, one of which is "wanna" contraction. However, there is still a very limited body of research regarding the acquisition of "wanna" contraction, both in first language (L1) and L2. The purpose of the study is to…

Based on writing produced by second language learners at different proficiency levels (CEFR A1 to C1), we adopted a usage-based approach (Ellis, Römer, & O'Donnell, 2016; Tyler & Ortega, 2018) to investigate how German and Spanish learner knowledge of 19 English verb-argument constructions (VACs; e.g., "V with n," illustrated by…

The results of a self-paced reading study with advanced German, Dutch and French second language (L2) learners of English showed that their online comprehension of early closure (EC) sentences which are initially misanalysed by native English speakers (e.g. "While John hunted the frightened rabbit escaped") was affected by whether or…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether processability theory (PT; Pienemann, 1998, 2005) accounts for the emergence of grammatical forms and structures in comprehension. Sixty-one learners of English participated in oral interviews that elicited a variety of structures relevant to PT. Learners were divided into two groups: those who…

The current project investigates developmental aspects of acquiring locative verb constructions in English as a second language. Locative verbs, such as "to pour," "to spill," "to spray," and "to sprinkle," constitute a prototypical case of an overgeneralization problem in language learning: Whereas some of…