Subject relative clauses (RCs) have been shown to be acquired earlier, comprehended more accurately, and produced more easily than object RCs by children. While this subject preference is often claimed to be a universal tendency, it has largely been investigated piecemeal and with low-powered experiments. To address these issues, this…

A writer's L1 is generally believed to influence their L2 English writing significantly. However, the extent to which L1 backgrounds influence Asian learners' L2 English writing has not been wholly elucidated due to the lack of data covering various learners in Asia. Therefore, this study analysed more than one-million-word essays written by 2,318…

It is a common finding across languages that young children have problems in understanding patient-initial sentences. We used Tagalog, a verb-initial language with a reliable voice-marking system and highly frequent patient voice constructions, to test the predictions of several accounts that have been proposed to explain this difficulty: the…

This quantitative study focuses on the relationship between foreign language learners' aptitude and proficiency test scores. Four groups of 136 beginning students received six months of Initial Acquisition Training (IAT) in four different language categories, according to the level of complexity for an English speaker: French (Category I),…

Although many online intercultural exchanges have been conducted based on the groundbreaking Cultura model, most to date have been between and among European languages. This volume presents several chapters with a focus on exchanges involving Asian and Pacific languages. Many of the benefits and challenges of these exchanges are similar to those…

This reference text of Tagalog grammar provides extensive description with illustrative examples of the language. Language classification and grammatical analysis are predicated on principles of transformational generative grammar. Seven categories of materials include: (1) pronunciation, (2) basic sentence structure, (3) nominals and their…