"Wh"-words have been analysed as existential quantifiers (Chierchia in Logic in grammar: polarity, free choice, and intervention. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013; Fox, in Sauerland U, Stateva P (eds) Presupposition and implicature in compositional semantics (Palgrave studies in pragmatics, language and cognition). Palgrave…

Westergaard's microcue account raises the question of the exact nature of language transfer in the acquisition of languages as well of how L1/Ln input interacts with the principles of universal grammar (UG) during processing. In order to consider in more detail the actual representation building, processing mechanisms that would be involved, her…

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…

In this article, I argue that first language (L1), second language (L2) and third language (L3) acquisition are fundamentally the same process, based on learning by parsing. Both child and adult learners are sensitive to fine linguistic distinctions, and language development takes place in small steps. While the bulk of the article focuses on…

Second language acquisition has been observed to be variable in its outcome such that, unlike native speakers, all second language learners do not achieve total success. Second language acquisition is made of macro and micro processes. External and internal (e.g., age, individual differences) factors are assumed to affect language processing in…

In this paper, a review of the role of input, output and instruction in second language acquisition is provided. Several pedagogical interventions in grammar instruction (e.g., processing instruction, input enhancement, structured output and collaborative output tasks) are presented and their effectiveness reviewed. A final and overall evaluation…

This paper presents an experimental study of the rarely explored question of how input through instruction interacts with L2 acquisition at the level of modular linguistic knowledge. The investigation focuses on L2 knowledge of the English polarity item "any," whose properties are only partially covered by typical language-teaching…

The induction problems facing language learners have played a central role in debates about the types of learning biases that exist in the human brain. Many linguists have argued that some of the learning biases necessary to solve these language induction problems must be both innate and language-specific (i.e., the Universal Grammar (UG)…

This study investigated the acquisition of the Spanish clitic se by English native speakers in passive, middle, and impersonal constructions. Little research has been done on this topic in SLA within a UG framework (Bayona, 2005; Bruhn de Garavito, 1999). VanPatten (2004) proposed the Processing Instruction (PI) model arguing for the necessity of…

Languages are known to exhibit universal restrictions on sound structure. The source of such restrictions, however, is contentious: Do they reflect abstract phonological knowledge, or properties of linguistic experience and auditory perception? We address this question by investigating the restrictions on onset structure. Across languages, onsets…

This article is concerned with the correspondence conditions that hold between certain semantic relations--including part-whole relations, possession, location, and the semantic features [+- animate] or [+- count]--and certain syntactic structures including genitives and relative clauses. The objective is to determine the extent to which these…

Raises a series of problems that attach to the standard analysis of input to learning as the stimulus array minus unattended-to information, where attention is construed as a selection function. Demonstrates the inadequacy of this distinction as the foundation for a theory of input in second-language acquisition. (Author/VWL)

This paper identifies a feature of human brain neural nets that may be described as the principle of ease of processing (PEP), and that, it is argued, is the primary force guiding a learner towards a target grammar. It is suggested that the same principle lies at the heart of Optimality Theory, which characterizes the course of language…

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the major areas of research in the field of child language acquisition. It is divided into seven parts and 19 chapters. Part I is an introduction and overview. Part II covers central issues in the study of child language acquisition, focusing on syntax, including those of innateness, maturation, and…