Structural priming refers to the tendency of speakers to reuse the same structural pattern as one that was previously encountered (Bock, 1986). The effectiveness of structural priming has been an issue of much discussion in the field of second language acquisition over decades. This study aims at investigating the role of structural priming in…

The present article provides an exploration of ultimate attainment in second language (L2) and its limitations. It is argued that the question of maturational constraints can best be investigated when the reference population is bilingual and exposed on a regular basis to varieties of their first language (L1) that show cross-linguistic influence.…

This paper reports the results of an elicited production task of Long Distance (LD) "wh"-questions conducted with typically developing French- and Dutch-speaking children aged four and six, and adult control groups for each language. It is shown that besides input-convergent "wh"-questions, in both languages children use nontarget strategies to…

This study assessed the effectiveness of five hours of distributed training on three-year-old children's comprehension and production of the passive, negative, possessive and negative passive syntactic structures. A comprehension test identified 20 children who did not evidence understanding of these structures. Subject were randomly assigned to…