Research on second-language (L2) acquisition has identified linguistic domains that appear to be especially difficult to learn--one such sticking point being syntactic structures that depend on the surrounding discourse. The Interface Hypothesis (IH) explains what makes such constructions problematic by appealing to a modular view of language,…

Previous work has shown that heritage grammars are often simplified compared to their monolingual counterparts, especially in domains in which the societally-dominant language makes fewer distinctions than the heritage language. We investigated whether linguistic simplification extended to the anaphoric system of Turkish heritage speakers living…

This study integrated reading and bilingual theories to examine the reading behaviors of second grade Latinx students in a Dual Language program. It explored how the students' differing language backgrounds (simultaneous bilinguals and sequential bilinguals who had developed Spanish as a home language) might influence their early reading…

Self-paced reading was used in three experiments to compare the processing of certain kinds of English sentences by adults with typical hearing and adults with hearing loss. Adults with typical hearing use strategies for processing an input sentence, anticipating the structure, and leading to incorrect analyses. One strategy we examine in this…

A study examined the linguistic strategies of strong and weak readers in grades three and six within the context of D. E. Rumelhart's interactive model of the reading process. A linguistic prediction task was set up to investigate students' use of orthographic constraints, syntactic redundancy, and syntactic and semantic knowledge. A program was…

A study applied Relevance Theory to interpretation of texts written in Ghanaian English, particularly those intended for reading by multiple audiences. The nature of such "hybrid" texts is examined and key principles of Relevance Theory are outlined. Relevance is defined in terms of contextual effect and processing effort. Contextual…

A study investigated whether there were commonalities of cue patterns in six selected tenth grade students' reading and writing that could be discovered from each student's respective language use and perception of the two distinct but interrelated processes. Specifically, the study explored how two above-average readers, two average readers, and…

Forty bilingual Ss were tested in four experiments to see if decoding of linguistically mixed texts with one-word substitutions in the other language would take more time than decoding of unilingual material. The overall aim was to further explore the nature of the language switch mechanism as it functions in input. In the first experiment,…

This paper focuses on the mechanism by which the successful learner acquires a second language. The author postulates a core language, the common core of the speaker's native and target languages, and states that the second language becomes an extension of this common core. Whatever language-specific features are added while acquiring the second…