The "recycling hypothesis" posits that the word recognition system is built upon minimal modifications to the neural architecture used in object recognition. In two masked priming lexical decision studies, we examined whether "mirror generalization," a phenomenon in object recognition, occurs in word recognition. In Study 1, we…

For children, Object Relative (OR) clauses can be late acquired across a number of languages (e.g., this is the goat that the cows are pushing), and production of non-standard ORs that include resumption is often attested (e.g., Italian; French; English). In addition, starting at age 6, children start adopting passive subject relatives (SRs)…

This article argues for the possibility and importance of infusing frame semantic insights into task-based lesson planning. "Frame semantics," a cognitive linguistic theory that takes a usage-based view of meaning, ties in with task-based language teaching (TBLT), which emphasizes second or foreign language learning through…

Second language (L2) speakers often experience difficulties in learning words with L2-specific phonemes due to the unfaithful lexical encoding predicted by the fuzzy lexical representations hypothesis. Currently, there is limited understanding of how allophonic variation in the first language (L1) influences L2 phonological and lexical encoding.…

The processes tapped by the widely-used word association (WA) paradigm remain a matter of debate: while some authors consider them as driven by lexical co-occurrences, others emphasize the role of meaning-based connections. To test these contrastive hypotheses, we analyzed responses in a WA task in terms of their normative defining features (those…

This paper supports the view that language instruction should be evidence and principle-based. Key facts about second language acquisition will be presented highlighting the main implications for language instruction. A principled and evidence-based approach to language instruction is one which takes into consideration the following: (i) a clear…

The current study investigates the influence of L2 English learners' belief about their interlocutor's English proficiency on phonetic accommodation and explores whether interaction-induced phonetic convergence could improve L2 English learners' vowel pronunciation. Results from two experiments show that when the subjects believed that their…

Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) is purportedly the only L2 pedagogy rooted in SLA theory and research and is unique in its psycholinguistic, ecological and pedagogical validity. Theoretical entities such as Processability Theory (Pienemann & Lenzing, 2020), the cognitive-interactionist approach (Gass & Mackey, 2020), and emergentism…

This dissertation investigates how bilinguals use their two grammars to comprehend written intra-sentential codeswitches. I focus on adjective/noun constructions in Spanish and English where I manipulate the congruence of grammatical word order in the two languages across the codeswitch boundary. This allows me to test three codeswitching…

Non-adult-like linguistic behavior in children is sometimes taken as evidence for endogenous factors that drive selection of grammatical features from the child's hypothesis space of possible grammars. Analyses of English-acquiring children's productions of medial "wh"-phrases exemplify this trend in particular. We provide an alternative…

Scalar implicatures involve inferring the use of a less informative term (e.g. some) to mean the negation of a more informative term (e.g. not all). A growing body of recent research on the derivation of scalar implicatures by adult second language (L2) learners shows that while they are successful in acquiring the knowledge of scalar…

The current study examines the influence of word type (i.e., emotion-label vs. emotion-laden) and valence (i.e., positive vs. negative vs. neutral) on the processing of emotion words among bilinguals. To this end, three groups of Arabic--English bilinguals (n = 120 per group) completed the tasks of free recall, ratings for concreteness,…

The interaction between working memory and language processing is widely discussed in cognitive research. However, those studies often explore the relationship between language comprehension and working memory (WM). The role of WM is rarely considered in language production, despite some evidence suggesting a relationship between the two cognitive…

Effects of concreteness and grammatical class on lexical-semantic processing are well-documented, but the role of sensory-perceptual and sensory-motor features of concepts in underlying mechanisms producing these effects is relatively unknown. We hypothesized that processing dissimilarities in accuracy and response time performance in nouns versus…

This study investigates children's interpretation of sentences with two logical operators: Dutch universal modal "hoeven" and negation ("niet"). In adult Dutch, "hoeven" is an NPI that necessarily scopes under negation, giving rise to a NOT > NECESSARY reading. The findings from a hidden-object task with 5- and…