A number of studies have found evidence for the so-called "ambiguity advantage," that is, faster processing of ambiguous sentences compared with unambiguous counterparts. While a number of proposals regarding the mechanism underlying this phenomenon have been made, the empirical evidence so far is far from unequivocal. It is compatible…

This study explores the identity positions that L2 English learners/users would take in case of hypothetical miscommunications. Based on positioning theory, at the time of L2 interaction, L2 learners assign themselves and others specific positions which are established through their learning experiences. It was hypothesized that their current…

Experiments on theories of reference have mostly tested referential intuitions. We think that experiments should rather be testing linguistic usage. Substantive Aim (I): to test classical description theories of proper names against usage by "elicited production." Our results count decisively against those theories. Methodological Aim…

This provocative article raises many important issues that need to be addressed and in so doing will advance the fields of second language (L2) and third language (L3) acquisition in several important ways. Fundamental questions concerning multilingual development persist especially with respect to the role of Universal Grammar in this language…

The stage of pre-university training is the most important stage in the professional development of foreigners studying at the preparatory faculties of Russian universities. During this period, cross-cultural communicative competence is being formed. The article proves that the formation of cross-cultural communicative competence is a complex…

This dissertation investigates the soft typology of phonological patterns. By studying the types of patterns observed in the world's languages, we can do more than determine what is attested and what is unattested, or what is possible and what is impossible, but discover a wide range of more gradient phenomena. Phonological patterns range from…

Gunther Kress's multimodal and social semiotic theory of communication has moved beyond the realm of linguistics, which originally framed his work, and has reached out to inform other fields, such as those of education, museum studies, as well as the humanities and social sciences more broadly. This article brings together our insights in relation…

The practical orientation of undergraduate translation and interpreting degrees in Spain means that less importance is given to theoretical modules, and it is often thought that students doubt the usefulness of these modules and are therefore reluctant to take them. Previous empirical research has shown that students are not as averse to theory as…

How do children learn the meaning of words like "pretty" and "tall," which are not only gradable and context dependent (Kennedy & McNally 2005), but encode speaker subjectivity? Despite their complex semantics (Stephenson 2007; Lasersohn 2009; Bylinina 2014), these and other adjectives like them, are some of the most…

This study investigates the language ideologies manifested in the linguistic hierarchies produced by relevant EU governmental/political institutions through their language requirements for visa application documents. Based on the theoretical framework of Language Management Theory (LMT), this study employs a mixed-methods approach, combining…

This study examined the production of L3 French words by Spanish--English bilinguals who had no prior knowledge of the L3. Using a shadowing task, 39 Spanish L1/English L2 and 18 Spanish monolingual speakers produced 26 tokens of word-initial voiceless plosive consonants in French, Spanish and English (15 Spanish and French tokens for the…

The present dissertation intends to investigate the syntactic nature and L2-acquisition of passive sentence structure in two Romance varieties, Italian and Spanish. First, I will present an analytic proposal couched within the Generative Approach (Chomsky, 1957, and subsequent work); from there, and following Perlmutter and Postal's (1977)…

Culture is an inseparable part of English Language Teaching (ELT), and ELT textbooks, as one of the main instructional resources are bound to include cultural and linguistic content. However, the kind of cultural content in these books has been a controversial issue for decades. It is recommended that curriculum designers use intercultural…

Since corpus linguistics gained popularity as a methodology in the latter half of the 20th century, second language acquisition research has seen the emergence of work investigating formulaic language, such as idioms, lexical bundles, and collocations. A collocation is a string of words that co-occur more routinely than probability would predict,…

Usage-based theories hold that mental representation of language is shaped by a lifetime of usage. Both input to which first language (L1) and second language (L2) users are exposed and their own language production affect their construction learning and entrenchment. The present study investigates L2 users' knowledge of two…