Human-Machine Interaction (HMI) technology has revolutionized the landscape of oral English education, offering new possibilities for improving learning efficiency and experiences. This paper presents an innovative teaching system that integrates real-time speech recognition and feedback capabilities with advanced natural language processing (NLP)…

Natural languages contain systematic relationships between verb meaning and verb argument structure. Artificial language learning studies typically remove those relationships and instead pair verb meanings randomly with structures. Adult participants in such studies can detect statistical regularities associated with words in these languages and…

This study investigates the hypothesis that non-isomorphic syntax-semantics mappings pose a greater challenge for non-native (L2) than for native (L1) speakers, focusing on a previously understudied phenomenon. We carried out an antecedent judgment task with L1 German and L1 Russian-speaking, proficient L2 learners of German to examine Condition C…

Processing of emotional meaning is crucial in many areas of psychology, including language and music processing. This issue takes on particular significance in bilinguals because it has been suggested that bilinguals process affective words differently in their first (L1) and second, later acquired languages (L2). We undertook a series of five…

The positive effects of bi-modal input on language learning are becoming a largely accepted experimental finding. However, experiments looking at bi-modal reading in a foreign language are normally limited by the common experimental situation of classroom-based researchers studying university age participants for the limited timespan of a…

This article explores how multiple linguistic cues interact in predictive processing among second language (L2) learners. In a visual-world eye-tracking experiment, we investigated whether learners of German use case and prosody cues together to assign thematic roles and predict post-verbal arguments. During the experiment, participants listened…

Eye tracking technology has become an increasingly popular methodology in language studies. Using data from 27 journals in language sciences indexed in the Social Science Citation Index and/or Scopus, we conducted an in-depth scientometric analysis of 341 research publications together with their 14,866 references between 1994 and 2018. We…

Listening comprehension is a real-time process, yet very little is known about the variables affecting real-time second language (L2) listening. The present study aimed at investigating the effects of syntactic complexity and word frequency on L2 listening. Furthermore, the role of the listener's working memory capacity in listening comprehension…

The present study examines both properties of the language and properties of the learner to better understand variability at the earliest stages of second language (L2) acquisition. We used event-related potentials, an oral production task, and a battery of individual differences measures to examine the processing of number and gender agreement in…

Input variability is key in many aspects of linguistic learning, yet variability increases input complexity, which may cause difficulty in some learning contexts. The current work investigates this trade-off by comparing speaker variability effects on L2 vocabulary learning in different age groups. Existing literature suggests that speaker…

The views that gender and language are related each other has been reviewed from at least two different disciplines: sociolinguistics and psychology. From the first discipline, it has been concluded that gender and language has no natural relationship for it is cultural values that shape genderlect. From the second discipline, it has been…

The phenomenon of regularization -- learners imposing systematicity on inconsistent variation in language input -- is complex. Studies show that children are more likely to regularize than adults, but adults will also regularize under certain circumstances. Exactly why we see the pattern of behaviour that we do is not well understood, however.…

Native-English speaking adults use morphological decomposition to understand complex words (e.g. "farmer" becomes "farm-er"). Whether decomposition is driven by semantic organization is still unclear. It is also unclear whether ESL adults and elementary age children use the same word processing strategies as native speaking…

A well-known challenge for language learners is that the input is typically produced by a variety of speakers, each with distinct vocal characteristics (Liberman, Harris, Hoffman, & Griffith, 1957). Accordingly, many studies have indicated that talker variability leads to processing costs for learners across the lifespan (Jusczyk & Pisoni,…

Students acquiring American Sign Language (ASL) as a second language (L2) struggle with fingerspelling comprehension more than skilled signers. These L2 learners might be attempting to perceive and comprehend fingerspelling in a way that is different from native signers, which could negatively impact their ability to comprehend fingerspelling.…