When learning a second spoken language, cognates, words overlapping in form and meaning with one's native language, help breaking into the language one wishes to acquire. But what happens when the to-be-acquired second language is a sign language? We tested whether hearing nonsigners rely on their gestural repertoire at first exposure to a sign…

Translanguaging (TL) theory underscores individuals' agentive deployment of all semiotic resources to construct meaning, highlighting language as part of an integrated repertoire for communication. To explore the potential of pedagogical TL in Chinese vocabulary instruction, this paper focused on one Chinese Language Arts lesson from a larger…

Previous evidence has shown that word pairs that are either related in form (e.g., "ruc-berro"; donkey-watercress) or very closely semantically related (e.g., "ruc-caballo", donkey-horse) produce interference effects in a translation recognition task (Ferre et al., 2006; Guasch et al., 2008). However, these effects are not…

This study aims to examine the influence of multiple translations of a word on bilingual processing in three translation recognition experiments during which French-English bilinguals had to decide whether two words were translations of each other or not. In the first experiment, words with only one translation were recognized as translations…

The present research tested the hypothesis that the age at which one's first language (L1) words are learned influences language processing in bilinguals. Prior research on bilingual language processing by Kroll and colleagues has suggested that memory links between L1 words and conceptual representations are stronger than memory links between…

This study investigated the role of verbal working memory on bilingual lexical disambiguation. Spanish-English bilinguals read sentences that ended in either a cognate or noncognate homonym or a control word. Participants decided whether follow-up target words were related in meaning to the sentences. On critical trials, sentences biased the…

Encountering trouble producing a word in the midst of a turn at talk is an everyday experience for foreign language learners. By employing conversation analysis (CA) as a central tool for analysis, the current study explores how students undertake a range of word searches while they organize a pair work session designed for the purpose of language…

This study investigates how L2 learners of German (English L1) process structural and semantic information when reading German sentences. In a timed comprehension task, intermediate and advanced L2 learners of German read sentences that varied according to word order (subject-first versus object-first) and subject animacy (inanimate subject versus…

Papers presented at the conference on applied linguistics include the following: "Speaking of Grammars: Is Big Beautiful?" (Jan Svartvik); "A Sociosemiotic View of the Grasp of Language at Reality: The Lexical Field 'Aesthetic Judgment'" (Wolfgang Kuhlwein); "Language as a Target and Instrument of the Educational Process…