Discusses relative clauses in Hong Kong English and considers questions about its morphosyntactic feature system, comparing relevant attestations from local data to those found in other varieties of English. Examines ways relative constructions in Cantonese may affect how relative clauses in Hong Kong English are formed and how the relative clause…

Re-examines the case of the "pseudo-passive," an interlanguage structure considered typical of first-language Chinese learners of second language English. Earlier approaches to the analysis of the structure--typological and syntactic--are reviewed and an alternative approach--discourse-syntactic--is proposed to bridge a methodological…

One of the great puzzles of language acquisition has been described as poverty of the stimulus: how are complex aspects of language acquired when they appear to be rare or even non-occurring in the input that a learner receives and comprehends? This article presents an emergentist solution to one aspect of this puzzle (involving relative clauses)…

An important problem for a language learner is identifying how properties of argument structure are realized morphosyntactically in the particular language they are learning. Speakers of some L1s overgeneralize the morphosyntactic reflexes of the movement of Theme objects in English to unaccusative intransitive verbs, using passive morphology in…

The study reported in this article is a part of a large-scale study investigating syntactic complexity in second language (L2) oral data in commonly taught foreign languages (English, German, Japanese, and Spanish; Ortega, Iwashita, Rabie, & Norris, in preparation). In this article, preliminary findings of the analysis of the Japanese data are…

The present study investigated the influence of sex, handedness, level in second language (L2) and Faculty choice on the performance of phonological, syntactical and semantic tasks in L2. Level in L2 and sex were the most affecting factors. Subjects who achieved higher scores on L2 tasks had strong second language aptitude skills since they were…

This study investigated whether giving learners an opportunity for oral output has any positive effect on the L2 learners' acquisition of a grammatical form. Twenty-four adult ESL learners were randomly assigned to one of three groups: an output group, which engaged in a picture description task that involved input comprehension and output…

This paper addresses the issue of whether second language (L2) learners can reset parameters, by testing English speakers learning Spanish on their ability to reset the subjacency and bounding node parameters. The bounding nodes are IP and NP in English and CP and NP in Spanish. Eight American graduate students, highly proficient in the Spanish…

Even for foreigners who have completed intermediate or advanced courses in English, technical prose may prove difficult because of a lack of knowledge of vocabulary and syntax. A research program investigates these variables to improve EFL instruction. (CK)

An investigation is conducted into the hypothesized notion of the interlanguage system and its effect on language transfer. The interlanguage system is composed of: internal factors (syntax, semantics, and phonology); external factors (sociological and psychological); and the typology of the native language. The investigation looks into: (1)…

In comparing 50 English as a second language (ESL) compositions written in class to 50 ESL compositions written at home, accuracy on the syntactic level and fluency on the discourse or rhetorical level for the home and class conditions were examined. The subjects, twenty-five undergraduate foreign students enrolled in special sections of freshman…

A statistical analysis was made of the most productive term-formation processes in English, German, French, and Russian in the field of chemistry. The study deals with (1) the morphological aspect of term-formation, that is, the most productive affixes involved in term-formation in the four languages; and (2) the syntactical aspect, that is, the…

Studies of age differences in second language learning ability are collected along with commentary on the results. The 12 papers describe long and short term studies of children and adults that focus on the optimal age for second language acquisition, the effect of different teaching methods and environments on age differences, and theories that…

R-QUAF (Rapid Question and Answer Formation) is a device which enables the English as a second language (ESL) class to systematically review previously studied sentence patterns in a brisk and lively way. The technique revolves around a wall chart with cue words for questions running down the left-hand side (to elicit the various structures to be…

This guide is designed for classroom teachers who work with non English dominant Asian students from China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Historic information, English as a Second Language contrasts, and cultural information are included. The three basic components of the guide are the phonological, the syntactical, and the cultural.…