Purpose: Punctuation is traditionally seen to represent grammatical structures in writing, but some authors argue that it can also reflect the intonation and pauses of speech. In two experiments, we examined the influence of grammar and prosody on adults' judgments of comma placement. Method: University students rated the appropriateness of commas…

Morphologically marked case is in Arabic a feature exclusive to the variety of Standard Arabic, with no parallel in the spoken varieties, and it is orthographically marked only on some word classes in specific grammatical situations. In this study we test the hypothesis that readers of Arabic do not parse sentences for case and that…

This article explores patterns in teachers' reported correction of student language use in speech and writing. The authors use the concept of language correction in student writing and student speech as a proxy for prescriptive approaches to teaching about language. By conducting a large-scale survey of all language and literacy teachers from…

Whether tone should be represented in writing, and if so how much, is one of the most formidable challenges facing those developing orthographies for tone languages. Various researchers have attempted to quantify the level of written ambiguity in a language if tone is not marked, but these contributions are not easily comparable because they use…

For the past five years, the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository has been documenting intricacies of the Alutiiq language with the help of Elder speakers and a grant from the National Science Foundation (#1360839). The project's primary focus has been recording vocabulary, grammar, and ways of speaking for this threatened Native Alaskan…

The present study investigated the influence of orthographic input on the recognition of second language (L2) spoken words with phonological variants, when first language (L1) and L2 have different orthographic structures. Lexical encoding for intermediate-to-advanced level Mandarin learners of Korean was assessed using masked cross-modal and…

This study draws on multimodal conversation analysis to emically account for moments in second language (L2) English interaction in which speakers appear to be visualizing text as they talk. One way they do this is by slotting out elements of a turn-in-progress in the air, shifting their hand in a slotting gesture from left to right as they say…

In the realm of language proficiency assessments, the domain description inference and the extrapolation inference are key components of a validity argument. Biber et al.'s description of the lexicogrammatical features of the spoken and written registers in the T2K-SWAL corpus has served as support for the TOEFL iBT test's domain description and…

This dissertation investigates a typologically rare linguistic phenomenon found in Irish from three different perspectives: how it challenges phonological theory, how it is used by contemporary speakers, and how its written representation affects its acquisition. Initial consonant mutation (ICM), as it appears in the Celtic languages, is known to…

This study examined how mode of input affects the learning of pronunciation and form-meaning connection of second language (L2) words. Seventy-five Japanese learners of English were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions (reading while listening, reading only, listening only), studied 40 low-frequency words while viewing their corresponding…

Understanding discourse connectives is an important step to achieving effective verbal communication. Yet, the ability of adult native speakers to understand the broad range of connectives found in most Indo-European languages has seldom been assessed. In this article we demonstrate that some adults have difficulties recognizing correct and…

This study examined the differences in perceptions of the value of feedback for improving English speaking performance between students who received video feedback and those who received written feedback and their preferences for written or video feedback. A total of 43 English as a foreign language students participated in this study to produce a…

In the present article, we explore the extent to which previous research on register variation can be used to predict spoken/written task-type variation as well as differences across score levels in the context of a major standardized language exam (TOEFL iBT). Specifically, we carry out two sets of linguistic analyses based on a large corpus of…

This article contributes to the scarcity of research on the interface between task-modality and the use of previously known languages (PKL) in young learners. It examines the use of Basque/Spanish by CLIL learners (aged 10-11) during oral interaction while completing two collaborative tasks in English: a speaking task and a speaking + writing…

This project firstly explored Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) students' perceptions about written corrective feedback (WCF)-related practices and preferences. Secondly, the student participants' first language (L1; e.g., Farsi) learner identities were operationalized, especially focusing on the skill of writing, WCF, and…