Previous research on the L1 acquisition of motion event expression suggests that mapping multiple semantic components onto syntactic units is associated with greater difficulties in verb-framed than in satellite-framed languages, because the former require more complex structures (using subordination). This study investigated the impact of this…

Feature-based approaches to acquisition principally focus on second language (L2) learners' ability to perceive non-native consonants when the features required are either contrastively present or entirely absent from the first language (L1) grammar. As features may function contrastively or allophonically in the consonant and/or vowel systems of…

While some research has highlighted how teachers prepare their course materials, little is known about how future teachers design support for their students, and thus plan and anticipate what can and will happen in the classroom. We have therefore sought to investigate whether identifiable learner profiles emerge when regular primary school…

Usage-based approaches to additional-language acquisition have identified numerous determinants of language learning, two of which were the focus of our study: frequency and cue contingency. Specifically, we examined how an immersion experience may impact sensitivity to these two determinants as reflected in the production of 4,808 pairs of nouns…

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…

Previous studies found an impact of language familiarity on face recognition in 9- and 12-month-olds. Own race faces are better recognized when associated with native language, whereas for other race faces, it is with non-native language. The aim of this study is to investigate if language familiarity can also influence abstract pattern…

Previous evidence suggests that children's mastery of prosodic modulations to signal the informational status of discourse referents emerges quite late in development. In the present study, we investigate the children's use of head gestures as it compares to prosodic cues to signal a referent as being contrastive relative to a set of possible…

This study builds upon previous research investigating the construct validity of phraseological complexity as an index of L2 development and proficiency. Whereas previous studies have focused on cross-sectional comparisons of written productions across proficiency levels, the current study compares the "longitudinal" development of…

The study investigates the reflections on tempo-aspectual morphology in Italian expressed by undergraduate multilingual learners with previous knowledge of Swedish and a Romance language (N = 22). The reflections of the participants, who were divided into four groups depending on a combination of proficiency in their background Romance language…

Within the same learning context, learners' outcomes in terms of oral fluency vary greatly. This study tracked the relative contributions that first language (L1) and initial second language (L2) fluency skill and working memory (WM) made to L2 fluency development. We assessed the performance of French-speaking Grade 6 learners' (n = 47, mean age:…

In four experiments, we investigated the impact of letter case (lower case vs. UPPER CASE) on the processing of sequences of written words. Experiment 1 used the rapid parallel visual presentation (RPVP) paradigm with postcued identification of one word in a five-word sequence. The sequence could be grammatically correct (e.g., "the boy likes…

The aim of this project was to identify factors contributing to cross-language semantic preview benefits. In Experiment 1, Russian-English bilinguals read English sentences with Russian words presented as parafoveal previews. The gaze-contingent boundary paradigm was used to present sentences. Critical previews were cognate translations of the…

This study explores the effects of embodied prosodic training on the production of non-native French front rounded vowels (i.e. /y, ø, oe/) and the overall pronunciation proficiency. Fifty-seven Catalan learners of French practiced pronunciation in one of two conditions: one group observed hand gestures embodying prosodic features of the sentences…

In 2 ERP experiments participants read 4-word sequences presented for 200 ms (RPVP paradigm) and were required to decide whether the word sequences were grammatical or not. In Experiment 1, the word sequence consisted of either a grammatically correct sentence (e.g., "she can sing now") or an ungrammatical scrambled sequence (e.g.,…

A large amount of literature exists on how native speakers derive and process pragmatic inferences, yet few studies have examined the issue in second language learners, despite a controversial debate of second language (L2) ultimate attainment of phenomena situated at external interfaces. This study contributes to the debate on the integration of…