This article proposes a novel account for the overuse of free morphemes and underuse of bound morphemes in English as a second language (L2) based on the framework of Distributed Morphology. It will be argued that an Economy Principle 'Do everything in Narrow Syntax (DENS)' operates in the L2 learner's computational system. Consequently,…

Lexical knowledge is complex, multidimensional, and difficult to pin down to a set of defined components. The development, organization, and use of lexical knowledge in the first and additional languages are studied in a number of neighbouring disciplines beyond second language acquisition and applied linguistics, including psycholinguistics,…

This study builds on prior research on second language (L2) Spanish psych verbs, which has centered on morphosyntactic properties, by examining their syntactic distribution, which relies on lexical semantic knowledge. The fact that certain forms are licensed for some verbs, but not others, is the result of an underlying lexical semantic difference…

First language acquisition is implicit, in that explicit information about the language structure to be learned is not provided to children. Instead, they must acquire both vocabulary and grammar incrementally, by generalizing across multiple situations that eventually enable links between words in utterances and referents in the environment to be…

This article addresses the benefits of audio-visual input for learning second language (L2) vocabulary and grammatical constructions. Specifically, it explores the role of frequency, the effects of subtitles and captions, and the mediating role of learner proficiency on language gains in two longitudinal studies. Study 1 targets vocabulary…

Mastery of grammatical gender is difficult to achieve in a second language (L2). This study investigates whether persistent difficulty with grammatical gender often observed in the speech of otherwise highly proficient L2 learners is best characterized as a production-specific performance problem, or as difficulty with the retrieval of gender…

In this study of the placement of sentence negation in third language acquisition (L3), we argue that there is a qualitative difference between the acquisition of a true second language (L2) and the subsequent acquisition of an L3. Although there is considerable evidence for L2 influence on vocabulary acquisition in L3, not all researchers believe…

Discusses the implications of the tendency of adult second-language learners to develop a well-structured, simple form of language outside the classroom, i.e. the Basic Variety (BV). Focuses on the structural properties of the BV, the status of these properties and the reasons why some structural properties of "fully fledged" languages are more…