This dissertation studies the acquisition of verb argument structure in the basilectal subvariety of Jakarta Indonesian (henceforth, bJI). There are two characteristics of bJI that potentially affect the acquisition of verb argument structure. First, bJI sentences can surface not only in the full frame but also in truncated frames. Second, the…

Phrasal verbs (PVs) have recently been the object of interest by linguists given their status as phraseological units whose meaning is non-compositional and opaque. They constitute a perfect case for theories of language processing and language acquisition to be tested. Cognitive linguists have participated in this debate and shown a certain…

In an event-related potentials (ERPs) study, we examined the comprehension of different types of Chinese (Mandarin) relative clauses (object vs. subject-extracted) to test the universality and language specificity of sentence comprehension processes. Because Chinese lacks morphosyntactic cues to sentence constituent relations, it allows a test of…

An important aspect of native speakers' communicative competence is collocational competence which involves knowing which words usually come together and which do not. This paper investigates the possible relationship between knowledge of collocations and the use of verb noun collocation in writing stories because collocational knowledge…

This dissertation study examined a broad question of whether computer-based grammar tutorials are effective and welcome tools to review grammar for language learners by investigating effects of three different modes of such tutorials on learners' knowledge and satisfaction. For this study, I developed experimental tutorials in three different…

This study investigates associative learning explanations of the limited attainment of adult compared to child language acquisition in terms of learned attention to cues. It replicates and extends Ellis and Sagarra (2010) in demonstrating short- and long-term learned attention in the acquisition of temporal reference in Latin. In Experiment 1,…

This dissertation investigates the methods used by intermediate, advanced and superior level learners of German when quoting formerly uttered speech in direct discourse. The study shows that that there are different methods of speech reporting at different levels of language proficiency. Each level of speakers in the study used the quotative…

Comprehension of verb-phrase ellipsis (VPE) requires reevaluation of recently processed constituents, which often necessitates retrieval of information about the elided constituent from memory. A. E. Martin and B. McElree (2008) argued that representations formed during comprehension are content addressable and that VPE antecedents are retrieved…

This study investigated neural activation patterns during verb processing in children, using fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging). Preschool children (aged 4-6) passively listened to lists of verbs and adjectives while neural activation was measured. Findings indicated that verbs were processed differently than adjectives, as the verbs…

Drawing on naturally-occurring data extracted from the British National Corpus (BNC) and the Corpus de Referencia del Espanol Actual (CREA) in conjunction with data elicited from native speakers by means of questionnaires, this paper provides a bottom-up, usage-based analysis of instances of depictive secondary predicates involving mainly verba…

Using a forced-choice question-answering paradigm, K. Christianson, A. Hollingworth, J. F. Halliwell, and F. Ferreira (2001) showed that the original misinterpretation built during the analysis of a garden-path sentence lingers even after reanalysis has occurred. However, their methodology has been questioned (R. P. G. van Gompel, M. J. Pickering,…

Increased second-language (L2) proficiency is associated with a shift from explicit to implicit processing; however, the neural underpinnings are of this shift are not well understood. Furthermore, it is known that unaccusative verbs cause persistent difficulties in L2 learning. In this study, behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) responses…

This dissertation investigates the processes in which second language (L2) speakers of Japanese develop their interactional competence in using modal expressions (e.g., "ne" [I share your view], "kamo" [maybe]) as recipients during study abroad. Although previous research has found that beginning learners of Japanese use the…

Behavioral and functional neuroimaging studies indicate deficits in verbal working memory (WM) and frontoparietal dysfunction in individuals with dyslexia. Additionally, structural brain abnormalities in dyslexics suggest a dysconnectivity of brain regions associated with phonological processing. However, little is known about the functional…

Two experiments and two corpus studies focus on homophone dominance in the spelling of regularly inflected verb forms, the phenomenon that the higher-frequency homophone causes more intrusion errors on the lower-frequency one than vice versa. Experiment 1 was a speeded dictation task focusing on the Dutch imperative, a verb form whose formation…