This paper problematizes the assessment of speakers' proficiency in endangered language communities. We focus in particular on processes of lexical production and elicitation as proxies for full proficiency assessment. Among linguists, it is standard to assess a speaker's knowledge of specific lexical items in order to set a baseline for further…

The global COVID-19 pandemic has put into high relief the need for better remote communication and collaboration tools, but also serves as an opportunity to focus on building community capacity and promoting greater community agency in the language documentation process. This paper describes a method for remotely supporting and monitoring a…

FirstVoices is a technology-centered organization that works with forty-seven Indigenous language communities around British Columbia. One of its top priorities is providing high-quality technical assistance as well as accessible annual training sessions for the platform. This requires nuanced systems of support and adaptability within the methods…

This commentary discusses some theoretical and methodological issues related to research on the spacing effect in second language acquisition research (SLA). There has been a growing interest in SLA in how the temporal distribution of input might impact language development. SLA research in this area has frequently drawn upon the rich field of…

This paper examines the effect of syntactic structures on referent predictability. Focusing on stimulus-experiencer (SE) verbs, we conducted two sentence-completion experiments in Chinese by contrasting SE verbs in three structures (active canonical, active "ba," and passive). The results showed that although verb semantics and discourse…

A great amount of sociolinguistic research in contact situations has centered on phonological and morphosyntactic variables, but studies of discourse-pragmatic features in contact situations are scarce and incipient. Discourse-pragmatic features are syntactically optional elements that are used to guide, structure, or express a stance towards…

In this paper, I provide an analysis of 'verbless' sentences in Arabic (mainly, the Standard variety, SA) in light of the claims of the feature-based probe-goal-Agree system of Chomsky (2001, 2004) and such assumptions as held by Biberauer et al. (2010) about probe-goal Agree relations being parameterized according to the feature-structure of…

Discourse Markers are one of an uninvestigated aspect of language in old and modern Kurdish linguistics, that has not been given due attention, neither by native nor non-native researchers. On this ground, it is hoped that the present study sheds light on this almost entirely ignored aspect of the language and this study is meant to be a…

This dissertation explores the effects of frequency on the learning and use of linguistic constructions. The work examines the influence of frequency on form choice in production and meaning inference in comprehension and discusses the effect of each modality on diachronic patterns of change in language. In production, high frequency of a form…

This article enters the debate about the complex and dynamical nature of second language acquisition (SLA) by discussing and commenting on Pallotti's critique of Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST). Pallotti's critique brings to the fore the argument that, due to its anti-reductionist stance, CDST research fails to observe three fundamental…

As is typical across Turtle Island, the Hul'q'umi'num' (Coast Salish) language revitalization movement is being carried by adult language learners (Haynes 2010; McIvor 2015) but becoming a proficient Hul'q'umi'num' speaker is challenging given the complexity of its sound system. In this paper, we share our experiences using the speech analysis…

All languages change over time. English has undergone continuous change throughout its three major periods: Old English (roughly from 450 to 1100 AD), Middle English (from 1100 to 1500), and Modern English (from 1500 to the present). Sound is one of the most easily influenced parts of language to be subject to different changes. Sound change is…

In this article, the researchers explore how insights from complex systems theory might resonate with the experience of TESOL practitioners and argue that complexity can function as a shared discourse space where connections might be drawn between research and practice. The article grew out of a meeting between TESOL practitioners and researchers…

In this paper we present the coreferential tagging of part of the EPEC Corpus of Basque. Although coreference is a pragmatic linguistic phenomenon highly dependent on the situational context, it shows some language-specific patterns that vary according to the features of each language. Due to the fact that Basque is not an Indo-European language,…

This paper considers the anaphoric status of the pro-form "fer-ho" (do it) in Catalan [This paper contains some ideas included in Busquets (2005)]. I discuss some anaphoric properties of "fer-ho" as deep anaphora. I also compare these properties to those of other types of anaphora, like VPE and pseudogapping (pg). I show that…