This study contributes to current trends of heritage speaker bilingualism research by examining the syntax of so-called Spanish dative-experiencer predicates ("gustar"-like verbs). Building on previous findings (e.g., Silva-Corvalán 1994; Toribio and Nye 2006), it is hypothesized that Spanish heritage speakers can project an optional…

The public's concern with the fate of the standard language has been well documented in the history of the complaint tradition. The print media have for centuries featured letters to the editor on questions of language use. This study examines a corpus of 258 language-related letters to the editor published in the English-speaking print media. By…

This study investigates the relationship between three linguistic functions: thetics, miratives and exclamatives. Thetics are an information structure configuration that conveys that the information is new to the addressee. The thetic subtypes selected for this study are the following: existentials (e.g. "There are apples in the…

There have been three competing analyses regarding the canonical word order of Japanese ditransitive sentences: a) "S-'ga' IO-'ni' DO-'o' V" is the canonical word order rather than "S-'ga' DO-'o' IO-'ni' V", b) both word orders are canonical, and c) the canonical word order depends on the type of the verb. The present study…

We give a narrative description of our ten-year path into the elaborate tonal systems of the Chatino languages (Otomanguean; Oaxaca, Mexico), and of some of the methods we have used and recommend, illustrated with specific examples. The work, ongoing at the time of writing, began when one of us (Cruz), a native speaker of San Juan Quiahije…

Previous studies (Barcroft & Sommers, 2005; Sommers & Barcroft, 2007) have demonstrated that variability in talker, speaking style, and speaking rate positively affect second language vocabulary learning, whereas variability in overall amplitude and fundamental frequency (F0) do not, at least for native English speakers. Sommers and…

This dissertation discusses the color terms of the Old Norse-Icelandic (or Old West Norse) language and seeks to establish which color terms in that language are basic (i.e., not further reducible, as English scarlet is to red), and what the fields of reference of these color terms are. By establishing how the color spectrum is divided in Old West…

Language is of vital importance to human beings. It is a means of communication and it has specific cognitive links. Advanced social cognition is necessary for children to acquire language, and sophisticated mind-reading abilities to assume word meanings and communicate pragmatically. Language can be defined as a bi-directional system that permits…

Multilingualism is a prevalent reality in today's world. From an individual level to a societal one, multilingualism incorporates many aspects that have been studied extensively by diverse social research disciplines. The present article will explore the potential directions which multilingualism research can take, concentrating mainly on the…

This paper examines the essential features of a group of constructions that belong to the family of complementary alternation discourse constructions in English. In this group of constructions, X and Y are two situations such that Y is less likely (or more likely) to happen than X. Each member of this group (X Let Alone Y, X Much Less Y, X Never…

Arabic varieties show explicit linguistic behavior, especially at the syntactic level. This apparent diversity is mainly due to how syntactic rules confine the scope and the flexibility of movement of certain constituents inside and outside their syntactic domains. This paper examines solely how the mother tongue from which all these varieties…

In this article I make the point that there has been a continuous focus on second language development in second language acquisition research for over 40 years and that there is clear empirical evidence for generalizable developmental patterns. I will both summarize some of the core assumptions of Processability Theory (PT) as an approach to…

This article focuses on a theoretical and empirical exploration of developmental trajectories and individual learner variation in second language (L2) acquisition. Taking a processability perspective, I view learner language as a dynamic system that includes predictable universal developmental trajectories as well as individual learner variation,…

Idealization plays a fundamental role in scientific inquiry. This article examines the case for maintaining the claim that the second language acquisition (SLA) of grammatical structures such as negation manifests identifiable stages of acquisition. It proposes that, while research has demonstrated the need for de-idealization, there is no need to…

In Study 1 we analyzed Italian child-directed-speech (CDS) and selected the three most frequent active transitive sentence frames used with overt subjects. In Study 2 we experimentally investigated how Italian-speaking children aged 2;6, 3;6, and 4;6 comprehended these orders with novel verbs when the cues of animacy, gender, and subject-verb…