Previous developmental studies of conjunction have focused on the syntax of phrasal and sentential coordination (Lust, 1977; de Villiers, Tager-Flusberg & Hakuta, 1977; Bloom, Lahey, Hood, Lifter & Fiess, 1980, among others). The present study examined the flexibility of children's interpretation of conjunction. Specifically, when two…

Previous research on young children's knowledge of prosodic focus marking has revealed an apparent paradox, with comprehension appearing to lag behind production. Comprehension of prosodic focus is difficult to study experimentally due to its subtle and ambiguous contribution to pragmatic meaning. We designed a novel comprehension task, which…

The presentation of the cyber language as one of the variations of the language includes a discussion on its nature as an intermediate form between oral language and written language and the forces responsible for the linguistic changes. On the one hand, we have the popular usage that has given rise to the constant evolution of the language and,…

Theoretically speaking, semantic minimalism and semantic maximalism are two current dominant assumptions on the nature of meaning in the linguistic communication. The former lays more emphasis on the syntactic basis of sentence meaning, while the latter stresses much over the pragmatic properties of utterance meaning. This paper, grounded on the…

We argue that coherence relations (relations between propositions, such as "Concession" or "Purpose") are signalled more frequently and by more means than is generally believed. We examine how coherence relations in text are indicated by all possible textual signals, and whether every relation is signalled. To that end, we…

The effects of syntactic and information structures on sentence processing load were investigated using two reading comprehension experiments in Japanese, a head-final SOV language. In the first experiment, we discovered the main effects of syntactic and information structures, as well as their interaction, showing that interaction of these two…

Since the inception of Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz, 1993), there have been two notable, but preliminary, analyses of Spanish gender and word class within this framework: Harris (1999) and Kramer (2015). This dissertation fills in the gaps left by these partial analyses for nominals in particular. It presents a novel word class…

This study discusses the role of stylistic analysis in the development of critical language awareness (CLA) which is crucial for assessing ideologies transmitted in discourse. The Critical Stylistic approach is used to compare narrative strategies in fiction and non-fiction: in Ishiguro's novel "The Buried Giant" (2015) and in Wolff's…

Ambridge calls for exemplar-based accounts of language acquisition. Do modern neural networks such as transformers or word2vec -- which have been extremely successful in modern natural language processing (NLP) applications -- count? Although these models often have ample parametric complexity to store exemplars from their training data, they also…

Children show a remarkable degree of consistency in learning some words earlier than others. What patterns of word usage predict variations among words in age of acquisition? We use distributional analysis of a naturalistic corpus of child-directed speech to create quantitative features representing natural variability in word contexts. We…

As an instance of foreign language comprehension, L2 humor perception is proved to be challenging for the foreign language learners. However, the body of literature is heavier on the side of humor production than humor perception. The current study explores the extent to which Iranian English as foreign language (EFL) learners perceive different…

Purpose: In this study, we sought to identify critical linguistic markers that can differentiate sentence processing of individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) from the sentence processing of normal-aging populations by manipulating sentences' linguistic complexity. We investigated whether passive sentences, as linguistically complex…

This study investigates syntactic modifiers as part of the request speech act within email messages and builds on studies of L2 pragmatics within computer-mediated communication to identify how modifications affect perceived politeness. Enrolled in first-year composition courses, the participants formed two groups: English L1 (EL1) students (n=32)…

Orthographic and linguistic knowledge are known predictors of reading and writing, yet little research with adolescent readers explores how such knowledge predicts reading and writing in a single model. We worked with 583 adolescent readers in remedial reading classes in grades 6-8 to collect indicators of orthographic and linguistic knowledge as…

Irish is a rapidly changing minority language spoken as the main community language in some areas of the officially Irish-speaking "Gaeltacht" regions in Ireland. We analyse narratives from 17 parent-child dyads, living in one such area. All children, aged 3-6;4, had high exposure to the local variety of Irish. The input quality was…