For children, Object Relative (OR) clauses can be late acquired across a number of languages (e.g., this is the goat that the cows are pushing), and production of non-standard ORs that include resumption is often attested (e.g., Italian; French; English). In addition, starting at age 6, children start adopting passive subject relatives (SRs)…

Information-theoretic complexity metrics, such as Surprisal (Hale, 2001; Levy, 2008) and Entropy Reduction (Hale, 2003), are linking hypotheses that bridge theorized expectations about sentences and observed processing difficulty in comprehension. These expectations can be viewed as syntactic derivations constrained by a grammar. However, this…

Recursive NPs are difficult to produce and late to emerge. We compare prosodic and syntactic abilities in Japanese-speaking five- and six-year-olds (n = 28) and adults (n = 10). It is reported that syntactic structure in Japanese is prosodically marked via downstep and metrical boost. Results of an elicited imitation task suggested that children…

Standard Spanish grammar states that desideratives ("querer que"), directives ("aconsejar que"), purpose clauses ("para que"), causatives ("hacer que"), emotive-factives ("alegrarse de que"), negated epistemics ("no creer que"), dubitatives ("dudar que"), and modals ("ser…

This paper explores the processes underlying verb metaphoric extension. Work on metaphor processing has largely focused on noun metaphor, despite evidence that verb metaphor is more common. Across three experiments, we collected paraphrases of simple intransitive sentences varying in semantic strain--for example, "The motor complained"…

The purpose of this article is to synthesize and analyse the most frequently occurring, widely dispersed and pedagogically useful lexical bundles in mathematical texts. Drawing on a five-million-word corpus of graduate-level textbooks, a total of 65 academic sequences meeting a predefined set of length, frequency and distribution criteria are…

This thesis investigates the choice between reflexive pronouns (e.g., "herself") and personal pronouns (e.g., "her") in the expression of subject coreference in English locative prepositional phrases. A persistent puzzle for syntactic theories of pronoun licensing, commonly known as binding theories, it has long been observed…

The process of learning to read is more difficult for English language learners (ELLs) because they are often learning a new language as they are trying to learn to read. Learning irregular/high-frequency words (sight words) may be especially challenging for ELL students. Limited research exists on the effects of interventions designed to help ELL…

Research on academic stance and evaluation has been prolific over the past few decades. Few studies, however, have focused on exploring the evaluative potential of that-constructions in shaping the structure of academic arguments. To address this lacuna, the current study aimed at exploring the potential impact of the distinct communicative…

Given the importance of collocational knowledge for second language learning, how collocation learning can be facilitated is an important question. The present study examined the effects of three different practice schedules on collocation learning: node massed, collocation massed, and collocation spaced. In the node-massed schedule, three…

When teaching Mandarin Chinese classifiers, teachers usually ask students to memorize 'classifier + noun', phrases as collocations. Given that Mandarin Chinese has a vast and complicated system of classifiers, the rote memorization of 'classifier + noun' collocations is challenging and monotonous. Therefore, the present study aims to improve that…

In second language (L2) vocabulary studies there is continuing interest in tests of depth of vocabulary knowledge, measuring various aspects of word knowledge other than just the form--meaning link that is the focus of breadth (or size) tests. This study aimed to explore new formats that could be used as diagnostic tools for assessing depth of…

The adjustment of syntactic and phraseological complexity is a key consideration in text adaptation. However, research on this topic in the context of Chinese as a second language (CSL) remains limited. Using 700 CSL reading texts graded following the newly issued Chinese Proficiency Grading Standards for International Chinese Language Education,…

This study examines the comprehension of verbal passives by children acquiring European Portuguese, in particular with respect to the predictions of the Universal Phase Requirement (UPR) and the Universal Freezing Hypothesis (UFH) regarding children's performance with different types of predicates. Both hypotheses entail the prediction that…

Comprehension of sentences with a center-embedded, object-gapped relative clause (ORC) is challenging for children as well as adults. Mismatching lexical and grammatical features of subject noun phrases (NPs) across the main clause and relative clause has been shown to facilitate comprehension. Adani et al. concluded that children's comprehension…