There is presently a lively debate in second language (L2) acquisition research as to whether (adult) learners can acquire linguistic phenomena located at the interface between syntax and other modules, such as semantics, pragmatics, and lexical semantics, in contrast to phenomena that are purely syntactic in nature. For some researchers, the…

Exchanging patient-specific information across heterogeneous information systems is a critical but increasingly complex and expensive challenge. Lacking a universal unique identifier for healthcare, patient records must be linked using combinations of identity attributes such as name, date of birth, and sex. A state's birth certificate registry…

This research study analyzes the effect the implementation of language-driven CLIL has on senior learners from Manuel J. Calle High School in Cuenca, Ecuador in relation to the development of written production in terms of Syntax, Content, Communicative Achievement, Organization, and Language compared to a non-language-driven CLIL classroom. There…

Syntactic and linguistic complexity have been studied extensively in applied linguistics as indicators of linguistic performance, development, and proficiency. Recent publications have equally highlighted the reductionist approach taken to syntactic complexity measurement, which often focuses on one or two measures representing complexity at the…

This study investigated the contribution of linguistic comprehension to the decoding skills of struggling readers. Participants were 36 children aged between eight and 12 years, all below average in decoding but differing in linguistic comprehension. The children read passages from the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability and their first 25 miscues…

L1 grammar education is internationally criticised because of its pedagogy and its curriculum content. There is a gap between linguistic theory and school grammar in which the latter rarely makes use of possibly relevant insights from the former. At the same time, linguistics itself has never seriously undertaken attempts to identify the…

Knowledge of English affixes plays a significant role in increasing knowledge of words. However, few attempts have been made to create a valid and reliable measure of affix knowledge. The Word Part Levels Test (WPLT) was developed to measure three aspects of affix knowledge: form (recognition of written affix forms), meaning (knowledge of affix…

School self-evaluation (SSE), as an important leverage for quality assurance, often relies on surveys among staff members to collect information on the schools' functioning. The extent to which respondents cognitively process items as developers intended them determines the cognitive validity of SSE results. However, it is unclear what problems…

Language on the Internet and social media varies due to time, geography, and social factors. For example, consider an online chat forum where people from different regions across the world interact. In such scenarios, it is important to track and detect regional variation in language. A person from the UK, who is in conversation with someone from…

ELF cross-cultural interactions and mediation processes in specialized migration settings are often characterized by 'gatekeeping' asymmetries between the participants involved challenging a successful meaning negotiation (Guido, 2008). The exploration of migration encounters (Sperti, 2017) is particularly useful in the analysis of naturally…

It is a common finding across languages that young children have problems in understanding patient-initial sentences. We used Tagalog, a verb-initial language with a reliable voice-marking system and highly frequent patient voice constructions, to test the predictions of several accounts that have been proposed to explain this difficulty: the…

Listening has been widely characterised as a multifaceted process encompassing a range of linguistic and psycholinguistic components (see Rubin, 1994). However, for learners at different levels of L2 proficiency, there is uncertainty over the relative importance of the various sub-skills. To address this issue, a number of linguistic and…

This article investigates near-native grammars at the syntax--discourse interface by examining the second language (L2) acquisition of two different domains of object movement in Dutch, which exhibit syntax-discourse or syntax-semantics level properties. English and German near-native speakers of Dutch, where German but not English allows the same…

This study aims to analyze positive remarks linguistically manifested through English intensifiers, i.e. very and so, and their collocates in café reviews. The appraisal framework primarily focuses on the feelings or attitudes of speakers or writers. It plays a part in providing communicative resources whereby speech functions are performed…

This article presents an action research study. Its purpose was to determine the extent to which the Reciprocal Teaching model (RT), proposed by Palincscar and Brown (1984), impacts tenth grader's English writing skills. The research work included: (1) A diagnostic stage to determine the participant's initial difficulties in regards to their…