Introductory "it" pattern, as in "it was found that," is of significance in academic writing but the use of introductory "it" might be challenging especially for native- and non-native students and non-native academic writers. However, few studies have been conducted to compare the use of introductory "it"…

Extracting the regularities of our environment is one of our core cognitive abilities. To study the fine-grained dynamics of the extraction of embedded regularities, a method combining the advantages of the artificial language paradigm (Saffran, Aslin, & Newport, [Saffran, J. R., 1996]) and the serial response time task (Nissen & Bullemer,…

The visual-manual modality of sign languages renders them a unique test case for language acquisition and processing theories. In this commentary the authors describe evidence from signed languages, and ask whether it is consistent with Ambridge's proposal. The evidence includes recent research on collocations in American Sign Language that reveal…

This study reports findings from two truth value judgment experiments to address two research questions on Mandarin: (i) whether children and adults have the knowledge of the structural constraint Principle C in their pronoun resolution; and (ii) whether adults and children show the prohibition effect of the cyclic-c-command constraint or the QR…

Escape games are an increasingly popular leisure activity involving a group of players completing tasks to achieve a pre-defined goal, which is usually escaping from a room. In this chapter, I briefly outline the educational potential of escape game activities in language classes within the frameworks of gamification, pervasive learning, and…

Multiple constraints, including semantic, lexical, and usage-based factors, have been shown to influence dative alternation across different languages. This work explores whether fine-grained statistics and semantic properties of the verb affect the acceptability of dative constructions in Spanish. First, a corpus analysis reveals that verbs of…

Recent communicative teaching approaches view learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) as involving more than knowledge of grammar structures. Students are expected to develop communicative skills which allow them to interact inside and outside the language classroom. To this end, learning idioms plays a significant role because these…

This dissertation investigated the caregiving relationships between infants and nonparental caregivers in early childcare settings through the lens of attachment and language behaviors. This study sought to provide an opportunity to extend our understanding of the socioemotional factors that influence children's development in their daily lives.…

This paper aims to advance our understanding of how children's use of vocabulary in writing changes as they progress through their school careers. It examines the extent to which a model of lexical sophistication as use of low-frequency, register-appropriate words adequately captures development in vocabulary use across the course of compulsory…

It is common to have good declarative but poor procedural knowledge of a foreign language, especially for classroom learners. To study this gap in a constrained manner, we asked Chinese learners of English to repeat, correct and produce indirect speech. The indirect speech construction was selected in the present study because it is known to be a…

To investigate the narrative development of Chinese-speaking children aged 3--6 years, 80 children were prompted to tell personal stories. High point analysis was used and both narrative components and overall narrative patterns were analyzed. In terms of narrative components, Chinese children were more skillful in using complicating action,…

This work investigates the acquisition of Spanish dative alternation (DA) in the production of English-Spanish bilingual and Spanish monolingual children. We explore whether "a/para"-datives and dative clitic doubled (DCLD) structures are syntactically derived from one another or, whether they are different structures. We also examine…

This study reports on a corpus analysis of the research articles published by Iranians, Chinese, and Turkish authors in the Reading Matrix journal. For this purpose, 62 research articles (373000 words) were meticulously analyzed to determine how the authors project their identities through different types of self-mention practices. Results of the…

Testing is increasingly recognized as a vital part of language revitalization. I demonstrate here that assessment of linguistic knowledge should also be part of the planning process that precedes the creation of a revitalization program. I take as an example Jejueo, the language of Korea's Jeju Island. Whereas previously published work…

The aim of this study was to examine, in a comparative way, formulaic expressions used in textbooks of Turkish as a foreign language and to determine in which contexts and how often they are included in these textbooks. Survey model was used to obtain data from three textbooks of Turkish as a foreign. Formulaic expressions in these books were…