"Taza" in Spanish refers to cups and mugs in English, whereas glass refers to different glass types in Spanish: "copa" and "vaso." It is still unclear whether such categorical distinctions induce early perceptual differences in speakers of different languages. In this study, for the first time, we report symmetrical…

Sentence production is a stage-like process of mapping a conceptual representation to the linear speech signal via grammatical rules. While the typological diversity of languages is vast and thus must necessarily influence sentence production, psycholinguistic studies of diverse languages are comparatively rare. Here, we present data from a…

Building up on studies that have revealed L2 transfer of imperfective meaning from one Romance language into another [Salaberry, M. R. (2005). Evidence for transfer of knowledge of aspect from L2 Spanish to L3 Portuguese. In D. Ayoun & R. Salaberry (Eds.), "Tense and aspect in romance languages: Theoretical and applied perspectives"…

A central concern of the cognitive science of language since its origins has been the concept of the linguistic system. Recent approaches to the system concept in language point to the exceedingly complex relations that hold between many kinds of interdependent systems, but it can be difficult to know how to proceed when "everything is…

Research on second language (L2) pronoun use in null-argument languages has traditionally focused on whether or not a speaker's first language (L1) also allows null pronouns. However, recent studies have pointed out that it is equally important to consider the specific linguistic properties of overt pronouns in the L1 and L2, which may differ even…

Understanding how native speakers acquire the phonological patterns in their language is a key task for the field of phonology. Numerous studies have suggested that phonological learning is a biased process: certain phonological patterns are easily accessed and learned by the speakers, while others show acquisition difficulties. These differences…

There has been plenty of observational evidence displaying that L2 English learners whose L1 do not have article systems undergo persistent difficulties. It is known that functional categories of grammar are especially difficult for L2 learners, and the Korean language does not have a functional equivalent to English articles. The current study…

The English Resultative Construction (ERC) is a satellite-framed structure with no identical equivalent in Spanish. In a series of studies, we analyzed and compared recognition (acceptability judgment task) and comprehension (sentence comprehension task) of three ERC subtypes with the English Depictive Construction (EDC) (which has a Spanish…

Variability in the form of article (i.e., a and the) omissions and stressing has been attributed to a mismatch between first (L1) and second language (L2) prosodic and syntactic structures. An overlap between the L1 and L2 systems, on the other hand, is expected to contribute to native-like article productions. This case study aims to explore the…