Empirical research conducted over the past few decades suggests that the age at which an individual is first exposed to a second language affects long-term outcomes, in particular for phonology. The question that has occupied scholars of various bents is what, exactly, underlies the robust age effects observed. Does age imply immutable changes in…

Different language sample elicitation techniques may be appropriate for different linguistic phenomena and for learners at different phases of acquisition. These techniques include elicited production, manipulation of given linguistic material (sentence combining, sentence completion), intuition and grammaticality judgment tests, introspection,…