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…

We consider how orthography activates sounds that are in a noncontrastive relationship in the second language (L2) and for which only one variant exists in the first language (L1). Participants were L1 English / L2 Spanish and native Spanish listeners. Intervocalically, Spanish graphemes "b d g" correspond phonetically to stops and…

Three profoundly deaf individuals undertook a low-frequency backward lexical translation task (French/English), where morphological structure was manipulated and orthographic distance between test items was measured. Conditions included monomorphemic items (simplex), polymorphemic items (complex), items whose French morphological structure…

This study reports on a self-paced reading experiment in which native and non-native speakers of English read sentences designed to evaluate the predictions of usage-based and rule-based approaches to second language acquisition (SLA). Critical stimuli were four-word sequences embedded into sentences in which phrase frequency and grammaticality…

This article examines the effect of phonological context (singleton vs. clustered consonants) on full phoneme segmentation in Hebrew first language (L1) and in English second language (L2) among typically reading adults (TR) and adults with reading disability (RD) (n = 30 per group), using quantitative analysis and a fine-grained analysis of…

This article reports the findings of a study in which we investigated the possible effects of word order on the acquisition of case marking. In linguistic typology (e.g. Greenberg, 1963) a very strong correlation has been shown between dominant SOV (subject object verb) word order and case marking. No such correlation exists for SVO (subject verb…

This study investigates the acquisition of the Spanish Imperfect by 60 English learners of Spanish at three different proficiency levels (beginner, intermediate and advanced). Two oral production tasks and one interpretation task show that although the Imperfect is used from early on, the full array of interpretations associated with this form…

In this study, we report the results of two self-paced reading experiments that investigated working memory capacity effects on the processing of globally ambiguous relative clauses by advanced Korean second language (L2) learners of English. Consistent with previous monolingual literature on the processing of temporary ambiguity, we found that…

This article reports an eye-tracking study on the native and non-native processing of case in Spanish. Twenty-four native and 27 first language (L1) German non-native speakers of Spanish were tested on their sensitivity to case marking violations involving structural case with objects of ditransitive verbs and to violations of inherent case for…

This article presents a generative analysis of the acquisition of formulaic language as an alternative to current usage-based proposals. One influential view of the role of formulaic expressions in second language (L2) development is that they are a bootstrapping mechanism into the L2 grammar; an initial repertoire of constructions allows for…

This study examines possible semantic interaction in fully fluent adult simultaneous and early second language (L2) bilinguals. Monolingual and bilingual speakers of Spanish and English (n = 144) were tested for their understanding of lexical categories that differed in their two languages. Simultaneous bilinguals came from homes in which Spanish…

In two experiments, this article investigates the predictive processing of gender agreement in adult second language (L2) acquisition. We test (1) whether instruction on lexical gender can lead to target predictive agreement processing and (2) how variability in lexical gender representations moderates L2 gender agreement processing. In a…

The present study examined visual word recognition processes in Hebrew (a Semitic language) among beginning learners whose first language (L1) was either Semitic (Arabic) or Indo-European (e.g. English). To examine if learners, like native Hebrew speakers, exhibit morphological sensitivity to root and word-pattern morphemes, learners made an…

This study investigates how fluent second-language (L2) learners of English produce and perceive the /ae/-/?/ vowel contrast of Southwestern American English. Two learner groups are examined: (1) early, proficient English speakers who were raised by Spanish-speaking families but who became dominant in English during childhood and, as adults, lack…

This article reports an empirical study investigating L2 acquisition of the Mandarin Chinese "shì…de" cleft construction by adult English-speaking learners within the framework of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere, 2009). A Sentence Completion task, an interpretation task, two Acceptability Judgement tasks, and a felicity…