Little is known about how nonnative speakers process novel language patterns in the input they encounter. The present study examines whether nonnatives develop a sensitivity to novel binomials and their ordering preference from context. Thirty-nine nonnative speakers of English (L1 Arabic) read three short stories seeded with existing binomials…

This study explored the interaction between learning conditions, linguistic complexity, and first language (L1) syntactic transfer in semiartificial grammar learning by conceptually replicating and extending Tagarelli et al. (2016). We changed the L1 background, elicited production data during debriefing, and added a binary mixed-effects logistic…

This study examines whether Japanese native (L1) listeners can implicitly learn stress pattern regularities, not present in their L1, after a brief auditory exposure. In the exposure phase, the participants listened to and repeated words bearing stress patterned after Latin, but with a highly restricted consonant inventory. They performed a…

The speech of second language learners is often influenced by phonetic patterns of their first language. This can make them difficult to understand, but sometimes for listeners of the same first language to a lesser extent than for native listeners. The present study investigates listeners' awareness of the accent by asking whether accented speech…

Based on writing produced by second language learners at different proficiency levels (CEFR A1 to C1), we adopted a usage-based approach (Ellis, Römer, & O'Donnell, 2016; Tyler & Ortega, 2018) to investigate how German and Spanish learner knowledge of 19 English verb-argument constructions (VACs; e.g., "V with n," illustrated by…

This study investigated the relationship between second language (L2) speakers' success in learning a new morphosyntactic pattern and characteristics of one-on-one learning activities, including opportunities to comprehend and produce the target pattern, receive feedback from an interlocutor, and attend to the meaning of the pattern through self-…

Recent studies on the learning of L2 prosody have suggested that pitch gestures can enhance the learning of the L2 lexical tones. Yet it remains unclear whether the use of these gestures can aid the learning of L2 intonation, especially by tonal-language speakers. Sixty-four Mandarin speakers with basic-level Spanish were asked to learn three…

This study examines heritage speakers' knowledge of Standard Arabic (SA) and compares their patterns of SA acquisition to those of learners of SA as second/foreign language (L2). In addition, the study examines the influence of previously acquired language varieties, including Colloquial Arabic (QA), on SA acquisition. To this end, the study…

This study uses a mixed-effects model to examine the acquisition of targetlike patterns of phonological variation by 17 English-speaking learners of French during study abroad in France. Naturalistic speech data provide evidence for the incipient acquisition of a phonological variable showing sociostylistic variation in native speaker speech: the…