Adult second language (L2) learners often experience difficulty producing and perceiving non-native phonological contrasts. Even highly proficient bilinguals, who have been exposed to an L2 for long periods of time, struggle with difficult contrasts, such as /r/-/l/ for Japanese learners of English. To account for the relative ease or difficulty…

This study examines L1-L2 interaction in semantic categorization in early and late L2 learners. Word categories that overlapped but were not identical in Arabic and English were tested. Words always showed a "wider" range of application in one language, "narrower" in the other. Three types of categories--"classical", "radial", and…

Compared the ability of native language speakers of Japanese with English-speaking students of Japanese, and vice versa, in reporting sentence subjects after listening to Japanese and English word strings. The word strings consisted of one verb and two nouns each. (49 references) (GLR)

A sentence interpretation experiment conducted with university-age native English speakers, Japanese English as a second language (ESL) speakers, and native Japanese speakers (N=12 per group) suggested caution in attempting to typify languages on the basis of processing strategies drawn from probabilistic tendencies evident in grouped data.…

This selection of papers starts with insights into multi- and plurilingual settings, then proceeds to discussions of aims for practical work with students, and ends with visions of future developments within translation for the mass media and the impact of machine translation. Papers are: "Interpreting at the European Commission";…