We tested the prosodic hypothesis that the temporal alignment of a speaker's beat gestures in a sentence influences syntactic parsing by driving the listener's attention. Participants chose between two possible interpretations of relative-clause (RC) ambiguous sentences, while their electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. We manipulated the…

This study adopted Ambridge's research paradigm to examine the effects of entrenchment, preemption, and verb semantics in second language (L2) acquisition of English "un-" prefixation. Three groups of Chinese learners of English (second- and fourth-year English majors and teachers of English) rated the acceptability of 48 "un-"…

We respond here to Pienemann's critique of our study that appeared earlier this year in the Language Learning Special Issue entitled "Orders and Sequences in the Acquisition of L2 Morphosyntax, 40 Years On" and guest edited by Jan Hulstijn, Rod Ellis, and Søren Eskildsen. Pienemann objected to our claim that the Teachability Hypothesis…

This chapter introduces three applications of Bayesian inference to common and novel issues in second language research. After a review of the critiques of conventional hypothesis testing, our focus centers on ways Bayesian inference can be used for dealing with missing data, for testing theory-driven substantive hypotheses without a default null…

Recent theorizing on second language (L2) motivation has proposed viewing motivation as a function of the language learners' vision of their desired future language selves. This would suggest that the intensity of motivation is partly dependent on the learners' capability to generate mental imagery. In order to test this hypothesis, this study…

A classroom study was designed to test the hypothesis that explicit knowledge is used by second-language (L2) learners in a free written response task if that knowledge is present. Eighty-one 12-18-year-old learners of Dutch as an L2 took part in a computer-assisted language learning experiment receiving either explicit or implicit instruction…

Learning the Chinese tone system is a major challenge to students of Chinese as a second or foreign language. Part of the problem is that the spoken Chinese syllable presents a complex perceptual input that overlaps tone with segments. This complexity can be addressed through directing attention to the critical features of a component (tone in…

This article examines the acquisition of Korean imperfective markers, the progressive "-ko iss-" and the resultative "-a iss-," with a view to understanding how tense/aspect morphology expands beyond prototype associations with inherent aspects of the verbs. We hypothesized that "-a iss-" will develop later than "-ko iss-," but that the…

Tested the Aspect Hypothesis using second-language Japanese data. Two experiments are described. Results of the studies extend the applicability of the Aspect Hypothesis to a non Indo-European language. (Author/JL)

Answers to theoretical questions about the place of input in a formal second language acquisition model are dependent on a distinction between two kinds of learner hypotheses. Type-N hypotheses require "negative evidence" for testing, while Type-P hypotheses are tested on the basis of "positive data" alone. (Author/CB)

Focuses on the interpretation of research data of Berthier, Starkstein, Lylyk, and Leiguarda (1990) reporting a case of faster recovery, after selective sodium amytal injection, of the patient's second language than his native language. Paradis (1990) argued that these results do not support Ojemann and Whitaker's (1978) hypothesis. (five…

According to the aspect hypothesis (Andersen & Shirai, 1996; Bardovi-Harlig, 2000), perfective morphology emerges before imperfective morphology, it is first used in telic predicates (achievements and accomplishments) and it later extends to atelic predicates (activities and states). The opposite development is hypothesized for imperfective…

Tested the hypothesis that accented speech heard at a reduced rate would sound less accented and more comprehensible than speech produced at a normal rate. In two experiments, English native-speaker listeners rated a passage read by 10 high-proficiency Mandarin learners of English. Findings suggest that a general speaking strategy of slowing down…

This study was undertaken to test the hypothesis that reading comprehension items, which elicit specific bottom-up and top-down strategies, favor certain linguistic/cultural groups. Verbal report data were collected from Arabic- and Mandarin-speaking English as a second language (ESL) learners to identify the reading strategies involved in…

Explored the relationship of similarity, dissimilarity, and markedness to second language, specifically English, phonological acquisition. The article hypothesized that the rate of acquisition for a dissimilar phenomenon is faster than for a similar phenomenon. Findings revealed that degree of markedness can increase or decrease rate. (38…