This dissertation represents the first attempt to integrate typological, semantic, and psycholinguistic perspectives to elucidate a semantically "bizarre" and "illogical" phenomenon called "expletive negation" (henceforth, EN) which is well known in Romance languages but has so far attracted little attention outside…

The present study is a corpus-based comparative investigation of Theme and thematic progression in English and Russian. While monolingual thematic studies have a long history in Linguistics, comparative studies are relatively few, in particular for the given language pair. In addition to filling the existing gap in the field of Translation…

This dissertation examines the possible influence of language learners' second language (L2) on their perception of phonological contrasts in their third language (L3). Previous studies on Third Language Acquisition (TLA) suggest various factors as possible sources of cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition of an L3. This dissertation…

Proposes a neurobiological model in which a greater number of brain structures than previously indicated are involved in language functions, with particular reference to second language learning. The study examines three areas of the brain rarely associated with language: the anterior cingulate gyrus, the prefrontal cortex, and the basal temporal…

This paper defines contrastive phonetics and discusses phonetic work in the Jyvaskyla Contrastive Project, the background theory of contrastive analysis, and expansion of the framework of contrastive phonetics. Contrastive phonetics is defined as a method which is used to compare the similarities and differences in the chain of speech…

This study places the predictions of the bilingual interactive activation model (Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 1998) and the revised hierarchical model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994) in the same context to investigate lexical processing in a second language (L2). The performances of two groups of native English speakers, one less proficient and the other more…

Second language reading research based on a psycholinguistic approach was undertaken. A model of the language user derived from the literature on first language acquisition was used. The role of conceptualization on second language reading, including the effects of interference and other factors in the first language, is discussed, and…

The research discussed here, primarily that of P.J. Gal'perin and his associates at the University of Moscow, is an experimental demonstration of basic tenets of Vygotsky's theory. According to Gal'perin, grammatical knowledge is formed first by teaching the students material grammatical actions; these actions are ultimately to become mental…