This study investigates whether adult second language learners' online processing of "wh"-dependencies is constrained by island constraints on movement. Proficiency-matched Spanish and Korean learners of English completed a grammaticality judgment task and a stop-making-sense task designed to examine their knowledge of the relative…

The present article provides an exploration of ultimate attainment in second language (L2) and its limitations. It is argued that the question of maturational constraints can best be investigated when the reference population is bilingual and exposed on a regular basis to varieties of their first language (L1) that show cross-linguistic influence.…

This paper addresses the problem of learning the class of raising verbs (e.g. seem). These verbs are potentially problematic for learners in that unlike typical main verbs, these verbs do not stand in a semantic relation with any Noun Phrase (NP) arguments. Moreover, a second class of verbs, known as control verbs, shares certain distributional…

Illustrates variation affecting the position of pronouns in complex verb phrases among native French speakers. Describes the methods used to verify the hypothesis that there exists a correlation between individual hesitation and lack of consensus in the community. Analyzes data from questionnaires administered to 551 persons in Switzerland and…

Two studies elicited native speaker and nonnative speaker judgments regarding preferred word order of the idioms known as "freezes." The results support the notion that rules of frozen word order are psychologically real and reflect universal language rules. (Author/AM)

This study investigates whether proficient second language (L2) speakers of Spanish and English use the same parsing strategies as monolinguals when reading temporarily ambiguous sentences containing a complex noun phrase followed by a relative clause, such as "Peter fell in love with the daughter of the psychologist who studied in California."…