This multifactorial corpus-based exploration of past tenses focuses specifically on the present perfect (PP) versus simple past (SP) alternation in intermediate-to-advanced learner English produced by French and German native speakers. While existing work on past tenses in L2 has traditionally focused on the role of lexical aspect in the…

Despite the worldwide prevalence of multilingualism, the knowledge of the relationship between domain-general cognitive control and multilingual language control remains scant. Here we provide new insights into this issue by examining systematically how different components of inhibitory control (i.e., response inhibition and interference…

We examine the stylistic aspects of L2 translations using a set of quantifiable descriptors. The sample includes 40 translations of a promotional text from Czech into English and French produced by novices and professional translators. The general stylistic competence is slightly higher in the group of professionals, although the overall quality…

A recurring question in the literature of heritage language acquisition, and more generally of bilingual acquisition, is whether all linguistic domains are sensitive to input reduction and to cross-linguistic influence and to what extent. According to the Interface Hypothesis, morphosyntactic phenomena regulated by discourse-pragmatic conditions…

Bilinguals sometimes outperform age-matched monolinguals on non-language tasks involving cognitive control. But the bilingual advantage is not consistently found in every experiment and may reflect specific attributes of the bilinguals tested. The goal of this dissertation was to determine if the way in which bilinguals use language, specifically…

A study of advanced English learners' use or avoidance of English idioms is described. The investigation looked at whether the subjects would attempt to use English idioms in a translation task containing idioms, or would instead use non-idiomatic synonyms or paraphrase. It also looked at which idioms are used and which are avoided: those that are…

The correlation between a bilingual's usage of grammatical morphemes from one of his/her languages and his/her language dominance is examined. The subject is a three-year-old Danish/English bilingual who code-switches at the morpheme level even though she has never been exposed to a code-switching bilingual community. Co-occurrence restrictions…

A study of the process of bilingualization of second-generation immigrants to Catalonia, a region of Spain, is described and summarized. The study looks at the interrelationships between (1) linguistic context, all sources of messages in natural speech; (2) linguistic behavior, the real communicative use the individual makes of his expressive…