A number of academic disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, are deeply interested in language acquisition. The process of acquiring a language is complicated and includes learning vocabulary, linguistic structures, and communication techniques. The most crucial factor in developing diverse cooperative networks for the…

A significant body of research has focused on the impact of immersive virtual reality (IVR) on vocabulary retention, but little is known about how to integrate language learning theories in IVR-mediated vocabulary learning. This study aims to examine the effect of IVR that integrate input processing model on vocabulary retention for elementary…

This dissertation is about the learnability of different generative, Separationist approaches to nominal morphosyntax. The core of my investigation is number, gender, and declension class, as manifested across nouns, adnominals (adjectives, numerals, demonstratives, and quantifiers), and articles. An extreme position would require that all of…

This article presents a series of three experiments investigating the processing of nested epistemic expressions, utterances containing two epistemic modals in one clause, such as "he 'certainly may' have forgotten." While some linguists claim that in a nested epistemic expression one modal is semantically embedded within the scope of…

In Krashen's theory of second-language acquisition he claims that there is distinction between language acquisition and language learning, a distinction which other second-language acquisition researchers have called "perhaps the most important conceptualization" in the field and which has made possible the most productive models of SLA.…

Young children can exploit the syntactic context of a novel word to narrow down its probable meaning. This is "syntactic bootstrapping." A learner that uses syntactic bootstrapping to foster lexical acquisition must first have identified the semantic information that a syntactic context provides. Based on the "semantic seed…

Statistical learning, the ability to extract regularities from input (e.g., in language), is likely supported by learners' prior expectations about how component units co-occur. In this study, we investigated how adults' prior experience with sublexical regularities in their native language influences performance on an empirical language learning…

This study investigated how input frequency (i.e., type frequency and token frequency) and proficiency levels enhanced the perception of English nominal suffixes by first language (L1) Thai learners. Based on the Usage-based Account (Tomasello, 2003), it was hypothesized that input frequency, i.e., token frequency (frequency of derived forms…

Linguistic meaning is generated by the mind and can be expressed in multiple languages. One may assume that equivalent texts/utterances in two languages by means of translation generate equivalent meanings in their readers/hearers. This follows if we assume that meaning calculated from the linguistic input is solely objective in nature. However,…

The current study tests the hypothesis that language comprehension is, in part, influenced by language exposure, and the biases that people develop are related to the frequency of exposure to different linguistic input, like, for instance, pronoun coreference. As comprehenders filter the linguistic input they encounter, we ask, what is the impact…

Usage-based theory has proposed that learning of linguistic constructions is facilitated by input that contains few high-frequency exemplars, in what is known as a skewed (or Zipfian) input distribution. Early empirical work provided support to this idea, but subsequent L2 research has provided mixed findings. However, previous approaches have not…

One of the fundamental questions in the field of language acquisition is a learnability problem, which considers how learners acquire certain aspects of language which are not directly provided in the input or whose referents are not readily observable. This dissertation investigates Japanese children's acquisition of various linguistic phenomena,…

Research on second language (L2) acquisition in the generative tradition (GenSLA) addresses the nature of interlanguage competence, examining the roles of Universal Grammar, the mother tongue and the input in shaping the acquisition, representation and use of second languages. This field is sometimes dismissed by applied linguists as irrelevant…

How do children learn the meaning of words like "pretty" and "tall," which are not only gradable and context dependent (Kennedy & McNally 2005), but encode speaker subjectivity? Despite their complex semantics (Stephenson 2007; Lasersohn 2009; Bylinina 2014), these and other adjectives like them, are some of the most…

Usage-based theories hold that mental representation of language is shaped by a lifetime of usage. Both input to which first language (L1) and second language (L2) users are exposed and their own language production affect their construction learning and entrenchment. The present study investigates L2 users' knowledge of two…