We examine the second language (L2) acquisition of variable Spanish word order by first language (L1) speakers of English via the acquisition of unaccusative and transitive predicates in various focus-related contexts. We employ two bimodal linguistic tasks: (1) acceptability judgment task (B-AJT) and (2) appropriateness preference task (B-APT).…

The article by Amaral and Roeper (this issue; henceforth A&R) presents many interesting ideas about first and second language acquisition as well as some experimental data convincingly illustrating the difference between production and comprehension. The article extends the concept of Universal Bilingualism proposed in Roeper (1999) to second…

Discusses syntactic optionality, the coexistence within an individual grammar of two or more variants of a given construction that make use of the same lexical resources and express the same meaning. Focus is on syntactic optionality in second language grammars. (Author/VWL)

The data for this study consisted of a longitudinal corpus of narratives from 17 English second language (L2) children, mean age of 5;4 years at the outset, with first languages (Lls) that do not have definite/indefinite articles (Chinese, Korean and Japanese) and Lls that do have article systems (Spanish, Romanian and Arabic). We examined these…

Investigates whether the underspecification of Number, which has been proposed to account for the structural properties of child grammars, can provide an explanation for changes in developing first- and second-language Spanish grammars. (Author/VWL)

The aim of this article is two-fold: to test the Aspect Hypothesis, according to which the early use of tense-aspect morphology patterns by semantic/aspectual features of verbs, and Tense is initially defective (e.g. Antinucci and Miller, 1976; Bloom et al., 1980; Andersen and Shirai, 1994; 1996; Robison, 1995; Shirai and Andersen, 1995;…

Focuses on nativist theories of language learning and how they apply to second-language acquisition (SLA). The article is seeking a nativism that goes beyond the scope of Universal Grammar and explains the human cognitive capacity for language learning, the learning of all language structures found in natural languages, and SLA. (95 references)…

This article presents a selective review of the work carried out recently in second language acquisition (SLA) research which makes use of oral learner corpora and computer technologies. In the first part, the reasons why the field of SLA needs corpora for addressing current theoretical issues are briefly reviewed. In the second part, recent…

Examines evidence offered to support the idea of a sensitive period for second language acquisition. Findings indicate that there is insufficient evidence to accept the claim that mastery of a second language is determined wholly, or even primarily, by maturational factors. (34 references) (Author/CK)

Analyzes data on the acquisition of German by Italian and Spanish speakers. Findings reveal that children learning a first language and adults learning a second language build up syntactic structure in much the same manner, and propose that the weak continuity approach of language acquisition accounts for all instances of syntactic acquisition.…