Recent knowledge about the system of gender assignment in French is examined to suggest theoretical reasons why English speakers are so rarely successful in mastering the French gender assignment system for inanimate nouns. Morphological, phonetic, and semantic rules shed light on the system. (14 references) (Author/LB)

Analyzed longitudinal data from 28-year-old Cambodian man who, despite instruction in English-as-Second-Language and residence in English-speaking community, used form "has" for both possessives (PO) and existentials (EX). Shared semantic properties of PO/EX, together with syntactic, pragmatic, perceptual characteristics of native…

Discusses part of a large-scale survey on the oral performance of advanced French-as-a-second-language students, as represented by recorded speech. Although schwa rarely leads to semantic confusions, its analysis in word-median or monosyllabic contexts shows interesting phonostylistic variations. (Author/VWL)

Aims to foster discussion of the means by which bilinguals control their two language systems. Proposes an inhibitory control model that embodies the principle that there are multiple levels of control. The model is used to expand the explanation of the effect of category blocking in translation proposed by Kroll and Stewart (1994). (Author/VWL)

Investigates the acquisition of temporality in English by Korean speakers over a period of 24 months. Temporality is examined from two perspectives: the expression of past-time events and semantic aspect and verb morphology. Results are discusses. (Author/VWL)

The population of children in the United States who require English as a second language (ESL) instruction increases every year. Among this diverse group of learners, which now exceeds four million, are learning disabled students. Their evaluation for special education services presents significant challenges to ESL, general education, and special…

Teaching vocabulary to primary grade children is essential. Previous studies of teaching vocabulary (word meanings) using story books in the primary grades reported gains of 20%-25% of word meanings taught. The present studies concern possible influences on word meaning acquisition during instruction (Study 1) and increasing the percentage and…

This study presents data from an experiment on the interpretation of intrasentential anaphora in Italian by native Italian speakers and by English speakers who have learned Italian as adults and have reached a near-native level of proficiency in this language. The two groups of speakers were presented with complex sentences consisting of a main…

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;…

This article presents a case study of academic language instruction in a high school "English Learner Science" course. It illustrates how a teacher's understanding of academic language affects her instruction and students' opportunities for learning. We examine a transcript of classroom discourse for the "didactic tension" that exists between this…

This paper examines an under-studied component of deep vocabulary knowledge, affective meaning, which is used to convey attitudes. Two affective dimensions, evaluation and potency, are examined to determine whether they influence the vocabulary choices of native speakers of American-English in describing interpersonal interactions. In Experiment…

A study investigated the way in which monolingual English-speaking college students developed new concepts for the linguistic structures and sociocultural symbolic meanings of gender that are unique to the Spanish language. Subjects were seven students of first-year intensive Spanish. They were asked to perform two problem-solving tasks: defining,…

This literature review examines a hypermedia learning environment from a semantic network basis and the application of such an environment to second language learning. (A semantic network is defined as a conceptual representation of knowledge in human memory). The discussion is organized under the following headings and subheadings: (1) Advantages…

The expression of modal meanings presents a difficulty even for advanced speakers of a foreign language and it has been shown that beginning and intermediate learners produce few modal auxiliaries. To investigate the phenomenon, a functional/semantic framework was used to determine what forms these students use to convey a particular meaning. The…

This glossing system is designed to fill the gap between grammar studies and reading. The system reflects flexional and derivational morphology of words as well as lexical relationships of synonymy, antonymy, homonymy and structural similarity and polysemy. It is intended to help students learn and understand vocabulary for successful reading.…