In this article, we present an analysis of the complexity of grammatical constraints and their impact on early language acquisition of inflectional morphemes in Malayalam. We use the natural speech production data of two monolingual children acquiring Malayalam between the ages 1;9-2;10 and 2;3-3;0 and three bilingual children acquiring…

Using written texts elicited from students with different proficiency levels, we studied the acquisition of nominal cases in Russian as a second language. We established the order in which cases were acquired (nominative, locative, accusative, genitive, instrumental, and dative), as well as certain characteristics of their acquisition…

Mandarin classifiers are a complex system, but little is known about how Mandarin-speaking children manage to learn the system. Based on the extant literature, we explored potential factors influencing the comprehension and production of Mandarin shape classifiers, including classifier-based semantic categorization and errors pertaining to the…

The current study examined how morpho-semantic processing of derivational morphology develops from later childhood through adolescence to adulthood in Finnish. Finnish is a synthetic language rich both in derivation and inflection. It has been suggested that children gradually acquire the ability to process morphologically complex word structures.…

This study adopted Ambridge's research paradigm to examine the effects of entrenchment, preemption, and verb semantics in second language (L2) acquisition of English "un-" prefixation. Three groups of Chinese learners of English (second- and fourth-year English majors and teachers of English) rated the acceptability of 48 "un-"…

This paper offers a theoretical approach to vocabulary instruction from the evidence provided by lexical errors as the main sources of difficulty in the EFL acquisition process, it reviews previous research and from it suggests new ways of dealing with lexical errors in the classroom. Some practical implications are concluded which rely on lexical…

Three experiments investigated the acquisition of English epistemic modal verbs (e.g., "may", "have to"). Semantically, these verbs encode possibility or necessity with respect to available evidence. Pragmatically, the use of weak epistemic modals often gives rise to scalar conversational inferences (e.g., "The toy may be…

Evidence for the role of corrective input as a facilitator of language acquisition is inconclusive. Studies show links between corrective input and grammatical use of some, but not other, language structures. The present study examined relationships between corrective parental input and children's errors in the acquisition of the Spanish copula…

In this paper we present an unsupervised neural network model of bilingual lexical development and interaction. We focus on how the representational structures of the bilingual lexicons can emerge, develop, and interact with each other as a function of the learning history. The results show that: (1) distinct representations for the two lexicons…

Many theories of language production and perception assume that in the normal course of processing a word, additional non-target words (lexical neighbors) become active. The properties of these neighbors can provide insight into the structure of representations and processing mechanisms in the language processing system. To infer the properties of…

Studies of word production in patients with Alzheimer's disease have identified the age of acquisition of words as an important predictor of retention or loss, with early acquired words remaining accessible for longer than later acquired words. If, as proposed by current theories, effects of age of acquisition reflect the involvement of semantic…

Children were asked to judge/correct sentences in which verb pairs, as predicates, could be associated with propositions or "arguments" which were obligatory for one verb and optional for the other. Results indicated gradual progression with age from initial ignorance to adultlike representation of obligatory and optional arguments for each verb.…

The count/mass disinction is often considered to be a semantic one because it distinguishes those nouns that refer to countable things from those that refer to non-countable things. However, exceptions indicate that semantic properties alone are not sufficient to determine noun sub-categorization. Therefore, such sub-categorization must be defined…

Selected spontaneous errors of word choice made between the ages of two and five by two children whose language development had been followed longitudinally were analyzed for clues to semantic developmnet. (JMB)

Investigated the hierarchical organization of the semantic system in preschoolers with and without word-finding deficits. Children named a series of objects at multiple levels of the noun hierarchy in response to contrast questions. Children with word-finding deficits had similar abilities to the other children but did not have enough stored…