orInverse relations, or "trade-off effects," are a common outcome of interlanguage development: a learner may increase performance in one linguistic domain while simultaneously decreasing performance in another. In this study, we investigate the relationships between one aspect of fluency (pause usage) and two aspects of syntactic…

This study investigates the knowledge of bilingual speakers of Catalan and Spanish regarding the production of object pronominal clitics (excluding non-reflexive third-person clitics), with a focus on: (i) their morphology, considering the variants that coexist for each form, and (ii) their syntactic placement (proclitic or enclitic) with respect…

The present study contributes to our understanding of the effects of age and type of linguistic input in the acquisition of Spanish as a second language in adulthood. I examine the Spanish syntax (word order) of three groups of speakers, monolingual Spanish speakers from Mexico and two bilingual English-Spanish speakers born and raised in the…

This study attempts to explain a systematic phenomenon that has been described in interlanguage grammars crosslinguistically: Null-Prep, which consists of omitting the obligatory preposition in certain movement constructions. We propose that Null-Prep is not related to lack of knowledge of "wh"-movement, as previously assumed, but to…

Adult first language (L1) English speakers who are advanced second language (L2) learners of Spanish demonstrate near-ceiling levels of accuracy for some features of Spanish, such as [Person] and [Number] for verbs (McCarthy, 2012; Rodgers, 2011). While for other features, such as [Aspect] for copulas (i.e. ser and estar), and [Person] and…

Purpose: This forum consists of articles that address the need for and approaches to assessment and treatment of morphology and syntax in children. Drawing on papers submitted by diverse laboratories working with multiple populations, this forum includes several articles describing different approaches to treatment, guidelines for goal setting,…

Purpose: The differential diagnosis of developmental language disorder (DLD) in bilingual children represents a unique challenge due to their distributed language exposure and knowledge. The current evidence indicates that dual-language testing yields the most accurate classification of DLD among bilinguals, but there are limited personnel and…

The Spanish subjunctive mood (SUBJ) is said to be highly vulnerable in heritage language (HL) acquisition. However, there is little controlled research on HL-speaking children acquiring the various Spanish SUBJ contexts, so we do not have a clear picture of when, how, or why heritage speakers (HSs) develop in the SUBJ as they do. This study tests…

Previous research indicates that the development of mood selection in Spanish spans several years and ends in the mastery of mood selection with sentential complements to express complex semantic meanings. The present study investigates this underexplored late stage by examining how Spanish-speaking children acquire adultlike mood selection in…

The present research explores the interactional nature of oral tasks carried out in two types of learner dyads in terms of their likelihood to foster negotiation for meaning during Language Related Episodes (LREs). Quantitative data analyses reveal how learners in same L1 dyads, Spanish English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, and in…

Learning to compose texts adequate for different purposes is crucial for becoming literate. We examined developmental changes in the rhetorical structure of written texts produced by Spanish children throughout the early years of elementary school in the light of descriptive writing purposes. Children had also performed tasks to test…

The present study explores the independent and interactive effects of task complexity and task modality on linguistic dimensions of second language (L2) performance and investigates how these effects are modulated by individual differences in working memory capacity. Thirty-two intermediate learners of L2 Spanish completed less and more complex…

Purpose: Early Interventions in Reading (Vaughn et al., 2006), the only literacy intervention with demonstrated effectiveness for U.S. dual language learners, was enhanced to support the development of oral language (vocabulary, grammar, and narrative) and literacy, which we refer to as "Language and Literacy Together." The primary focus…

We take a multidimensional perspective on the development of second language (L2) speaking ability and examine how changes in the underlying cognitive variables of linguistic knowledge and processing speed interact with complexity, fluency, and accuracy over the course of a 3-month Spanish study abroad session. Study abroad provides a unique…

This study considers the role of L1 phonological influence in L2 English past tense morphology production by native speakers of Spanish, Mandarin, and Japanese. While these L1s share similar phonological restrictions on consonant cluster formation needed for English past tense morphology, differences arise in L1 syntax (only Mandarin lacks…