The main goal of this tutorial is to promote the study of children with developmental language disorder (DLD) across different languages of the world. The cumulative effect of these efforts is likely to be a set of more compelling and comprehensive theories of language learning difficulties and, possibly, of language acquisition in general.…

In 3 ERP experiments, we investigated how experienced L2 speakers process natural and correct syntactic input that deviates from their own, sometimes incorrect, syntactic representations. Our previous study (Lemhöfer, Schriefers, & Indefrey, 2014) had shown that L2 speakers do engage in native-like syntactic processing of gender agreement but…

One of the new scales in the CEFR Companion Volume is online interaction. The new descriptors cover goal-oriented online transactions, including written correspondence and the use of formulaic language. In Dutch business schools, students learn German for special purposes at B1/2 level: they are expected to master German in a professional context…

This paper compares the initial state of second language (L2) and third language (L3) acquisition for English articles to examine the influence of L2 proficiency on positive transfer from L2 to L3. We tested 36 L1 Turkish/L2 German adolescent learners of L3 English (L3 group), 41 L1 Turkish adolescent learners of L2 English (L2 group), and 10…

The present study investigates the syntactic competence of bilingual Portuguese-German returnees who have lost regular contact with their L2 (German). The main criterion which distinguishes the participants is the age of input loss. This allows their division into two main groups: speakers who lost German input during early childhood (between ages…

In this study, we use corpus analysis and computational modelling techniques to compare two recent accounts of the OI stage: Legate & Yang's (2007) Variational Learning Model and Freudenthal, Pine & Gobet's (2006) Model of Syntax Acquisition in Children. We first assess the extent to which each of these accounts can explain the level of OI errors…

The 1990s witnessed a major expansion in research on children's morphosyntactic development, due largely to the availability of computer-searchable corpora of spontaneous speech in the CHILDES database. This led to a rapid emergence of parallel findings in different languages, with much attention devoted to the widely attested difficulties in…

Minor grammatical errors made by German students in translating from English to German led to an investigation of the means available in the two languages for effecting text-coherence. The examples cited indicate that English has fewer possibilities than German for showing sentence perspective through surface-syntactical markers. (IFS/WGA)

Contradicts a previous assertion by C. Tanz that children commit substitution errors usually using objective pronoun forms for nominative ones. Examples from Dutch and German provide evidence that substitutions are made in both directions. (CHK)

An error analysis was made of 26 essays written by English-speaking honor students in their first year of university German. Results illustrate the relative frequency of errors occurring in the sample, together with some possible explanations for certain types of errors. (SED)

On the basis of German compositions written by second- and third-year English students, with specific reference to the placement of "nicht," it is shown that performance is affected by the mother tongue, but also by the level of experience in using the target language. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Berlin gymnasium students were found to make errors in English word order traceable to German word order and to "hypercorrectness" in avoiding the latter. A suggested taxonomy of errors is presented. A functional language theory is needed to provide the learner with insight into sources of errors. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Examines errors made by English speakers learning German and, in attempting to find sources for them, contrasts certain phenomena of German and English grammar. The phenomena in question are cleft sentences and the treatment of case. (TL)

Describes a study of those areas that experience suggests are major sources of error for native English-speakers studying German. Students' writing samples of different proficiency levels were analysed to establish (1) changes in error rate per student over the three semesters and (2) degree of negative transfer for each group. (SED)

A collection of 32 conference papers is presented as reflecting the state of the art in contrastive linguistics studies of English and other languages. The reports cover the following topics: 5 English contrastive projects (Romanian-English, Yugoslav-Serbo-Croatian English, English-Hungarian, and Finnish-English analysis, and a project from the…