The present paper based on extensive fieldwork D conducted on Kalasha, an endangered language spoken in the three small valleys in Chitral District of Northwestern Pakistan, exposes a spontaneous dialogue-based elicitation of linguistic material used for the description and documentation of the language. After a brief display of the basic typology…

The present article addresses the following question: what variables condition syntactic transfer? Evidence is provided in support of the position that third language (L3) transfer is selective, whereby, at least under certain conditions, it is driven by the typological proximity of the target L3 measured against the other previously acquired…

I provide an update on the state of the art of the research--the last one being Collentine (2003)--on the acquisition of the function of the subjunctive and mood selection, as well as the research's implications for pedagogy. The article considers what we currently know about the role of universal grammar, psycholinguistic perspectives on the…

In this article, we present a study that tests the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace and Filiaci, 2006) at the syntax-pragmatics interface and its possible extension to the syntax-morphology interface in two groups of first language (L1) speakers of Shipibo with different levels of formal instruction in Spanish as a second language (L2). Shipibo is a…

There are several major questions in the literature on late second language (L2) learning and processing. Some of these questions include: Can late L2 learners process an L2 in a native-like way? What is the nature of the differences in L2 processing among L2 learners at different levels of L2 proficiency? In this article, we review studies that…

This longitudinal study examines the acquisition of tense and agreement morphology by child L2 learners in an early stage of language acquisition. The objectives of this study are twofold. The first is to observe the development of verb inflections and syntactic competence over time from an early stage by Chinese child L2 learners of English. The…

What makes a child's language development trajectory have the patterns that it has, and what causes differences across children in those patterns? These fundamental questions have for over half a century been at the heart of research on language development in monolingual children, on the cross-linguistic development of language in children from…

"Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics (CLP)" and its namesake field have accomplished a great deal in the last quarter of a century. The success of the journal parallels the growth and vitality of the field it represents. The markers of journal achievement are several, including increased number of journal pages published annually; greater diversity…

The standard view maintains that quantifier scope interpretation results from an interaction between different modules: the syntax, the semantics as well as the pragmatics. Thus, by examining the mechanism of quantifier scope interpretation, we will certainly gain some insight into how these different modules interact with one another. To observe…

While syntactic reanalysis has been extensively investigated in psycholinguistics, comparatively little is known about reanalysis in the semantic domain. We used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to keep track of semantic processes involved in understanding short narratives such as "The girl was writing a letter when her friend spilled coffee…

In a recent series of publications (Traxler et al. J Mem Lang 39:558-592, 1998; Van Gompel et al. J Mem Lang 52:284-307, 2005; see also Van Gompel et al. (In: Kennedy, et al.(eds) Reading as a perceptual process, Oxford, Elsevier pp 621-648, 2000); Van Gompel et al. J Mem Lang 45:225-258, 2001) eye tracking data are reported showing that globally…

This dissertation focuses on the apparent linguistic discontinuity reflected in notarial texts from the twelfth to the thirteenth century in the Iberian Peninsula. Particular attention is given to the historical development of Spanish personal a (the direct object animacy marker), which can be used to trace the communicative continuity that must…

This study tests the extent to which giving credit for African American English (AAE) responses on a General American English sentence imitation test mitigates dialect effects. Forty-eight AAE-speaking second graders completed the Recalling Sentences subtest of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Third Edition (1995). A Bayesian…

This paper explores whether the poor mastery of morphosyntax exhibited by second language (L2) learners can be tied to difficulties with non-syntactic processing. Specifically, we examine whether problems with English regular and irregular past tense are related to poor L2 phonological ability and lexical access, respectively. In Experiment 1, L2…

This article presents the concept of Jewish Lithuanian as a range of post-Yiddish varieties spoken by some Jews in Lithuania and seeks to synthesise findings in contemporary ethnolect studies and in the field of Jewish language research. The legitimacy of the term "ethnolect" is questioned by some researchers; however, it is argued that…