This study was an investigation into the aural and written receptive knowledge of the English semantics of English lexis that is loanwords in the Japanese language and the predictive strength of the variables of semantic distance, concreteness/abstractness, polysemy, phonological distance, number of syllables, number of phonemes, number of…

Lexical inferencing is considered a listening strategy that is commonly employed by advanced EFL (English as a Foreign Language) listeners and a factor that contributes to successful listening comprehension. However, investigations of the factors that influence inferencing success in listening as well as how much each factor contributes to success…

The Interface Hypothesis proposes that the pragmatic-discursive interface with syntax is more vulnerable to crosslinguistic influence than the syntactic-semantic interface [Tsimpli, Ianthi, and Antonella Sorace. 2006. "Differentiating Interfaces: L2 Performance in Syntax- Semantics and Syntax-Discourse Phenomena." In Proceedings of the…

Referential expressions such as pronouns are frequently used in conversations, and native speakers seem to understand who these expressions refer to effortlessly. Although the process of pronoun resolution seems to be easy, interpretations of pronouns are dependent on various sources of information from the discourse including morphosyntax (e.g.,…

Task-irrelevant background sound can disrupt performance of visually based cognitive tasks. The cross-modal breakdown of attentional selectivity in the context of reading was addressed using analyses of eye movements. Moreover, the study addressed whether task-sensitivity to distraction via background speech on reading was modulated by the…

Recent research on expert teachers suggests that an integrated understanding across the core domains of teachers' knowledge is crucial for their professional competence. However, in initial teacher education pre-service teachers seem to struggle with the integration of knowledge represented in multiple domain-specific sources into a coherent…

Task-based language teaching (TBLT) is well known for providing authentic opportunities for second and foreign language (L2) skill development. However, for many learners the use of traditional grammar within TBLT lacks the functional support necessary to create accurate and fluent L2 output. The current study replaced traditional grammar…

This study examines first language (L1) English transfer in the acquisition of plural noun semantics in second language (L2) Arabic. Drawing on previous research on the L2 acquisition of plural noun interpretation, the study presents and discusses new production data of specific and generic definite plurals by English-speaking learners of Arabic…

Purpose: We aim to identify the possible sources for age-related differences in the perception of emotion in speech, focusing on the distinct roles of semantics (words) and prosody (tone of speech) and their interaction. Method: We implement the Test for Rating of Emotions in Speech (Ben-David, Multani, Shakuf, Rudzicz, & van Lieshout, 2016).…

In this study, we conducted a lexical decision test using masked priming paradigm to examine the morphological and orthographic priming effects in word recognition. Morphologically related word pairs can be derivational, sharing the same root or not (pseudo derivational). However, the orthographically related pairs share the same letters in…

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…

Recently, there has been considerable L2 research on interfaces between different modules of grammar (internal), such as syntax-semantics, or between grammar and other cognitive systems (external), such as semantics-pragmatics. Sorace's (2011) Interface Hypothesis proposes that L2 learners, even at highly proficient levels, often fail to integrate…

The present study is designed to investigate whether children's difficulties with subject-to-subject raising (StSR) are due to intervention effects. We examine English-speaking children's comprehension of StSR with "seem" and Spanish-speaking children's comprehension of StSR with "parecer" 'seem,' a configuration never before…

In the present study, we compared the processing of both conventional and novel metaphors by deaf versus hearing young adults. Eighteen deaf participants with severe-to-profound hearing loss and 18 controls matched for age, sex, and years of education were presented with word pairs of 4 types (literal, conventional metaphors, novel metaphors, and…

This study examined the relationship between negative pragmatic transfer and language proficiency with reference to the refusal speech acts as realized by Yemeni learners of English as a Foreign Language (henceforth referred to as YLEs). Forty Yemeni learners of English (20 of low proficiency level and 20 of high proficiency level) and 2 baseline…