Frequency and contingency (i.e., co-occurrence probability of words in multiword sequences [MWS]) are two driving forces of language acquisition and processing. Previous research has demonstrated that L1 and advanced L2 speakers are sensitive to phrasal frequency and contingency when processing larger-than-word units. However, it remains unclear…

Definite discourse-new bridging reference (e.g., a school … "the teacher"; Clark, 1975) is a complex syntax-pragmatic component of referential movement, one that is subject to relatively opaque form-function contingency compared with forms used for discourse-old reference, and one that is especially prone to crosslinguistic influence.…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are prone to personal pronoun difficulties. This article investigates maternal input as a potential contributing factor, focusing on an early developmental stage before ASD diagnosis. Using Quigley and McNally's corpus of maternal speech to infants (3-19 months; N = 19) who are either at high or low…

Effectively constructing a confident authorial stance and framing one's argument in the context of the ongoing scholarly conversation are important skills for writers to acquire as they gain expertise writing in an academic discipline. Construction of an effective authorial stance is complicated by conventions of avoiding first-person pronouns in…

Purpose: We examined indices of narrative microstructure as metrics of language development and impairment in Arabic-speaking children. We examined their age sensitivity, correlations with standardized measures, and ability to differentiate children with average language and language impairment. Method: We collected story narratives from 177…

Grammatical complexity constitutes an indispensable subconstruct of L2 writing ability. Nonetheless, rating scale descriptors for grammatical complexity have heavily relied on degree modifiers or adjectives. Thus, this study attempts to explore the potential for the use of nominal modifiers as discriminators for adjacent levels of L2 writers in…

This paper reports on an experimental study addressing second language acquisition of English quantifiers by Arabic speakers. Due to several differences found between Arabic and English regarding types, meanings and functions of quantifiers, Arabic learners encounter challenges in mastering them properly. Unlike English, Arabic does not make lots…

The aim of this study is to analyse the errors of higher education students in English writing tasks. In the study, the paragraphs in the exam papers of 57 preparatory class students, studying at a state university in Turkey in 2017-2018 academic year, were analysed. The study was conducted using qualitative research method. Case study was used in…

Adjective- noun order errors are a common occurrence throughout all levels of English language students. Based on professional experiences, existing literature and revisiting what some may consider archaic methodologies, this reflective article aims to analyse adjective-noun order errors among Colombian learners of English, understand why it…

Effective professional learning is acknowledged as a key lever to improve teacher practice. However, many studies report significant variation in the effectiveness of the types of programs on offer. Recently, there has been a move from the traditional single event, passive approach to more collaborative and ongoing forms of professional learning.…

There is growing consensus that sexual health education should be inclusive of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning students, and students of various identities on the spectrums of sexuality and gender (LGBTQ+). However, to date, the perspectives of LGTBQ+ teenagers of colour remain under-investigated. Twenty-five in-depth…

How languages are acquired and what stages learners go through has been the focus in language teaching area, and this cross-sectional study investigated the use of English adverbs by elementary, pre-intermediate and intermediate level Turkish EFL students at Anadolu University School of Foreign Languages by analyzing it from acquisitional…

This dissertation explores subject pronoun expression (SPE) in Palenquero Spanish (PL Spanish) and Palenquero Creole (PL Creole), two languages that have coexisted for centuries in San Basilio de Palenque (Colombia), share most of their lexicon, but differ in their grammar. Crucially, this study investigates how the contact between them and the…

Syntactic structures are unobserved theoretical constructs which are useful in explaining a wide range of linguistic and psychological phenomena. Language acquisition studies how such latent structures are acquired by human learners through many hypothesized learning mechanisms and apparatuses, which can be genetically endowed or of general…

The perfective aspect marker in Chinese is partly functionally similar to inflectional suffixes in Indo-European languages but is non-inflectional and lexical in nature, lying thus at the semantics-syntax interface. This provides us with the opportunity to compare directly the syntactic and semantic constraints during second language (L2) sentence…