Previous studies report that children use color words haphazardly before acquiring conventional, adult-like meanings. The most common explanation for this is that children do not abstract color as a domain of linguistic meaning until several months after they begin producing color words, resulting in a stage during which they produce but do not…

This study investigated the roles of associative learning and linguistic knowledge, in particular phonological and semantic knowledge, in word learning of Chinese readers using a cross-sectional design. Extending past research in associative learning using existing Chinese characters as word stimuli, this study resorted to pseudowords and invented…

The aim of the study was to examine the lexical errors made by EFL students. The technique for eliciting information employed was an achievement test. A sample of 30 Saudi female students was asked to write essays in English that were assessed by the researcher. The students were all majoring in English in the third year at King Khalid University.…

Literature occupies unique position in the society and it has high status in the civilized community. Each ethnic group has unique culture and the culture presents a variety of literary works. Literary works deliver social messages to build harmony in the society. One of the genres of literary works that has vital role in our society is poetry.…

The type of processing-resource allocation (TOPRA) model predicts that increasing one type of processing (semantic, structural, or mapping oriented) can decrease other types of processing and their learning counterparts. This study examined how semantic and structural tasks affect the mapping component of second language (L2) vocabulary learning.…

Narratives frequently represent perceptions that allow for multiple interpretations in terms of perspective: Perceptions can be interpreted from the narrator's viewpoint as well as the character's viewpoint. Two experiments examined the role of contextual viewpoint markers and verb tense in readers' interpretation of such ambiguous perceptions.…

Reading plays an essential role in our everyday lives. The aim of this study is to investigate how letters are represented in the brain using the unique characteristics of the Arabic language, which can be written with 2 different scripts. The hypothesis proposed is that the processing of script is sound based: Phonology is what determines letter…

This dissertation examines the extent to which lexical aspect and grounding influence the acquisition of tense and aspect by ninety-four instructed adult learners of Italian in two academic settings in North America. The semantic notions of tense and aspect have been extensively investigated in the domain of second language acquisition. After more…

This study intends to examine the reading process in Chinese of two young heritage language learners through the use of retrospective miscue analysis (RMA). Retrospective miscue analysis involves both the author and the reader in reflectively discussing the reader's oral reading miscues--responses that differ from the actual text. This study…

The second language (L2) acquisition of tense, aspect, and mood/modality (TAM) has been widely explored as it holds the promise of a better understanding of the L2 learners' linguistic competences, particularly semantically and morpho-syntactically. This study focuses on the acquisition of the subjunctive mood by L1 English learners of L2 French…

The main goal of this study was to ascertain the effectiveness of an intervention programme on narrative coherence in students with Typical Development (TD) and with a Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Participants were 99 five-year-old students from schools in Tenerife. A task involving retelling a story was used for the narrative analysis,…

Recent research on the effects of processing instruction (PI) have incorporated online research methods in order to demonstrate that PI has effects on cognitive processing behaviors as well as on accuracy (e.g. Lee & Doherty, 2019a). The present study uses self-paced reading and a moving windows technique to examine the effects of PI on second…

Linguistic alignment--the contingent reuse of our interlocutors' language at all levels of linguistic structure--pervades human dialogue. Here, we design unique measures to capture the degree of linguistic alignment between interlocutors' linguistic representations at three levels of structure: lexical, syntactic, and semantic. We track these…

The present paper investigates semantics of human body part names (BPN) in languages of different structure. The lexemes under study are characterised by a high level of polysemy, frequent occurrence and primary role in the processes of world perception and categorisation. The empirical data comprise 438 lexemes (expressing 1438 meanings), which…

The main purpose of this paper is the functional analysis and argumentation of text connectors as tools for implementation of the textual connectivity not only in the local but also global context. Given the comparative nature of this paper, we will be comparing typology and relationships expressed by the connectors in some of the argumentative…