Recent studies in the acquisition of a second language (L2) phonology have revealed that orthography can influence the way in which L2 learners come to establish target-like lexical representations (Escudero et al., 2008, 2014; Escudero and Wanrooij, 2010; Showalter, 2012; Showalter and Hayes-Harb, 2013). Most of these studies, however, involve…

Grounded on the tradition of Contrastive Rhetoric (CR), this paper aimed at contrasting the presence of metadiscourse resources in a book preface of Filipino and English authors. It especially sought to see the similarities and differences of interactive and interactional markers between two cultures. A total of thirty book prefaces on language…

This study examines English and Arabic binomials, identifies the similarities and differences in their semantic features, semantic structure, and semantic relations between the members of binomials. It also investigates translation students' ability to comprehend and translate binomials from English to Arabic and vice versa. It was found that…

The present paper aims to analyze the most inherent features and characteristics of household lexis in English. Special emphasis has been placed on their names of the objects used in everyday life, kitchen utensils, animal and birds. Lexical units concerning ceremonies, habits and traditions are also among the scope of the paper. Moreover, the…

We report on object and action picture-naming accuracy in two groups of bilectal speakers in Cyprus, children with typical language development (TLD) and children with specific language impairment (SLI). Object names were overall better retrieved than action names by both groups. Given that comprehension for action names was relatively intact for…

This study examined whether late-learning English-German second language (L2) learners and late-learning German-English L2 learners use prosodic cues to disambiguate temporarily ambiguous first language and L2 sentences during speech production. Experiments 1a and 1b showed that English-German L2 learners and German-English L2 learners used a…

This study investigated Spanish-speaking learners' awareness of a non-distinctive phonetic difference between Spanish and English through a delayed mimicry paradigm. We assessed learners' speech production accuracy through voice onset time (VOT) duration measures in word-initial pre-vocalic /p t k/ in Spanish and English words, and in Spanish…

Previous research has demonstrated that adults are successful at visually tracking rigidly moving items, but experience great difficulties when tracking substance-like "pouring" items. Using a comparative approach, we investigated whether the presence/absence of the grammatical count-mass distinction influences adults and children's…

Cross-linguistic research on motion events has shown that Spanish speakers and English speakers have different patterns of thinking for speaking about motion, both linguistically and gesturally (for a review, see Stam, 2010b). Spanish speakers express path linguistically with verbs, and their path gestures tend to occur with path verbs, whereas…

The typological contrast between verb- and satellite-framed languages (Talmy, 1985) has set the basis for many empirical studies on L2 acquisition. The current analysis goes beyond this typology by looking in detail at the conceptualization of the path of motion in a motion event. We take as a starting point the cognitive salience of specific…

Request for information (RfI) is believed to be the universally dominant function of young children's questioning, whereas request for action (RfA) has been reported to be the leading interrogative form used in early child Cantonese. The possibility of crosslinguistic variability prompts further research and comparison with additional languages.…

This paper examines the production of word-initial stops by two simultaneous trilingual sisters, aged 6;8 and 8;1, who receive regular input in Italian and English from multiple speakers, but in Spanish from only one person. The children's productions in each language were analyzed acoustically and compared to those of their main input providers.…

This paper presents the collection and analysis of Minásbate equivalents of some concepts used in the study of arithmetic, counting, and geometry as provided by the elderly residents of the province of Masbate. The glossary of mathematical terms derived from interviews would serve as an authoritative reference for mother tongue teachers in the…

Arbitrary symbolism is a linguistic doctrine that predicts an orthogonal relationship between word forms and their corresponding meanings. Recent corpora analyses have demonstrated violations of arbitrary symbolism with respect to concreteness, a variable characterizing the sensorimotor salience of a word. In addition to qualitative semantic…

Mother tongue acquisition starts with words and grammar acquired spontaneously by means of communication, while at school foreign language learning takes place based on grammar. Vocabulary learning is very often neglected or rather it turns into an individual activity. The present study, which is considered to be unique on its own, is to reveal…