This dissertation investigates the patterning of Macedonian direct object DPs with respect to clitic pronouns. The occurrence of clitics with direct objects in Macedonian varies along two dimensions, the type of DP and the position of DP. Two broad classes are considered, regular and wh DPs, and positions both within IP and at the left periphery.…

English spatial term assignment can involve some level of ambiguity, in that a single preposition may map onto a different area of space depending upon contextual issues involved in the assignment. For example, a located object can be said to be "above" a reference object in different ways: (1) according to properties of the environment, (2)…

Many concepts depend on negation and on relations such as conjunction and disjunction, as in the concept: "rich or not democratic". This article reports studies that elucidate the mental representation of such concepts from descriptions of them. It proposes a theory based on mental models, which represent only instances of a concept, and for each…

Pictures consisted of component halves from either the same photographic scene (SS) or different scenes (DS). SS pictures possessed the emergent property of forming a continuous scene. In Experiment 1, conjunction lures were created by rearranging halves from studied DS pictures into new DS or SS lures. Despite equally familiar components,…

The study aimed to investigate the distribution patterns of the English grammar articles (a, an, and the) as well as the distributions of their colligation patterns in written compositions of English among Malaysian ESL learners. This paper reports the results of a corpus-based study on articles used by these learners. The method used in this…

In Malta, mathematics is often taught through code-switching between Maltese and English, mainly due to the use of textbooks published in the UK. The mixing of the languages has been a source of discussion for several years, with some educators accepting the mixed pattern, and others arguing in favour of using English alone. Furthermore, the…

This paper addresses an issue of increasing significance in the context of taught educational doctorates and argues that this may have wider applicability for doctoral students across a range of social science disciplines. It identifies the need to engage with policy analysis as a key element of such programmes and attempts to address students'…

This study examined variability in Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) learners' development of the Chinese numeral classifier system from a dynamic systems approach. Our data consisted of a longitudinal corpus of 657 essays written by CFL learners at lower and higher intermediate levels and a corpus of 100 essays written by native speakers (NSs)…

This study investigated the acquisition of the Spanish clitic se by English native speakers in passive, middle, and impersonal constructions. Little research has been done on this topic in SLA within a UG framework (Bayona, 2005; Bruhn de Garavito, 1999). VanPatten (2004) proposed the Processing Instruction (PI) model arguing for the necessity of…

This study analyzed how six Heritage language learners at the university level gained conscious awareness and control of the concept of modality as revealed in student verbalizations (Vygotsky, 1998) throughout five different written communicative events. This work took place in the only course designed for Heritage language learners at a large…

This study used ERP (event-related potentials) to examine both the role of the L1 and the role of individual differences in the processing of agreement violations. Theories of L2 acquisition differ with regard to whether or not native-like acquisition of L2 features is possible (Schwartz and Sprouse, 1994, 1996; Tsimpli and Mastropavlou, 2007),…

Despite considerable evidence suggesting that second language (L2) learners experience difficulties when processing morphosyntactic aspects of L2 in online tasks, the mechanisms underlying these difficulties remain unknown. The aim of this dissertation is to explore possible causes for the difficulties by comparing attentional mechanisms engaged…

This paper explores the expression of certainty in a set of high- and low-rated Geography argumentative essays. Using one aspect of Hunston's (1989, 2000) concept of the evaluation of status, the paper compares the statement types used to construe the writer's expression of certainty in the construction of arguments. Drawing on the framework,…

This study compares the development of three different types of bilingual/second language children in their acquisition of gender-marking on adjectives in Dutch to investigate whether there is evidence for age-of-onset effects in early childhood as proposed by Meisel (2009). The three groups of children are: simultaneous bilingual children,…

This paper seeks to explore the extent of definite article usage variation in several varieties of English based on a classification of its usage types. An annotation scheme based on Hawkins and Prince was developed for this purpose. Using matching corpus data representing Inner Circle varieties and Outer Circle varieties, analysis was made on…