Describes a study on the English language use of native speakers of Arabic and Japanese in three task conditions: completing a written grammar test, participating in an oral interview, and narrating a story. Results support the hypothesis that the utterances of second language learners show systematic variability related to task. (SED)

Describes the experience of three American children learning French in a francophone environment. Discusses the patterns of French language use that emerged during their first year in Paris, identifying four distinct stages, and suggests criteria for measuring learners' success. Emphasizes communication and functional language skills rather than…

An attempt is made to describe second language behavior and language transfer in cybernetic terms. This should make it possible to translate language into machine language and to clarify psycholinguistic explanations of second language performance. (PMJ)

This paper presents a case study of the untutored acquisition of English by a 33-year-old Costa Rican male. Three causes for his lack of linguistic development over a 10-month period are considered: ability, age, and social and psychological distance. The third of these is seen as the cause. (Author/POP)

Examines experimental data relative to second language acquisition of English reflexives. The article focuses on an experiment designed to tap syntactic constraints of interlanguage grammar and on the consideration of the consistency of responses of individual subjects. Findings reveal the systematicity of interlanguage grammar much more…

Expands on a view of "Valueless Features"--which suggests that the second-language (L2) initial state is distinct from natural language grammars because transfer obliterates the values associated with features located under functional heads--by examining data on the L2 acquisition of English by speakers of German. Despite important differences…

Examined how a new topic was introduced, maintained, and changed in the Japanese-English interlanguage data of a 45- minute interview between a native and a non-native speaker of English. Findings revealed that although the topic marking system of the interlanguage shared some features with the first and second languages, it maintained features…

Tested the hypothesis that synchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) can indirectly improve second language oral proficiency by developing the same cognitive mechanisms underlying spontaneous conversational speech. Findings show a significant difference between the experimental and control groups oral proficiency development with…

An overview is given of semantic research in adult Second Language Acquisition (SLA), focusing particular attention on undirected SLA. Several studies on child SLA are mentioned, and suggestions for further research on SLA semantics are offered. (35 references) (GLR)

Examines the way in which the reading aloud done by a second language learner of English can reveal aspects of the learner's interlanguage. Particular attention is paid to the learner's acquisition of the "-ed" past tense morpheme, and to the acquisition of pronouns. (Author/VWL)

Addresses the difficulty of article acquisition by examining the perception of noun countability by native speakers of English and Japanese speakers of English, testing whether native and nonnative speakers have different perceptions of countability. Results suggest a possible link between the indefinite versus zero article suppliance by Japanese…

A modified matched guise technique was used with 57 subjects to evaluate 14 recorded voices in 3 accent categories (broad, mild, hypercorrect). Some differences were found between native speakers and nonnative speakers, and the results pose questions in terms of the two distinct judgmental dimensions of solidarity and status. (60 references) (LB)

Investigations of Japanese speakers' interlanguage constructions of English existential sentences with a locative sentential topic found a general shift from topic-comment to subject-predicate structures as proficiency increased. (24 references) (Author/CB)

Two studies investigated developmental changes, and inter-linguistic and inter-individual variations, in the expansion and composition of young French children's early lexicons. Results indicated that lexical productivity strongly increased with age, whereas lexical diversity showed little developmental progression. Inter-individual variability in…

This case study investigated whether patterns obtained from elicited speech also hold for conversational data. A longitudinal corpus of spontaneous/natural speech from an adult first-language Spanish learner of second-language Swedish is studied. (Author/VWL)