Second language (L2) learners' successful performance in an L2 can be partly attributed to their knowledge of collocations. In some cases, this knowledge is accompanied by knowledge of the semantic and/or grammatical patterns that motivate the collocation. At other times, collocational knowledge may serve a compensatory role. To determine the…

The present article provides an exploration of ultimate attainment in second language (L2) and its limitations. It is argued that the question of maturational constraints can best be investigated when the reference population is bilingual and exposed on a regular basis to varieties of their first language (L1) that show cross-linguistic influence.…

An important topic in the evolution of language is the kinds of grammars that can be computed by humans and other animals. Fitch and Hauser (F&H; 2004) approached this question by assessing the ability of different species to learn 2 grammars, (AB)[superscript n] and A[superscript n] B[superscript n]. A[superscript n] B[superscript n] was taken to…

This study presents results from a sentence completion test that examines the production of finite main clauses and non-finite relative clauses in Turkish agrammatic speech. In main clauses, the verb is finite and all its constituents are in their base positions. In relative clauses, the verb is a participle and the NP undergoes overt movement to…

Numerical phases have rich cultural connotations and connect closely with culture. Along with the extension of China's reform and opening up policy, cross-cultural communication tends to be wider. The comparative research on cross-cultural languages is very important. Because of different cultural backgrounds, the cultural connotations of Chinese…

Our sense of space is part of our experiential universals. However, the incorporation of space into words differs across languages. This paper argues that "space" is lexicalized in English but not in Indonesian. English encodes the sense of location and direction into "adverbial particles," producing language-specific…

The main objective of the current study is to investigate L2 Japanese learners' ability to segment complex sentences from aural input. Elementary- and early intermediate-level L2 learners in general have not developed the ability to use syntactic cues to interpret the meaning of sentences they hear. In the case of Japanese, recognition of…

This paper is an attempt to study empirically a sample of spoken narratives of Hindi, Telugu and Dakkhini speakers in the multilingual setting of Hyderabad. After a brief account of multilingualism and variation within a language as commonly occurring phenomena, the paper examines the spoken narratives of the three languages mentioned above with a…

The present study aims at investigating the learning strategies on which Thai EFL learners rely in learning English relative clauses (ERCs). Not only do these strategies facilitate their ERC acquisition, but they are also found to lead them to certain kinds of problems. Such problems related to the learning strategies are first language transfer,…

Formulaic language is widely recognized to be of central importance to fluent and idiomatic language use. However, the mechanics of how formulaic language is acquired are not well understood. Some researchers (e.g. Nick Ellis) believe that the chunking inherent in formulaic language drives the language learning process. Others (e.g. Wray) claim…

Collocations are one of the most important elements in language proficiency but the effect of error correction feedback of collocations has not been thoroughly examined. Some researchers report the usefulness and importance of error correction (Hyland, 1990; Bartram & Walton, 1991; Ferris, 1999; Chandler, 2003), while others showed that error…

The purpose of the present study is to contribute to the ongoing debate about the use of lexical bundles by first (L1) and second language (L2) speakers of English. The study consists of two experiments that examined whether L1 and L2 English speakers displayed any knowledge of lexical bundles as holistic units and whether their knowledge was…

We investigate the on-line processing of verb-phrase ellipsis (VPE) constructions in two brain injured populations: Broca's and Anomic aphasics. VPE constructions are built from two simple clauses; the first is the antecedent clause and the second is the ellipsis clause. The ellipsis clause is missing its verb and object (i.e., its verb phrase…

How the perceptions of novel figurative phrases change over the course of numerous presentations were addressed in three studies using rating tasks (Studies 1 and 3) and recall tasks (Study 2). The present set of studies replicated much of Schweigert et al.'s (J Psychol Res 32:455-475, 2003) findings of changes in correlations among figurative…

Nativist and constructivist accounts differ in their characterization of children's knowledge of grammatical categories. In this paper we present research on the process of acquisition of a particular grammatical system, gender agreement in the Spanish noun phrase, in children under three years of age. The design of the longitudinal study employed…