Ever since the introduction of the “independent grammars assumption,” whereby a child is said to have its own grammar and not just an imitation of adult language, first language (L1) acquisition researchers such as Martin Braine (1963) and others have constructed grammars for children’s languages rather than treat them as defective adult grammars. This is based on the view that language learner...

In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that bilingualism may cause a linguistic disadvantage in lexical access even for bilinguals' first and dominant language. To this purpose, we conducted a picture naming experiment comparing the performance of monolinguals and highly-proficient, L1-dominant bilinguals. The results revealed that monolinguals name pictures faster than bilinguals, both...

This paper looks into the question of how to quantify rhythm in Norwegian spoken as a second language by speakers from different language backgrounds. The speech material for this study was taken from existing recordings from the Language Encounters project and consisted of sentences read by natives and speakers from six different L1s. Measurements of syllable durations and speech rate were mad...

Research has assessed how language use differences between bilinguals (e.g., whether two languages are used approximately equally often or not) influence processing. However, first (L1) and second (L2) might also differ within bilinguals, depending on the topic of conversation. For example, a Mandarin–English bilingual studying in North America UK talk about exams English but their childhood Ma...

Research on first language (L1) acquisition has shown that typically developing children acquire a large part of morpho-syntax by the age of 4 (Guasti, 2002). Similarly, studies investigating how children process morpho-syntactic information have revealed that by the same age, their processing routines do not differ from those used by adults (Clahsen & Felser, 2006). However, there is one struc...

This experimental study investigated the learners’ integrative acquisition of obligatory overt subjects and subject-verb clause agreement in English as an L2. In L1 acquisition research, correlations between superficially unrelated linguistic phenomena are analyzed in terms of integrative effects. For instance, in English L1 acquisition, there is evidence for an integrative appearance of subjec...

This research aimed to investigate the writing strategies applied by English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students in Indonesia. It also investigated how process undergone Indonesian EFL differs from using their first language (L1). The questionnaire Petrić and Czárl (2003) was used find out students. In addition, adult model of Hayes (2012), which constructed based on students, framework partic...

Since  an  important  role  for  working  memory  has  been  found  in  the  first  language acquisition  (e.g.,  Daneman,  1991;  Daneman  &  Green,  1986;  Waters  &  Caplan,  1996), research  on  the  role  of  working  memory  is  emerging  as  an  area  of  concern  for  second language  acquisition  (e.g.,  Atkins  &  Baddeley,  1998;  Miyake  &  Freidman,  1998; Robinson,  1995,  2002,  ...

Using the ER-fMRI technique, the present study was designed to investigate the neural substrates of language switching among second-language learners. Twelve Chinese college students who were learning English were scanned when they performed language switching tasks (naming pictures in their first [L1, Chinese] and second [L2, English] languages according to response cues). Compared to non-swit...

In this study an attempt was made to construct a multi-factor model predicting the development of reading literacy in the upper grades of primary school in the Netherlands for subgroups of 729 first language (L1) learners and 93 second language (L2) learners. Following a longitudinal design, it was explored to what extent the variation in reading literacy development in L1 and L2 from grade 4 t...