second language  learners often develop grammatical competence in the absence of concomitant pragmatic competence (kasper & roever, 2005) and the exact nature of the relationship between the two competences is still indistinct and in need of inquiries ( bardovi-harlig, 1999; khatib & ahmadisafa, 2011). this study is a partial attempt to address the lacuna and aims to see if any relation...

The writings of Marshall McLuhan have had an enduring influence on our understanding of the social and cultural impacts of communication media. The idiomatic resonance of McLuhan’s famous statement, “the medium is the message,” has entered language and contemporary consciousness, influencing the way we think and feel about media, the way we perceive their effects, and our awareness of their pot...

This paper focuses on one single phenomenon, namely the acquisition of idiomatic reading in subordinate clauses in Bernese Swiss German. We argue that the learning procedure in this case involves cross-modular triggering. The cross-modular character of acquiring the idiomatic reading in subordinate clauses is rooted in the fact that, inter alia, the child has to specify several features, namely...