Second language acquisition research often compares non-native acquirers (L2ers) with other learner populations. Such cross-population comparisons include: (i) child native language (L1) acquisition~child L2 acquisition (e.g. Gavruseva 2000; Weerman et al. 2003); (ii) child L2~adult L2 (e.g. Cancino et al. 1978; McDonald 2000; Montrul 2002; Weerman et al. 2003) and (iii) child L1~adult L2 (Canc...

Two perceptions of Korean and English sibilants by two different L2 groups were examined: the identification of Korean (KO) contrast /s-s*/ by American English (AE) learners of Korean and the identification of English (EN) contrast /s-ʃ/ by Korean ESL learners. The results of the first experiment showed that AE beginning learners of Korean poorly identified the Korean contrasts (with chance acc...

This paper investigates the nature and time course of phonetic drift in L1 by examining the very first weeks of 20 L1 English speakers’ acquisition of Korean as L2. Acoustic analyses of these learners’ L1 and L2 production over time indicate that learning L2 stops affects the production of L1 stops (in terms of VOT and/or f0 onset) in as little as one week, with the L1 sounds approximating the ...

This article revisits earlier proposals that language learning is, in essence, the learning of formulaic sequences and their interpretations; that this occurs at all levels of granularity from large to small; and that the language system emerges from the statistical abstraction of patterns latent within and across form and function in language usage. It considers recent research in individual d...

According  to  a  basic  prediction  made  by  the  Revised  Hierarchical  Model  (RHM),  at  early  stages  of language  acquisition,  strong  L2-L1  lexical  links  are  formed.  RHM  predicts  that  these  links  weaken with  increasing  proficiency,  although  they  do  not  disappear  even  at  higher  levels  of  language development. To test this prediction, two groups of highly proficie...

The interaction between syntactic structures and event structures has become an important area of linguistic research. The telic/atelic distinction, a property of an event having or not having a natural endpoint, is a focus in the discussion of this interaction. Together with durativity and dynamicity, telicity, a semantic notion, forms the base of the well-known Vendler (1967) four-way typolog...

This study examined the predictive role of several learner factors in second language (L2) incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading: L2 proficiency, motivation, anxiety, and mastery of strategies. Participants were 129 English learners in a comprehensive university in China. Participants read two English texts and were given an unannounced vocabulary test to assess their incidental voc...

Although age of acquisition (AoA) is frequently used when examining the endpoint second language (L2) learning, it rarely to examine initial phases L2 acquisition. The present study provided a unique look at role AoA in early and literacy by priori selecting two groups Arabic-English speakers based on their ages, 6–8-year-olds (N = 43) 9–13-year-olds 53). These Syrian refugees were matched Engl...

Studies of ultimate attainment in adult second-language (L2) acquisition report a disjunction between success in acquiring the syntax of the target language (TL), on the one hand, and persistent difficulties at the interfaces of syntax with other grammatical modules, e.g. discourse-pragmatics, on the other. However, there continues to be debate as to whether these difficulties arise from devian...

Given that Mandarin is a verb-serializing language, Russian a satellite-framed language, and Spanish a verb-framed language, the current study examines Mandarin college students’ acquisition of Russian and Spanish as L2, to understand the strength of L1 preferences for expression of PATH on Russian and Spanish majors’ second language acquisition in Taiwan. Based on oral narrative data, the stud...