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...

We revisit morpheme studies to evaluate the long-standing claim for a universal order of acquisition. We investigate the L2 acquisition order of six English grammatical morphemes by learners from seven L1 groups across five proficiency levels. Data are drawn from approximately 10,000 written exam scripts from the Cambridge Learner Corpus. The study establishes clear L1 influence on the absolute...

One of the most common approaches to studying L2 acquisition involves the comparison of L2 performance and L1 norms with regard to a particular linguistic feature. However, as BleyVroman (1983) points out, such an approach can be misleading, since the L1 norms may not be as clear-cut as the researchers claim, and the L2 errors may actually represent a systematic application of the learner’s dev...

LAB offers online submission . More details can be found below in the 'Submission' section and guidelines is an international peer-reviewed journal which provides outlet for cutting-edge studies on linguistic aspects of bilingualism. assumes a broad definition bilingualism, including work on: adult L2 acquisition/processing, simultaneous child heritage language L1 attrition L2/Ln environments, ...

Grammar competition has been proposed as a model for second language (L2) acquisition. Variational Learning provides framework within which to investigate the idea of grammar requires marriage quantitative properties input with Universal Grammar. A diachronic variational is extended acquisition (L2A) explore verb-second word order optionality in L2 English. Patterns L1-German–L2-English are rev...

The present paper summarizes three experiments that investigate the effects of age of acquisition on first-language (L1) acquisition in relation to second-language (L2) outcome. The experiments use the unique acquisition situations of childhood deafness and sign language. The key factors controlled across the studies are age of L1 acquisition, the sensory–motor modality of the language, and lev...

Variation set structure--partial overlap of successive utterances in child-directed speech--has been shown to correlate with progress in children's acquisition of syntax. We demonstrate the benefits of variation set structure directly: in miniature artificial languages, arranging a certain proportion of utterances in a training corpus in variation sets facilitated word and phrase constituent le...

Variation set structure — partial alignment of successive utterances in child-directed speech — has been shown to correlate with progress in the acquisition of syntax by children. The present study demonstrates that arranging a certain proportion of utterances in a training corpus in variation sets facilitates word segmentation and phrase structure learning in miniature artificial languages by ...

This thesis explores the role of age in second language (L2) acquisition and first language (L1) attrition. The focus is on Voice Onset Time (VOT) in the production and categorical perception of word-initial L1 and L2 stops in highly advanced L1 Spanish learners of L2 Swedish. Using as the point of departure a maturational constraints perspective and the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH), Study ...