In this paper, we introduce block insertion and deletion on trajectories, which provide us with a new framework to study properties of language operations. With the parallel syntactical constraint provided by trajectories, these operations properly generalize several sequential as well as parallel binary language operations such as catenation, sequential insertion, k-insertion, parallel inserti...

In the acquisition of a second language, numerous factors interact simultaneously, including the patterns of the first language (L1), the patterns of the target language (L2), universals of language acquisition, and the amount and type of exposure to the L2. English is learned as a second language in India, where the first languages of the English learners differ widely in the phonotactics of c...

Communicating in a second language could be seen as a process requiring the deconstruction and reconstruction of cultural meanings. If this is the case, how do second language (L2) learners express cultural meanings of their first language (L1) expressions that do not have semantically equivalent L2 expressions? Twentynine Japanese students learning English as a second language in the US were a...

Present work is aimed at investigating the influence of mother tongue (L1) of a South Indian speaker on a second language (L2). Second language can be a dominant local language, national language in India i.e., Hindi or a connecting language English. In the current study, L2 is a short discourse in English. Cepstral and prosodic features were used as in Language Identification (LID) to distingu...

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...

An intriguing discovery in recent years is that resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) is associated with cognitive performance. The current study investigated whether RSFC within the reading network was correlated with Chinese adults' reading abilities in their native language (L1, Chinese) and second language (L2, English). Results showed that RSFC within the reading network was positiv...

In his seminal paper on the ‘fundamental difference’ between first and second language (L1 and L2) acquisition, Bley-Vroman (1990) proposed that this disparity is due to the lack of continued access to Universal Grammar and the unavailability of ‘domain-specific learning procedures’ beyond a critical period in child language development. He considered four possible alternative accounts of this ...

The present study investigated cross-language priming effects with unique noncognate translation pairs. Unbalanced Dutch (first language [L1])-English (second language [L2]) bilinguals performed a lexical decision task in a masked priming paradigm. The results of two experiments showed significant translation priming from L1 to L2 (meisje-girl) and from L2 to L1 (girl-meisje), using two differe...

Third language (L3) acquisition differs from first language (L1) and second language (L2) acquisition. There are different views on whether L1 or L2 is of primary influence on L3 acquisition in terms of transfer. This study examines differences in the event-related brain potentials (ERP) response to agreement incongruencies between L1 Spanish speakers and L3 Spanish learners, comparing response...