How second language (L2) learning is achieved in the human brain remains one of the fundamental questions of neuroscience and linguistics. Previous neuroimaging studies with bilinguals have consistently shown overlapping cortical organization of the native language (L1) and L2, leading to a prediction that a common neurobiological marker may be responsible for the development of the two languag...

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 study reports on a comparison of the use and knowledge of tense-marking morphemes in English by first language (L1), second language (L2) and specifically language-impaired (SLI) children. The objective of our research was to ascertain whether the L2 children's tense acquisition patterns were similar or dissimilar to those of the L1 and SLI groups, and whether they would fit an (Extended) ...

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...

According to the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM), articulatory similarity/dissimilarity between sounds of the second language (L2) and the native language (L1) governs L2 learnability in adulthood and predicts L2 sound perception by naïve listeners. We performed behavioral and neurophysiological experiments on two groups of university students at the first and fifth years of the English lan...

Speech production research has demonstrated that the first language (L1) often interferes with production in bilinguals' second language (L2), but it has been suggested that bilinguals who are L2-dominant are the most likely to suppress this L1-interference. While prolonged contextual changes in bilinguals' language use (e.g., stays overseas) are known to result in L1 and L2 phonetic shifts, co...

The present study focuses on individual differences in levels of communicative anxiety (CA) and foreign language anxiety (FLA) in the first (L1), second (L2), third (L3) and fourth (L4) language of 106 adult language learners. Data were collected about CA / FLA levels when speaking with friends, with strangers, and speaking in public. The analyses revealed that multilinguals do experience more ...

The study of second language acquisition (SLA) concerns not only the way to learn a (L2), but also unique system created by learners (interlanguage). This qualitative analyzed EFL learners’ interlanguage focusing on their strengths and weaknesses in speaking English, especially phonological, grammatical pragmatic competence English. data were obtained from recorded conversation between two non-...