This study explores how learners generalize grammatical categories such as noun gender. Adult native English speakers with no prior knowledge of Russian (N = 47, ages 17-55 years) were trained to categorize Russian masculine and feminine diminutive nouns according to gender. The training set was morphophonologically homogeneous due to similarities…

Adult native speakers (L1) of Russian and advanced nonnative second-language (L2) speakers read Russian sentences on a computer and were asked to choose one of two inflected past-tense verbs in a forced-choice task. Verbs either matched or mismatched gender of the subject-noun phrase. Data suggested that L1 and L2 speakers may depend on common…

Examines a task that can be applied in a uniform fashion across different languages to compare levels of vocabulary development in foreign-language learning. Results indicate that the lexical decision task can be a useful tool for the assessment and cross-linguistic comparison of lexical development in foreign-language learning. (37 references)…