Recent research has shown that cognate word processing is modulated by variables such as degree of orthographic and phonological overlap of cognate words and task requirements in such a way that the typical preferential processing observed in the literature for cognate words relative to non-cognate words can be annulled or even reversed (Comesaña…

Why is it more difficult to comprehend a 2nd (L2) than a 1st language (L1)? In the present article we investigate whether difficulties during L2 sentence comprehension come from differences in the way L1 and L2 speakers anticipate upcoming words. We recorded the brain activity (event-related potentials) of Spanish monolinguals, French-Spanish late…

This study investigates prosodic (noun length) and lexical-semantic (animacy) influences on determiner use in the spontaneous speech of three children acquiring French, Austrian German and Dutch. In support of typological and language-specific hypotheses from the Germanic-Romance contrast, an advantage of monosyllabic nouns and of inanimate nouns…

Phonological and semantic principles which underlie the derivation of verbs from nouns and adjectives in English are examined. There is intricate phonological conditioning for suffix "-ize" and for suffix "-(i)fy"; a third major process is zero derivation. These derivational processes cover more than a score of semantic relations (some with…

Most current models of language production assume that information about gender is selected only in phrasal contexts, and that the phonological form of a noun can be accessed without selecting its syntactic properties. In this paper, we report a series of picture-word interference experiments with Italian-speaking participants where the…

Describes and explains interrelationship among nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and determiners making up the Spanish determiner and adjective phrase. (BK)

In this article second language (L2) knowledge of Dutch grammatical gender is investigated. Adult speakers of German, English and a Romance language (French, Italian or Spanish) were investigated to explore the role of transfer in learning the Dutch grammatical gender system. In the first language (L1) systems, German is the most similar to Dutch…

Focuses on the licensing conditions on empty categories in DP, dealing in particular with the distribution of the null noun "pro" in adjectival contexts. N-"pro" is submitted to requirements of formal licensing and identification. The contrast between English and other languages with respect to N-"pro" derives from…