Twenty-five children with specific language impairment (SLI; age 5 years, 3 months [5;3]-8;2), 50 typically developing children (3;3-8;2), and 31 normal adults participated in three eye-tracking experiments of spoken language comprehension that were designed to investigate the use of verb information during real-time sentence comprehension in…

This paper investigates how learners interpret definite plural noun phrases (e.g., "the tigers") and bare (article-less) plural noun phrases (e.g., "tigers") in their second language. Whereas Spanish allows definite plurals to have both generic and specific readings, English requires definite plurals to have specific, nongeneric readings. Generic…

Definitions that children provide can be a valuable measure of their syntax, and specifically, of their ability to produce relative clauses. This research explored the acquisition of subject, object, and indirect object relative clauses in 121 Hebrew-speaking children aged 3 years, 5 months to 8 years, 6 months (3;5-8;6). The children were asked…

In this study, the influence of plausibility information on the real-time processing of locally ambiguous ("garden path") sentences in a nonnative language is investigated. Using self-paced reading, we examined how advanced Greek-speaking learners of English and native speaker controls read sentences containing temporary subject-object…

The results of a self-paced reading study with German second language (L2) learners of Dutch showed that noun animacy affected the learners' on-line commitments when comprehending relative clauses in their L2. Earlier research has found that German L2 learners of Dutch do not show an on-line preference for subject-object word order in temporarily…

English sentences containing the universal quantifiers "each", "every", and "all" are highly complex structures in view of the subtleties of their scope properties and resulting ambiguities. This study explored the acquisition of universal quantifier sentences as reflected in the performance of three diverse college-level student groups on a…

Discusses the code-switching in English and Spanish of adjectives or nouns inside a noun phrase containing both. Proposes that the device that prevents switched prenominal Spanish adjectives is the same one that prevents the same classes of adjectives from normally appearing in prenominal position in Spanish. (SED)

Examined the use of noun phrase morphology by preschool-age children with specific language impairment (SLI) who were also acquiring Swedish. Relative to typically developing same-age peers and younger peers matched according to mean length of utterance, the children with SLI had greater difficulty in the use of genitive inflections, indefinite…

Comparison of Vietnamese-Australians' perception and production of the English compound-phrasal contrast with that of native English-speaking Australians indicated that the number of syllables and consonant clusters alien to Vietnamese phonology and length of residence in Australia were major factors affecting the Vietnamese-Australians'…