Recent studies of paralinguistic intonational meaning show that languages differ systematically in how pitch range is used to signal meaning differences, contra previous claims. This poses an additional challenge to second language learners, who generally receive little tutoring on intonation. This study investigates learners' competence and…

The incidence of nativelikeness in adult second language acquisition is a controversial issue in SLA research. Although some researchers claim that any learner, regardless of age of acquisition, can attain nativelike levels of second language (L2) proficiency, others hold that attainment of nativelike proficiency is, in principle, impossible. The…

This article reports the results of an eye-tracking experiment that investigated the effects of structural distance on readers' sensitivity to violations of Spanish gender agreement during online sentence comprehension. The study tracked the eye movements of native Spanish speakers and English-speaking learners of Spanish as they read sentences…

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…

This article investigates an argument-adjunct asymmetry in English as a second language (ESL) learners' acquisition of inversion in "wh"-questions. A generative approach (DeVilliers, 1991; Stromswold, 1990) claims that inversion is acquired earlier in argument "wh"-questions than in adjunct "wh"-questions, the asymmetry resulting from their…

The results of two self-paced reading experiments are reported, which investigated the online processing of subject-object ambiguities in Dutch relative clause constructions like "Dat is de vrouw die de meisjes heeft/hebben gezien" by German advanced second language (L2) learners of Dutch. Native speakers of both Dutch and German have been shown…

The acquisition of English verbal morphology has been mostly tested as a second language (L2) in English-speaking settings (Bardovi-Harlig, 1992a, 1992b, 1992c, 1998; Bardovi-Harlig & Bergstrom, 1996; Bayley, 1991, 1994), more rarely as a foreign language (e.g., Robison, 1990, 1995), in only one cross-sectional study with native speakers of French…

The increasing numbers of English language learners (ELLs) in Canadian schools pose a significant challenge to the standards-based provincial tests used to measure proficiency levels of all students from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds. This study investigated the extent to which reading item bundles or items on the Ontario Secondary…

This study investigates knowledge of gender agreement in Spanish L2 learners and heritage speakers, who differ in age and context/mode of acquisition. On some current theoretical accounts, persistent difficulty with grammatical gender in adult L2 acquisition is due to age. These accounts predict that heritage speakers should be more accurate on…

This study provides a model for examining the second language (L2) acquisition of structures where the first language (L1) and (L2) are similar, and where native speaker (NS) use varies. Research on the copula contrast in Spanish ("ser" and "estar" mean "to be") has shown that an assessment of learner choice cannot rely on an error analysis…

Recognizing the specific speech act ( Searle, 1969) that a speaker performs with an utterance is a fundamental feature of pragmatic competence. Past research has demonstrated that native speakers of English automatically recognize speech acts when they comprehend utterances (Holtgraves & Ashley, 2001). The present research examined whether this…

Deaf and hearing students' knowledge of English sentences containing universal quantifiers was compared through their performance on a 50-item, multiple-picture task that required students to decide whether each of five pictures represented a possible meaning of a target sentence. The task assessed fundamental knowledge of quantifier sentences,…

This study compares quantitative and qualitative results for task-based second language (L2) grammar instruction conducted as whole-class, teacher-led discourse (TLD) versus small-group, learner-led discourse (LLD). Participants included 78 English-speaking adults from six university classes of beginning L2 Spanish, with two assigned to each…

This study examined the influence of first language (L1) orthographic experiences on decoding and semantic information retention of new words in a second language (L2). Hypotheses were that congruity in L1 and L2 orthographic experiences determines L2 decoding efficiency, which, in turn, affects semantic information encoding and retention.…

This study examined the development of integrated knowledge or automatic competence in adult SLA. Automatic competence was operationalized in terms of the participants' sensitivity to grammatical errors in a self-paced reading task. Their sensitivity was determined by observing whether there was a delay in reading ungrammatical sentences. Native…