Although a growing body of research has sought to understand the relationship between word order and information structure, previous information structure (IS) analyses of verb-subject order have produced conflicting results for Medieval French, which have subsequently led to conflicting claims about the importance of IS to its word order as well…

The languages of the world encode possession in a variety of ways. In Slavic languages, possession on the level of the clause, or predicative possession, is represented by two main encoding strategies. Most Slavic languages, including those in the West and South Slavic sub-groupings, use a "have" verb comparable to English have and German "haben."…

This dissertation provides a language processing perspective on the study of second language acquisition (SLA) of tense and aspect. Of special interest are the universal vis-a-vis language-specific dimensions of temporal and aspectual semantics involved. According to the Aspect Hypothesis (AH, e.g. Andersen & Shirai, 1994), the initial…

This study examines the motion verb system of Bulgarian, focusing both on the structure of the Bulgarian motion verb itself, and on the information typically encoded in the Bulgarian verb of motion. It then compares the Bulgarian motion verb system with the motion verb systems of two other Slavic languages, Russian and Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian…

In this study I examine the noticing of verbs with stem vowel changes by beginning adult learners of L2 German who have not been formally introduced to this linguistic feature. Two research questions (RQs) guided the experimental design and the empirical analyses in this study: (1) Do adult beginning learners of German who are unfamiliar with…

This dissertation investigates the methods used by intermediate, advanced and superior level learners of German when quoting formerly uttered speech in direct discourse. The study shows that that there are different methods of speech reporting at different levels of language proficiency. Each level of speakers in the study used the quotative…

This dissertation study examined a broad question of whether computer-based grammar tutorials are effective and welcome tools to review grammar for language learners by investigating effects of three different modes of such tutorials on learners' knowledge and satisfaction. For this study, I developed experimental tutorials in three different…