The purpose of this dissertation is to answer the following question that falls in the intersection of philosophy of language and epistemology: is there any distinctive kind of knowledge that one might possess, merely in virtue of being a native, competent speaker of a certain natural language? When this is expressed as a question specifically…

This thesis examines whether native, heritage, and L2 speakers of Spanish engage a morphological layer of representation in the processing of inflected words, and whether they do so with both regularly- and irregularly-inflected words. Also examined is whether this tendency towards compositional (i.e. morphological rule-based) processing is…

This dissertation centers on the application of the mental space theory to expand our understanding of the role lexical discourse markers (LDMs) play in discourse. LDMs have been recognized by many researchers for their discourse connective function(s) (Levinson, 1983; Schiffrin, 1987; Blakemore, 1989, 2000, 2001, 2002; Fraser, 1996, 1999, 2006).…

This dissertation investigates the semantics and pragmatics of two types of free choice items (FCIs) in Korean which employ a wh-indeterminate (i.e., wh-morphology. e.g., "nwukwu" "who/someone") and a non-deictic-indefinite (e.g., "amwu") respectively in combination with a suffixal particle--"na." Both wh-indeterminate-based FCI (wh-(N)-"na")…

This study investigated the effects of shared reading on oral vocabulary development with 42 second language (L2) learners in Dakar, Senegal. Participants, ranging from four to six years old, were taught French target words using predictable books, non-predicable books, and control activities of the typical local instructional practice of using…