In order to investigate second language (L2) processing at ultimate attainment, 20 first language (L1) English and 20 L1 Dutch advanced to near-native speakers of German as well as 20 native Germans were tested in two experiments on subject-object ambiguities in German. The results from a self-paced reading task and a speeded acceptability…

Reports on an experimental study that was conducted to examine how native speakers of Japanese acquire syntactic properties of English reflexive pronouns. In particular, the effects of two parameters of Universal Grammar, the Governing Category Parameter, and the Proper Antecedent Parameter were studied. (AUTHOR/GLR)

Investigation of native Hindi, Japanese, and Korean speakers' acquisition of English phonology and syntax found that, at a certain stage of acquisition, learners arrived at a parameter setting that was midway between the native and target language settings, occurring when the target language employed either a more or less marked setting than the…

Adult learners of English as a second language who speak Chinese (n = 30), Japanese (n = 28) or Spanish (n = 46) as a first language (L1), and a comparison group of native speakers (n = 22) read sentences that contain: (a) ungrammatical "wh"-extractions that violate island constraints; and (b) grammatical long-distance Subject and Object…

Argues that functional categories instantiated in the learners' first language (L1) transfer to the initial state of second language syntactic development. On the basis of Zulu interlanguage data on acquisition of the obligatory declarative complementizer "ukuthi" (that) by English native speakers, argues that Comp contains a null…

Examines sentence matching, a methodology frequently used in the second language literature to determine notions of grammaticality of nonnative speakers. Native speakers of French and second language learners of French performed a sentence-matching task focusing on three areas of French grammar: adverb placement, subject-verb agreement, and…

The study investigates the relationship between input, UG (Universal Grammar) parameter values, and the native language in the acquisition of a purely semantic property that is superficially unrelated to its syntactic trigger, The Bare Noun/Proper Name parameter (Longobardi, 1991; 1994; 1996; 2001; 2005). On the one hand, English and Italian bare…

The processing strategies described by Clahsen to explain the development of German word order make predictions. Some experimental results show that inverted sentences result in significantly shorter response times than uninverted sentences for nonnative speakers but that native speakers do not respond at all to the inverted-uninverted contrast.…

Argues that, when considering subject pronouns, one must examine the input to the learner. English transcripts by two Spanish native speakers demonstrate that the pattern of learner-language pronoun use closely parallels native speaker use. Data suggest that considering principles of Universal Grammar devoid of contest is insufficient for…

Asked native and nonnative speakers to give judgments of frequency for near synonyms in second-language lexical sets and compared those responses to modern corpus word counts. Native speakers were able to discern the core word in lexical sets either 77% or 85%, and nonnative speakers at 71% or 79%. (Author/VWL)

We discuss the results of an experiment that investigates English-French learners' interpretation of quantifiers with detachable restrictions. Such quantifiers are ungrammatical in English. We investigate aspects of interpretation that rely on a highly idiosyncratic interface between grammar and general principles of conversational cooperation in…

Investigated how learners' perception of second language segments is affected by their first language by examining native Korean and Japanese speakers' perception of nasal segments in English. Also examined the perceived relationship between English syllable-final nasals and Japanese categories to provide insight into why one of the contrasts was…

Reports on reaction time experiments investigating subject-verb agreement and null subjects in 33 Korean learners of German and a control group of 20 German native speakers. Results found that the two phenomena do not covary in the Korean learners, indicating that properties of agreement and null subjects are acquired separately from one another.…

Study of the German attrition of two Turkish girls who returned to Turkey after residing in Germany found that attrition stages (slower speech and code-switching; lexical attrition; and basic grammar) were largely a mirror-image of a Turkish boy's acquisition of German while residing in Germany. (14 references) (Author/CB)

Reports on an experiment investigating adult second language (L2) acquisition of Spanish object clitic placement by native speakers of English and French. Two experimental methodologies are compared: an on-line sentence matching task and an off-line grammaticality judgment task. (Author/VWL)