The past two decades have shown an unexpected effectiveness of "Web-scale" data in natural language processing. Even the simplest models, when paired with unprecedented amounts of unstructured and unlabeled Web data, have been shown to outperform sophisticated ones. It has been argued that the effectiveness of Web-scale data has…

The induction problems facing language learners have played a central role in debates about the types of learning biases that exist in the human brain. Many linguists have argued that some of the learning biases necessary to solve these language induction problems must be both innate and language-specific (i.e., the Universal Grammar (UG)…

This article presents the results of experimental data on language production and comprehension. These show that adult learners of Dutch as an additional language, with different language backgrounds, and a L2 proficiency below level A2 (Waystage) of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR; Council of Europe, 2001), use…

Few systematic efforts have been reported to develop higher degree by research student skills for writing publishable articles in science and technology fields. There is a need to address this lack in the light of the current importance of publication to science research students and the high supervisor workload entailed in repeated draft…

In native speakers of gender-marking languages, mechanisms of gender production appear to be affected by the morphophonological cues to gender present in the noun phrase. This influence is manifested in higher levels of production accuracy when more transparent cues to gender are present in comparison to when they are not. The goal of the present…

In this study we compared the effects of two types of form-focused instruction (FFI) on second language (L2) learning and their potential contributions to the development of different types of L2 knowledge. Both types of instruction were pre-emptive in nature, that is planned and teacher generated. In Integrated FFI attention to form was embedded…

Yuki and the other Northern Yukian languages, Huchnom and Coast Yuki, were spoken until recently in Mendocino County in Northern California. This dissertation is a grammar of Yuki based primarily on spoken narratives recorded in the first decade of the twentieth century, so it provides a description of the Yuki language as it was spoken at that…

The starting hypothesis of the keynote article (KA) is that language acquisition plays an essential role in processes leading to grammatical change. Consequently, a minimal requirement, to be met by explanations of diachronic change is that they rely on mechanisms which are operative in acquisition. The KA is therefore an appeal for…

The acquisition of linguistic structures that require "perspective-taking" at the level of "message generation" is challenging. We investigate use of "progressive aspect" in L2 event encoding, using a sentence priming paradigm. We focus on Dutch, in which use of progressive aspect is optional. The progressive consists…

This article discusses the impact of lexical range on the learners' ability to communicate in English when taught as a foreign language in bilingual schools, and emphasizes the importance of explicit vocabulary instruction. It draws on data from classroom observation, lexis-retrieval tasks, written and spoken performance in bilingual…

Two recent proposals link the use of nonagreeing "don't" to the Root Infinitive (RI) Stage. Guasti & Rizzi (2002) argue for a misset parameter involving how agreement is spelled out. Schütze (2010) proposes that Infl is underspecified in child language and that "do" surfaces to support the contracted clitic/affix…

As the Greek verbal system has become the subject of various dissertations and monographs, the future tense-form has been generally overlooked in the discussion. This dissertation seeks to overcome this lacuna by suggesting that the future tense-form functions as a rhetorical feature that expresses the author's expectation of an alternative state…

Spanish is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. Quechua is the largest indigenous language family to constitute the first language (L1) of second language (L2) Spanish speakers. Despite sheer number of speakers and typologically interesting contrasts, Quechua-Spanish second language acquisition is a nearly untapped research area,…

This study investigates 2-5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's interpretation of the disjunction word "huozhe" ("or") in two positions in "ruguo" ("if")-conditional statements, i.e., in the antecedent clause versus in the consequent clause. The findings from three experiments show that the meanings…

In the study conducted using qualitative research methods, one of the purposeful samplings, typical case sampling was used. The date were collected from two sources. The students were asked to prepare any topic they wanted and then delivered it. The students were observed for one month in order to detect their mistakes as they speak, through…