To investigate potential causes of L2 performance deficits that correlate with age of onset, we use a computational model to explore the individual contributions of L1 entrenchment and aspects of memory development. Since development and L1 entrenchment almost invariably coincide, studying them independently is seldom possible in humans. To avoid…

This article documents how second language (L2) Spanish learners in an American high school formulated explicit grammar rules during three inductive lessons on the pronominal clitic "se." Following Adair-Hauck "et al." (2010), each lesson first presented a property of "se" within a narrative text, and then had learners inductively "Co-construct"…

In this paper, the patterns of semantic extensions of allative markers are compared with those of ablative markers from a cognitive-typological perspective. Despite the symmetry the two notions appear to exhibit semantically, goal and source exhibit asymmetry and the prevalence of the former over the latter can be seen in a wide range of…

Speakers must command different linguistic registers to index various social-discourse elements, including the identity of the addressee. Previous work found that English-learning children could link registers to appropriate addressees by 5 years. Two experiments found that better cues to the linguistic form or to the social meaning of register…

Speakers of gender-agreement languages use gender-marked elements of the noun phrase in spoken-word recognition: A congruent marking on a determiner or adjective facilitates the recognition of a subsequent noun, while an incongruent marking inhibits its recognition. However, while monolinguals and early language learners evidence this…

With 97 learners in an advanced Spanish course, the study examines the effects of textual enhancement adjuncts, prior subject knowledge, first language (L1) reading ability, and second language (L2) Spanish proficiency on L2 comprehension of scientific passages. Readings included two texts with two types of embedded questions: a pause or written…

Research has demonstrated that children use different strategies to infer a referent. One of these strategies is to use inflectional morphology. We present evidence that toddlers learning Spanish are capable of using gender word inflections to infer word reference. Thirty-month-olds were tested in a preferential looking experiment. Participants…

This study presents the results of four experiments in the framework of processing instruction conducted with four language learner groups (Spanish, "n"?=?43; German, "n"?=?46; Russian, "n"?=?44; and French, "n"?=?48; discussed in that order). In each experiment, the processing problem was held constant (the…

This study compares Spanish morphosyntax error types and magnitude in monolingual Spanish and Spanish-English bilingual children with typical language development (TD) and language impairment (LI). Performance across groups was compared using cloze tasks that targeted articles, clitics, subjunctives, and derivational morphemes in 57 children.…

This study investigates whether adult second language learners' online processing of "wh"-dependencies is constrained by island constraints on movement. Proficiency-matched Spanish and Korean learners of English completed a grammaticality judgment task and a stop-making-sense task designed to examine their knowledge of the relative…

Although many studies have suggested positive effects for speaking or output practice on L2 grammar development, the question of how speaking affects L2 grammar remains. This study specifically examines how output affects the explicit and implicit knowledge of Spanish indirect object pronouns (IOPs). It also investigates levels of L2 grammar…

This article focuses on the teaching of pragmatics in the Spanish as a Foreign Language classroom and examines the role of grammar as a communicative resource. It also aims to highlight the importance of teaching pragmatics from beginning levels of language instruction, with the spotlight on speech acts at the discourse level. After the concept of…

In 3 experiments, we investigated the effect of grammatical gender on object categorization. Participants were asked to judge whether 2 objects, whose names did or did not share grammatical gender, belonged to the same semantic category by pressing a key. Monolingual speakers of English (Experiment 1), Italian (Experiments 1 and 2), and Spanish…

Evidence for the role of corrective input as a facilitator of language acquisition is inconclusive. Studies show links between corrective input and grammatical use of some, but not other, language structures. The present study examined relationships between corrective parental input and children's errors in the acquisition of the Spanish copula…

There is an increasing pressure from school leaders in many countries for teaching to be based solely on ICT tools. The present study is interested in what this does to pupils' attitudes towards ICT in language classrooms. Is a digital monopoly a good way for pupils to learn languages? Is it what they want? To understand for which tasks students…