Adult learners acquire second language (L2) allophones with experience. We examine two mechanisms which may support the acquisition of allophonic variants in second language acquisition. One of the mechanisms is based on the distribution of phones with respect to their phonological context (i.e. phonological distribution). The other is based on…

As English continues to spread as an international lingua franca, there is a growing diversity in its use around the world. As a result, there are calls for embracing the diversity in the teaching, learning and assessment of the language. At the same time, there is a growing criticism against the widely taken language tests such as the Test of…

In his philosophical novel, Thus spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche (1883-85), famously wrote, 'God is dead,' signifying that God is no longer credible as an absolute moral compass. Over a century later, Paikeday (1985), proclaimed that "The native speaker is dead!" in his book title, implying that the native speaker as the arbiter of what is…

Recent empirical research in sociolinguistics and social psychology has established the existence of the socio-psychological phenomena known as linguistic stereotyping (LS) and reverse linguistic stereotyping (RLS), which have an implicit or unconscious effect on listeners' perception of speech and speakers. Despite such findings, little research…

This paper problematizes the assessment of speakers' proficiency in endangered language communities. We focus in particular on processes of lexical production and elicitation as proxies for full proficiency assessment. Among linguists, it is standard to assess a speaker's knowledge of specific lexical items in order to set a baseline for further…

The purpose of this study was to understand graduate and post-graduate EFL teachers' epistemological beliefs based on the standardized English language and their beliefs on the NEST/NNEST dichotomy. In order to gain a deeper understanding two different group of teachers were formed consisting of graduate and post-graduate level of education. The…

Upholding a critical, ethical, multilingual stance presents numerous challenges amidst a myriad of institutional, infrastructural, and societal pressures. Despite significant breakthroughs, such as translanguaging theories and pedagogies and the evolution of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) principles, the journey towards a more inclusive and…

This study tests the Competing Systems Hypothesis (CSH) as applied to adult second language acquisition of aspect in Spanish. The CSH purports that differences among tutored and untutored learners result from competition between one system of underlying grammatical knowledge and another of learned metalinguistic knowledge in tutored learners…

Existing research on second language (L2) pronoun resolution has not yet looked at immediate and cumulative priming effects. By using a sentence comprehension task, the present study aims at priming dis-preferred interpretations for ambiguous pronouns. We test a group of native speakers and a group of intermediate-proficiency L2 learners of…

This study builds on prior research on second language (L2) Spanish psych verbs, which has centered on morphosyntactic properties, by examining their syntactic distribution, which relies on lexical semantic knowledge. The fact that certain forms are licensed for some verbs, but not others, is the result of an underlying lexical semantic difference…

This study examines the variable occurrence of preposition duplication in contexts of coordination in Spanish (e.g., "Fui con mi madre y (con) mi padre"). We build on previous research on this variable morphosyntactic phenomenon (namely, prepositions in contexts of coordination) by expanding the type of data and the independent variables…

The Spanish subjunctive mood (SUBJ) is said to be highly vulnerable in heritage language (HL) acquisition. However, there is little controlled research on HL-speaking children acquiring the various Spanish SUBJ contexts, so we do not have a clear picture of when, how, or why heritage speakers (HSs) develop in the SUBJ as they do. This study tests…

Despite the increasing number of U.S. born Latinos, placing heritage and native speakers in the Spanish curriculum is still a challenge (MacGregor-Mendoza & Moreno, 2020). The present article: (1) addresses the unique needs of heritage speakers in the Spanish curriculum; (2) problematizes traditional grammar-based placement exams; and (3)…

Previous studies in the acquisition of clitic se in Spanish have focused on the syntactic processes needed to perform detransitivization. However, current approaches on event structure reveal that "se" encodes aspectual information which is crucial for its acquisition. We examine the use, intuition and interpretation of the aspectual…

This study examines the effect of incorporating a variety of international English accents into a simulated TOEFL listening comprehension test in growing recognition of internationalization of language teaching and learning in the field of TESOL. Although some high-stakes English proficiency exams have begun incorporating speech samples produced…