The present study investigates to what extent first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) speakers use lexical futures, whether such forms provide evidence of development, and whether these forms are constrained differently from the present indicative (PI) according to linguistic predictors. It uses a combined approach through its…

This article explores French L1 speakers' attitudes toward French L2 speakers' negation use. Negation in prescriptive grammars calls for a pre-verbal ne and a post-verbal element like "pas." Although orally "ne" deletion is frequent, it is rarely or never taught. One common, albeit meagerly supported, explanation is that L1…

This study investigates the acquisition of the Spanish Imperfect by 60 English learners of Spanish at three different proficiency levels (beginner, intermediate and advanced). Two oral production tasks and one interpretation task show that although the Imperfect is used from early on, the full array of interpretations associated with this form…

This study examines the second language acquisition of Spanish past tense morphology by three groups of English speakers (beginners, intermediates and advanced). We adopt a novel methodological approach--combining oral corpus data with controlled experimental data--in order to provide new evidence on the validity of the Lexical Aspect Hypothesis…

This study explores whether and to what degree explicit form-focused instruction (FFI) facilitates the use of morphosyntactic forms in second language oral production and also whether it has differential effects on morphosyntactic forms with different linguistic variables. Twenty-seven university-level Chinese EFL participants were randomly…

Construction grammar (CG) has been proposed as an adequate grammatical formalism for building intelligent language tutoring systems because it is highly compatible with the learning strategies observed in second language learning. Unfortunately, the lack of computational CG implementations has made it impossible in the past to corroborate these…

This article reports on a study that investigated whether the extent to which learners benefit from recasts on two Turkish morphemes differ depending on communication mode--i.e. Face-to-Face Communication (F2FC) and text-based Synchronous Computer-Mediated Communication (SCMC)--and/or the salience of the target structure (i.e. salient and…

This article contributes to the literature on the use of the present tense to refer to past events in oral narratives, otherwise known as the Conversational Historical Present (CHP) (Wolfson 1978). Previous research has found that the CHP switches with the past (Wolfson 1979) frequently with verbs of saying and achievement verbs (Dunn 1998; Van…

This paper presents a brief summary of processability theory as proposed by [Pienemann, M., 1998a. "Language Processing and Second Language Development: Processability Theory." John Benjamins, Amsterdam; Pienemann, M., 1998b. "Developmental dynamics in L1 and L2 acquisition: processability theory and generative entrenchment." "Bilingualism:…

The study of SLA began around the beginning of the 70s with the emergence of both theoretical and empirical studies. Undoubtedly, the acquisition of tense/aspect, besides other topics, has attracted much interest from researchers. This study investigated the use of telic and atelic verb forms in the oral production of Turkish speakers of English…

Previous research indicates that foreign language learners are much more focused on accuracy, particularly grammatical accuracy, than their teachers are. The purpose of the current study was to gain a more detailed understanding of American learners' views of the need for accuracy in the oral production of a foreign language (German) by (a)…

It has been observed that there is a strong association between the inherent (lexical) aspect of verbs and the acquisition of tense-aspect morphology (the aspect hypothesis; Andersen & Shirai, 1994). To investigate why such an association is observed, this study examined the influence of inherent aspect and learners' first language (L1) on the…