The goal of this study is to provide better empirical insight into the licensing conditions of a large set of NPIs in German so that they can be used as reliable diagnostics in future research on negation-related phenomena. Experiment 1 tests the acceptability of 60 NPIs under semantic operators that are expected to license superstrong, strong,…

Research employing psycholinguistic techniques to assess the on-line processing of collocation by native and non-native speakers has flourished in the past few years. This line of research aims (among other things) at exploring actual performance in real time as opposed to the traditional paper-and-pencil testing techniques that have been…

Since its modern inception in the late nineteenth century, research on word associations has developed into a large and diverse area of study, including work with both applied linguistic and psycholinguistic orientations. However, despite significant recent interest in the use of word association to investigate second language (L2) vocabulary…

Semantic variables enable L2 researchers and materials creators to quantify and control the effects of meaning on cognition. However, in recent years, many variables have been normed and published. Parsing the methods employed in norming this myriad of variables and which disparate theories informed their creation can be an opaque and arduous…

This study investigates how figurative language is processed by learners of a second language (L2). With an experiment testing L2 comprehension of figurative expressions in three categories, each combining shared and unshared first language (L1) and L2 lexical representations and conceptual representations in a different way, the study…

Language testing and second language acquisition research are both concerned with proficiency in the second language; given this shared interest, the rapprochement between these two domains may prove revealing and productive not only in terms of teaching practices, but also in taking a wide view of language, ranging across cognition, society and…

By analyzing different language tests currently in use for elementary school children, the article criticizes psychometric means of evaluation and ideas about language and language acquisition resulting from psychometric evaluation. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

A collection of selected papers from the March 1981 Language Proficiency Assessment Symposium, a component of the National Institute of Education's Assessment of Language Proficiency of Bilingual Persons project, are presented. Papers include: "An Overview of Communicative Competence" (Cynthia Wallat); "Some Comments on the Terminology of Language…

Contrastive psycholinguistic analysis of second language acquisition was undertaken with bilingual students taught primarily in French and with bilingual students taught in both English and Spanish. Three types of contrastive comparisons are made on the results of production tests administered to students. (SW)

To what extent does Universal Grammar (UG) constrain second language (L2) acquisition? This is not only an empirical question, but one which is currently investigable. In this context, L2 acquisition is emerging as an important new domain of psycholinguistic research. Three logical possibilities have been articulated regarding the role of UG in L2…

Results of a 10-item oral language test presented only orally, orally with pictures, and orally with concrete aids replicate earlier research findings showing that bilingual children manipulate language more easily than unilinguals. Unilinguals' errors were due to incomplete development while bilinguals' were caused by that and first-language…

A review of literature on foreign language testing indicates that the earliest approaches to language assessment were generally uninformed by contemporaneous linguistic and psychological theories and were characterized by a lack of psychometric sophistication. This trend was followed by the development of test instruments that were heavily…

The purpose of this study was to investigate children's acquisition of the non-comparative forms of spatial adjectives and to specifically test the following experimental questions: (1) Are positive-pole terms, or those such as "big," which indicate extent along a dimension, acquired earlier than negative-pole terms? (2) Does…

Examines a multicontextual aspect of language proficiency that sociolinguists refer to as "communicative competence." Offers a procedure for its application. (PD)