Subject-verb (SV) agreement helps listeners interpret the number condition of ambiguous nouns ("The sheep is/are fat"), yet it remains unclear whether young children use agreement to comprehend newly encountered nouns. Preschoolers and adults completed a forced choice task where sentences contained singular vs. plural copulas…

The present study examines how second language learners (L2) assign the thematic roles of agent/patient in Spanish passive sentences with "ser" (often referred to as the true passive) when it is their initial exposure to this structure. The target sentences were preceded by a contextual sentence. After hearing the two sentences,…

Describes and quantifies aspects of the comparative clauses conjoined with correlatives "than" and "as." The data are compared to show patterns of distribution, their spread across different genres, and the similarity or otherwise of their use in Britain and Australia. Findings show that the scalar comparative clause does not…