This corpus study brings a second language (L2) research perspective, insights from generative grammar, and new empirical evidence to bear on a long-accepted claim in the World Englishes literature--namely, that inversion with "wh"-movement in colloquial Indian English is obligatory in embedded clauses and impossible in main clauses. It…

The position of antecedent strategy (Carminati, 2002) claims that speakers of null-subject languages prefer to resolve intrasentential anaphora by linking pro to an antecedent in the specifier of the inflection phrase and the overt pronoun to an antecedent lower in the clause. The present study has two aims: (a) to determine whether adult early…

This article investigates the information structure of verb-second (V2) declaratives in Swedish, German, and nonnative German. Even though almost any type of element can occur in the so-called prefield, the clause-initial preverbal position of V2 declaratives, we have found language-specific patterns in native-speaker corpora: The frequencies of…

This study examines how Keenan and Comrie's (1977) noun phrase accessibility hierarchy (NPAH) intersects with the typological characteristics of Korean in the acquisition of relative clauses (RCs). Korean has two types of RC constructions: head-external and head-internal. The head-external relative has its head to the right of the RC, whereas the…

Explores research and theory regarding the relation between second-language acquisition and language universals research with respect to three phenomena: extraction; structure dependence; and the distribution of overt reflexives. (Author/CB)

Reports on one of a series of sociolinguistic studies of the speech of children of foreign workers in Berlin, "Gastarbeiterdeutsch," addressing the question of potential creolization. The paper has three sections: (1) a social and linguistic background of "Gastarbeiterdeutsch"; (2) the study methodology; and (3) results of the…

Suggests that structural universals between different-based pidgins result from universal linguo-cognitive processing strategies which are employed in learning languages. Some of the strategies occur in all types of acquisition, and others are more applicable to L2 type acquisition. Past research is discussed, and some exemplary data are given.…

A variety of studies have reported that learners of English as a second language find subject relative clauses easier to produce and comprehend than direct object relatives, but it is unclear whether this preference should be attributed to structural factors or to a linear distance effect. This paper seeks to resolve this issue and to extend our…

Discusses various definitions of markedness in terms of second language acquisition and describes a study testing one such definition which found that second language learners did not accept preposition stranding in the second language but did accept double object construction and suggested that transfer took place only with one of two marked…

An examination of native and non-native speakers'use of zero anaphora in English production found a similar general discourse function across the groups, although the English was frequently ungrammatical by prescriptive standards. There were important quantitative and structural differences between speaker groups in use of the device. (Author/CB)

A competition model experiment is reported that investigated the sentence-processing strategies of English-speaking learners of Japanese and Japanese-speaking learners of English. Results indicated a correlation between learners' proficiency in Japanese and case-marker dependency in Japanese strings. (Contains 23 references.) (Author/LB)

Discusses possibilities and limitations of laboratory research methods for testing theories of second language acquisition. Reviews experimental lab studies and focuses on the motivation for conducting these studies, the use of artificial or semiartificial language structures and different design features. (54 references) (Author/CK)

Addressed three issues in a description of techniques used to study how people learn structured sequences. These are the content of what is learned, the role of conscious awareness in syntactic learning, and the role of limited-capacity processing or focal attention in syntactic learning. (Contains 86 references.) (Author)

Topical structure analysis of English-as-a-Second-Language essay tests identified two topical structure variables, proportions of sequential and parallel topics in the essays, that differentiated the highest-rated essays from the lower-rated essays. (46 references) (Author/CB)

Explored the effect of giving novice foreign language readers information about the rhetorical structure of an expository text as a text adjunct. Results indicated that an expanded framework is an effective text adjunct for the comprehension of the expository prose. (27 references) (Author/CB)