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• A particularly large data set and modern modeling give new insights into variation. • Grammatical aspect, persistence, and frequency exert a consistent effect on marking. • Second-language acquisition processes and unique sociohistories explain variation. • There is a core grammar of variable past inflection in English. • Patterns of grammatical variation purportedly unique to creoles are unexceptional. In this paper, we investigate variable past inflection in four New Englishes. Our data are drawn from the conversational parts of the Hong Kong, India, Jamaica, and Philippine subcomponents of the International Corpus of English. We investigate the entire range of language-internal factors that have been found to influence non-obligatory past marking in varieties of English. This includes morpho-phonological verb class, lexical aspect, grammatical aspect, marker persistence, the presence or absence of a temporal adverbial, and, for consonant-final regular verbs, preceding and following phonological environment. We also consider verb frequency, which has received only scant attention in past inflection research so far. Employing both mixed-effects regression and random forests, we argue that, despite inter-variety differences, there is a core grammar of past inflection, which is constrained by general structural and cognitive phenomena such as grammatical aspect and marker persistence, with frequency also exerting an important and consistent effect. This has implications for debates about universals vs. substrate influence or creole effects in morphosyntactic variation in English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary purpose of the paper was to review several secondary sources in the field of Second Language Acquisition. Consequently, various literatures available from PubMed, Scopus, the Cochrane Library, the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Google Scholar, reference lists, and ongoing studies were reviewed. The current research identified and analyzed psycholinguistic factors that impact second language acquisition by immigrants with special emphasis on psychological, linguistic, and social determinants. From the literature review that was conducted, it was established that several previous studies confirmed that age at migration has an inverse correlation with mastery of the second language. Also, it was found that immigrants from groups that are largely represented in the host country have a lower probability of achieving second language proficiency. Further, the linguistic distance between the native and the target language is associated with second language acquisition. Concerning social and psycholinguistic factors, a difference exists between genders in the achievement of good oral skills and family particularly matters in the assimilation into the new culture. Therefore, this review paper highlighted the need for support from the local communities, the government and the non-governmental organizations to help the immigrants effectively learn a second language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper we offer a panoramic overview of the development of Andean Spanish and Andean Linguistics, from a theoretical point of view of language contact and universal grammar. We discuss how the notion of Andean Spanish came into existence, the issues under debate, and the consequences of different theoretical positions. We also introduce the contents of the papers included in this special issue, and highlight their key points, framing them in the context of the research on universal grammar. The following five areas are covered: (1) the convergence of Quechua and Aymara, (2) the impact of bilingualism on intonation, (3) the sharing of suffixes in contact situations, (4) the modification of the present perfect tense in Spanish in contact with Quechua, and (5) the properties of the Quechua case system from the point of view of contact varieties. Finally, we provide some remarks on bilingual education, and some suggestions for further directions for future research. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper examines three sources of knowledge in the acquisition of English articles by second language (L2) learners: L1-transfer, L2-input and Universal Grammar (UG). The paper examines patterns of English article (mis)use among L2-English learners whose L1 either has articles (Spanish) or lacks articles (Russian). It is shown that L1-Spanish learners of English transfer the semantics of Spanish articles onto English, and thus correctly categorize English articles on the basis of definiteness. In contrast, L1-Russian learners of English exhibit fluctuation between the concepts of definiteness and specificity, consistent with earlier findings by . It is shown that the L2-learners’ performance cannot be a result of domain-general statistical learning: despite a large hypothesis space for what English articles might mean, learners of English entertain only those hypotheses that involve semantic universals. It is argued that while L1-Spanish speakers rely on transfer, L1-Russian speakers, in the absence of transfer, have direct access to semantic universals, and fluctuate between them. The learners’ difficulty in choosing the appropriate semantic universal for English (definiteness) is argued to stem from problems generalizing from input triggers. Thus, all three factors – L1-transfer, access to semantic universals through UG, and input triggers – are shown to be relevant for the acquisition of English articles. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper provides an analysis of Chocó Spanish (CS) neutral declarative intonation. Results show that this Afro-Colombian dialect, in line with other black vernaculars spoken in Latin America and other cases of Spanish in contact, presents a reduced inventory of pitch accents when compared to other varieties of Spanish. Specifically, L+H* (i.e., peak alignment within the stressed syllable) predominates in both prenuclear and nuclear phrase positions, which deviates quite significantly from common Spanish trends, where there is often a distinction between nuclear L+H*/L* and prenuclear L+>H* (i.e., peak displacement to a post-tonic syllable). Conversely, at the intermediate and intonational phrase levels (ip and IP, respectively), CS appears to reflect other native (non-contact) varieties of Spanish, showing H- ip boundaries to indicate the continuation of a thought and L% IP boundaries to signal the conclusion of an idea. Our findings are further compared with results from other contact varieties to show that certain aspects of CS intonation may be conceived as the byproduct of the transmission of second language (L2) intonational features to following generations of first language (L1) speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Teachers in EMI and EFL classes in a Chinese university display various translanguaging practices. • Most teachers recognise and adopt translanguaging in content teaching. • Students generally hold neutral to positive attitudes towards translanguaging practices. • Students express their learning needs of using translanguaging for scaffolding. With multilingualism drawing increasing attention from sociolinguistic scholars in the past two decades, the traditional monolingual ideology in language teaching has been challenged. As a new paradigm in multilingualism, translanguaging values multilingual users' integrated use of their full linguistic resources, and it offers a new perspective on second language teaching and learning. By employing a mixed-methods approach, including classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, and a questionnaire, the study presented in this paper investigated both teachers' and students' use of and attitudes towards translanguaging. The findings show that, in general, the students hold a neutral-to-positive attitude towards translanguaging practices. Moreover, although the teachers have different attitudes and practices, most of them recognise the effectiveness of translanguaging for content learning in order to deepen understanding, create class rapport, and achieve better learning for students with lower English-language proficiency. The resistance towards the implementation of translanguaging, including language policy, monolingual ideology and overuse of first language (L1), were discussed. This paper concludes by presenting the implications of the study's findings for language teaching and learning with a key point regarding the need to develop systematic and contextualised translanguaging pedagogical strategies. Furthermore, this paper argues that it is important for teachers and students to broaden their perceptions and assume a multilingual perspective in language learning and teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the spontaneously produced intonation of Afro-Bolivian Spanish (ABS) declaratives. ABS is an Afro-Hispanic language of the Americas (AHLAs) spoken in the region of Los Yungas, Department of La Paz, Bolivia. The main findings indicate the presence in ABS of certain intonational features that diverge from those of other native varieties of Spanish. In line with recent hypotheses on the genesis and evolution of ABS and other AHLAs ( Sessarego, 2013a,b ), we propose that our results reflect advanced second language acquisition processes, which do not imply any previous (de)creolization phase for these Afro-Hispanic varieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Authentic Overpassivization errors rarely carry passive meaning. • Overpassivization is not caused or sanctioned by causativization of target verbs. • Unergative verbs, unlike unaccusatives, are rarely passivized. • There is no evidence of Overpassivization in English-speaking learners' L2 Chinese. • Overpassivization follows a U-shaped developmental path. Overpassivization errors such as * My mother was died have attracted L2 researchers' attention since the 1970s. The most influential account of this phenomenon to date, the Conceptualizable Agent analysis, attributes its cause to language users' discourse-pragmatic perspective on described events. The analysis has been widely supported with experimental data but the original study that introduced the concept of conceptualizable agent has never been subjected to close and critical examination. The current paper evaluates its basic assumptions, experimental design, interpretation of data, and theoretical and empirical implications, including the developmental pattern of Overpassivization and its predicted existence in L2 Chinese. We show that Overpassivization is neither caused nor sanctioned by an imaginary agent in discourse contexts and the phenomenon can be more naturally accounted for as learners' superfluous morphosyntactic marking of NP-movement involved in the derivation of unaccusative sentences. In conclusion, Overpassivization should not be regarded simply as L2 learners' fickle selection of verb forms based on their conceptualization of events. Instead, this unique error pattern observed in adult L2 English should be analyzed as a small but important piece of a much larger puzzle, i.e., the nonnative acquisition of linguistic properties associated with split intransitivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Chinese listeners' perception of Politeness cues in Korean was examined. • Random stimuli judged by naïve Chinese listeners showed below chance level (52.8%). • Accuracies increased to 57.8%(naïve) and 62.5%(experienced) when blocked by speaker. • Language experience facilitates the acquisition of language-specific politeness cues. This paper is a socio-phonetic study into the ways that affective meanings, particularly those related to politeness, are perceived cross-culturally. Building on previous research [Brown et al., 2014], the present experiments investigated the perception of acoustic cues associated with politeness in Korean by two groups of Chinese listeners: naïve listeners and experienced learners. The aim of this study is two-fold: to assess whether second language (L2) learners can access acoustic information for a politeness-related social stance in the L2, and whether L2 experience can improve learners' ability to attend to the relevant cues. In Experiment 1, randomly ordered isolated stimuli produced in either a deferential or an intimate context by native Korean speakers were judged by naïve Chinese listeners. Similar to English listeners in Brown et al. (2014), Chinese listeners' overall accuracies were below chance level (52.8%). When the same stimuli were presented in a blocked by speaker design in Experiment 2, accuracies increased to 57.8% for naïve listeners and 62.5% for experienced listeners, indicating that language experience can facilitate the acquisition of the language-specific acoustic correlates of politeness. The implications of these findings are discussed in light of the effects of L2 experience in immersion settings on the implicit learning of sociolinguistic knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper discusses two types of accents between two Chinese dialects, Taiwanese and Mandarin. The Taiwanese accent of Mandarin is referred to as Taiwanese-Mandarin, and the Mandarin accent of Taiwanese is referred to as Mandarin-Taiwanese. In this research, I establish two corpora and propose a marking-based model of accent formation, which considers universal marking a key to the emergence of accented forms. An accent occurs when unmarked forms emerge to replace some marked forms of the target language (L2). The speaker encountering an L2 constraint ranking may build his/her own ranking, which may or may not be identical to L2. In terms of Optimality Theory, a constraint in L1 may be promoted or demoted in the accented L2, and constraint mobility operates to achieve the unmarked. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In recent research on L2 acquisition, there has been considerable emphasis on interfaces between the linguistic system and grammar external components, such as syntax/discourse, or between different modules of grammar, such as syntax/semantics, syntax/morphology or morphology/phonology. This has led to proposals that difficulties experienced by L2 learners can be explained in terms of problems with integrating linguistic phenomena relevant to certain interfaces. With some exceptions, there has been a tendency to consider at least some interface phenomena as inherently problematic, while others are inherently unproblematic. This paper provides an overview of L2 research on interfaces, comparing different interface domains. I conclude that we must be wary of assuming that all linguistic interfaces are equally problematic or unproblematic or that different linguistic phenomena pertaining to the same interface will necessarily behave alike. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper examines the complex interplay between phrasal prosody, syntax, and meaning in English and Spanish, and explores its implication for second language acquisition (SLA). We present L2 data from L1 Spanish/L2 English learners which indicate that moving from syntax to prosody to encode the thetic/categorical distinction is far more challenging than moving from syntax to prosody to align the focused constituent with Nuclear Stress. On the other hand, L2 data from L1 English/L2 Spanish learners indicate that moving from prosody to syntax to encode the thetic/categorical distinction is far less challenging than moving from prosody to syntax to align the focused constituent with Nuclear Stress. We offer a grammatical account of this seemingly contradictory situation, in support of the view that second language learners acquire a grammatical system rather than isolated patterns. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper reports four experiments that test whether persistent problems of second-language (L2) learners with L2 inflection, such as case or subject–verb agreement, are the consequence of age-related grammatical impairment of L2 morphosyntax or differences in processing efficiency between natives and non-natives. Fifty-nine L1 English, Dutch and Russian advanced to near-native L2 speakers of German were tested on their ultimate attainment of case marking, subject–verb agreement and gender concord. Different off-line and on-line tasks were employed. Cross-linguistic and cross-experiment comparisons of native and non-native performance show that native-like ultimate attainment of L2 inflection is possible for postpubescent learners in L2 grammar and L2 processing. Non-target-like L2 inflection is systematically related to L1 transfer and limitations in L2 processing efficiency. In conjunction, these findings argue against a critical period for morphosyntax in L2 acquisition; rather, they suggest that non-native and native grammars and processing systems are fundamentally identical, with L2 systems being computationally less efficient due to L1 influence. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper, we argue against the emergentist position that functional morphology can be acquired by induction from properties of the target-language surface phonetic string. Two experiments are presented, which examine oral production data from Mandarin speakers at intermediate levels of proficiency in English. The first experiment is on the acquisition of English past tense morphology, the second on the acquisition of English articles. In both cases, learners are quite successful at supplying the appropriate morphology. A detailed examination of the phonetics of learners’ outputs shows that many of their productions cannot be derived from the surface strings available in the ambient input. In particular, the L2 learners produce tense and articles in ways which are not found in either the L1 or the L2, namely, with fortis release on tense inflection and stress on articles. We maintain that options made available by Universal Grammar, together with transfer of prosodic representations from the L1, best account for such behaviour. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study investigated the second language acquisition of resolutions of the argument dependencies of verbs. The investigation adopted an emergentist approach, assuming that acquisition is item-based and construction-based. The paper investigated argument dependencies that are resolved in complex constructions and by pragmatic interpretation. The data were from a longitudinal case study of a 12-year-old Spanish learner of English, Ana, who wrote stories describing 15 different wordless picture books during a 201-day period. The findings indicate that Ana began by producing only a few types of complex constructions that were lexically-selected by a small set of verbs. Gradually, she produced an increasingly large range of constructions. Ana also gradually increased the complexity of her language in terms of the serial use of dependent clauses and phrases. By the end of the study, she may have developed linguistic abilities that can be described as grammaticalized, generalized linguistic constructions or automatic processing routines. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper compares production and comprehension data from children acquiring Dutch as a second language (L2) with children acquiring Dutch as a first language (L1). Using the same experimental methodology for all subjects, it investigates how these two groups of learners acquire direct object scrambling, a property of Dutch which requires syntactic, semantic and discourse knowledge. A comparison of production and comprehension data from the same individuals suggests that in child L2 acquisition – as observed in child L1 acquisition – there is a discrepancy between production and comprehension in this domain. Contrary to what is generally expected to be the case, however, it is production which is more targetlike than comprehension. Several explanations for this finding are explored, including the lack of discourse integration and processing problems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Quantitative linguistics is employed to study interlanguage as a system. • Interlanguage of speakers with different L1 has different typological characteristics. • Improvements are made to the study scope of linguistic typology. • An in-depth understanding of the characteristics of the interlanguage system is provided. Interlanguage studies have shifted over time from the early qualitative studies to quantitative studies of specific linguistic structures. However, the focus of these studies is usually on a partial aspect of an interlanguage instead of the whole system. Therefore, there remains a paucity of quantitative studies on interlanguage from the typological perspective. Based on a syntactically-tagged corpus that we built, and taking a quantitative linguistic metric, this paper reports the typological change in Chinese interlanguage from two native language backgrounds i.e., English and Japanese. The findings show that (1) the interlanguage of native English speakers and native Japanese speakers have the same preference for SV and VO; (2) interlanguage is a gradual developmental system, and the typological features of native language have an influence on the development of interlanguage typological features; (3) typological markedness between NL and TL affect the development of interlanguage's typological features, and experience with L2 can also influence L2 acquisition; (4) the dependency direction can be universally applicable as an indicator to investigate the overall development of interlanguage typology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Second language investments for academic and social purposes vary considerably. • Language investments are shaped by agency to invest in particular identities. • Multiple ideologies play a role in second language investments. This paper reports findings of a qualitative study on a group of cross-border mainland Chinese students' English learning experiences in an English medium instruction (EMI) university in Hong Kong. It focuses on their investments in English-mediated practices in the university context, with particular attention to the mediating role of identity, capital and ideology in their second language (L2) investments. Findings indicate that the participants were invested in L2 practices for academic purposes by leveraging their cultural capital to speak and practise their L2 in the classroom, which enabled them to construct desirable academic identities as competent university students. However, their L2 investments for social purposes were somewhat constrained by their lack of necessary cultural capital to secure access to L2 interactional opportunities outside the classroom. Findings also suggest that their differential levels of investments in different L2 practices during their cross-border studies appeared to be shaped by their exercise of agency to invest or otherwise in particular identities and forms of capital and mediated by multiple ideologies with respect to the role of English as the world language, native-speakerism, and cultural differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The imperfective paradox (IP) refers to the fact that the imperfective-progressive yields completion entailment with atelic predicates (e.g., Livia was pushing the chair → Livia pushed the chair = true) but not with telic predicates (Livia was peeling the tangerine → Livia peeled the tangerine = not necessarily true). The paper questions whether L2 learners too – like adult native speakers – are sensitive to the IP. Ninety-nine adult L2 Italian learners with different L1s and proficiency levels underwent a novel version of the completion judgment task based on event sub-intervals. In this task, learners did not assess if imperfective and perfective events in a video clip was completed but when. Analysis of reaction times and of interruptive-clicks showed that beginner and intermediate L2 learners – unlike native speakers – did not differentiate the patterns of completion between perfective and imperfective predicates and between telic and atelic predicates. It is possible that – at initial stages of acquisition – such aspectual oppositions are still underspecified. These results challenge the predictions of the Lexical Aspect Hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]