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This study explores U-shaped behaviour in the acquisition of irregular verb morphology across three groups of Norwegian L2 learners of English. This phenomenon is especially interesting due to its significance for the organization and division between the mental lexicon and grammar. We hypothesized that if U-shaped behaviour was observable, then we would find significant differences in participants’ performance accuracy levels in conjunction with overregularization errors. We report results on the acquisition of irregular verb morphology, in addition to mean reaction times on different types of responses (accurate responses and overregularized ones). The final analysis includes data from participants from the 8 th grade (N=17), 9 th grade (N=19), and 10 th grade (N=15). We report results of the acquisition of irregular verbs, in addition to reaction latencies. Participants responded to an elicitation task to test performance on 40 items. The results are consistent with the later stages of U-shaped learning. We found an increase in overall accuracy co-occurring with a decrease in overregularization errors. We propose that the existence of U-shaped behaviour in the L2 is indicative of a general underlying input-driven learning pattern, and that this process is an integral part of acquiring knowledge upon exposure to irregularities in a productive paradigm.

The notion of the native speaker has occupied a prominent place in foreign/second language research and theoretical linguistics: it has influenced both the way we theorize about language and the way we conduct empirical research, and has had practical implications concerning second language pedagogy. In the second language tradition, it was needed as a norm and a standard to evaluate L2 attainment, and, as such, has functioned as a benchmark in terms of goals for L2 instruction (Davies, 2003). In line with this tradition, second language and lingua franca speakers' achievements have ideally been compared with those of monolingual native speakers, although these constitute different groups of speakers, with different needs and abilities. In a similar vein, much psycholinguistic and bilingualism research uses the “native speaker” norm, based on an idealized first language (L1) competence, adopting the inclusion of a control group of monolingual speakers of the language as default in empirical research.

This study investigates comprehension of subject-verb agreement by German speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs) (n=31, 7;1-12;4, mean: 9;6) and children with normal hearing (NH) (n=36, age 7;5-10;9, mean: 9;0). Previous research has shown that young children with NH have problems in the interpretation of verb inflection. For children with CIs, the subtle verb inflection information may be even harder to detect and comprehend. In a picture selection task with eye-tracking we found that children with CIs are less sensitive to number information provided by the verb (e.g., Sie malt/malen die Prinzessin ‘she/they paint(s) the princess) than children with NH (CI: 85% correct, NH: 96% correct). Children with higher working memory scores are better in identifying the number of the subject. In contrast to children with NH, children with CIs identify the number of the subject earlier and better in sentences with strong verbs, where the singular and plural verb forms are perceptually more distinctive, than in sentences with weak verbs. Thus both cognitive and perceptual factors play a role in the processing of subject-verb agreement by children with CIs.

Resumen basado en el de la publicación Monográfico con el título: ¿Qué necesitamos en el aula de ELE? : reflexiones en torno a la teoría y la práctica Se presenta un estudio sobre la capacidad de interpretar efectos de sentido relacionados con la alternancia modal indicativo/subjuntivo en estructuras condicionales con si, por parte de dos grupos de aprendices avanzados de ELE, de L1 francés e inglés, respectivamente. Los resultados son compatibles con las predicciones de ciertos enfoques generativistas de adquisición de L2, en especial la hipótesis de reensamblaje de rasgos (Lardiere 2008, 2009). Dichos resultados son también compatibles con un enfoque de pragmática cognitiva como el de la teoría de la relevancia (Sperber y Wilson, 1986/1995), que desarrolla una visión de conjunto sistemática y coherente de la forma en que los significados lingüísticos interactúan con el contexto en la comunicación humana. ESP

The present paper reports the results of a study investigating the acquisition of verb movement in L2 Spanish. Οur initial hypothesis was that there is nοt necessarily any consistency in terms of the acquisition of the three properties associated with this parameter, i.e., the acquisition of one property does nοt imply the acquisition of the others. For οur purposes, we look at the acquisition of three surface-level syntactic properties, which are determined by [+raise] setting of V-movement in Spanish. The statistical analysis gives evidence that L2 learners of Spanish have moved from the [-raise] value of English tο the [+raise] value of Spanish since they are able tο place the verb in the right position. However, the inflection remains absent to some degree. Therefore, we suggest that in Second Language Acquisition what happens is a problem with mapping (Prevost and White, 2000)., Selected papers on theoretical and applied linguistics, Vol 15 (2003): Selected Papers from the 15th International Symposium on Theoretical and Aplied Linguistics, Thessaloniki 4-6 May 2001

This article distinguishes two classes of learners according to the pedagogical methodology employed: the first focuses on the development of metalinguistic knowledge of rules and language through conscious learning; the second in­volves a naturalistic approach based upon communicative activities. This article, based on different word orders of Spanish, sets out to discover whether the envi­ronmental data determine access to the properties of the new target language. The subjects are ab initio learners (n=28) of Spanish at the University of Ply­mouth and learners (n=20) from the Instituto Cervantes, Manchester. Both groups of learners were exposed to the target language for the same amount of time and asked to interpret 32 Spanish sentences with different word orders. The results show that there are clear differences between native and both groups of non-native speakers in terms of the perception of the syntactical and pragmatical properties of the different word orders in Spanish., Selected papers on theoretical and applied linguistics, Vol 13 (2000): 13th International Symposium on Theoretical and Applied Linguisitcs, Thessaloniki 22-24 April 1999

This thesis investigates the acquisition of the spatial and figurative meanings of five Spanish spatial particles, namely sobre, encima, debajo, bajo and en, by a group of Chinese university students of Spanish as a foreign language at intermediate and upper-intermediate language levels. More specifically, this study aims to answer two questions. The first question considers the order of acquisition of prepositional meanings, that is, whether this is similar to a native language, with literal and more primary meanings acquired first and figurative ones later or, conversely, whether the pattern of acquisition is different to that found in a first language (Kemmerer, 2005; Lam, 2010). The second question of this research is to determine whether there are observable differences between the degree of acquisition and use of these prepositions in English compared to Spanish, and if so, what the characteristics of these differences are. To try to answer these questions, the performance of this group of participants in four behavioural tests is compared. The tests were a lexical identification task, a picture fill-in-the- blank task, a sentence generation task and a truth value judgment task. These tests were conducted both in Spanish, which the participants had begun to study at undergraduate level and English, which they had first been exposed to in school in a pre-puberty period. The results of this study indicate, first, that the acquisition of the literal and figurative meanings of the spatial particles in this study does not follow a pattern similar to that found in a native language. That is, meaning acquisition in a foreign language occurs in a parallel or simultaneous pattern. Furthermore, in a non-immersion context such as that of this study, the age at which students begin the study of a foreign language is not a decisive factor in determining the degree of mastery that students can obtain. The quantity and quality of the input students are exposed to; together with an appropriate methodology appear to be the most important factors in predicting the level of proficiency that can be reached.

This study tests Slobin’s (1996) claim that L2 learners struggle with conceptual restructuring in L2 acquisition. We suggest that learners can find themselves in four different reconceptualisation scenarios: the TRANSFER, RESTRUCTURING, CREATIVE/HYBRID and CONVERGENCE SCENARIOS. To test this proposal in the field of event conceptualisation, a comprehensive analysis was made of the frequency distribution of path, manner, caused motion and deictic verbs in narratives elicited from intermediate (N=20) and advanced learners (N=21) of French, as well as native speakers of French (N=23) and English (N=30). The productions of the intermediate level learners were found to correspond to the creative/hybrid scenario because they differed significantly in their motion expressions from English as well as French native speakers, except for path, which was verbalised in target-like ways early on. Advanced learners were found to be able to reconceptualise motion in the L2, as far as manner and path are concerned, but continued to struggle with deictic verbs and caused motion. The clearest evidence for transfer from the L1 was found in verbalisations among intermediate level learners of events which involved a boundary crossing.