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Two experiments and a corpus study tested whether Brazilian Portuguese (BP), which has been argued to be shifting from null subjects toward overt subjects indeed shows a comprehension preference for reduced over fuller anaphors for salient antecedents, and whether comprehension is better explained as an imbalance between processing cost and discourse function (pragmatics account), or simply the frequency of different constructions (usage-based account). Sentences with overt pronouns were read slower (Experiment 1) but rated more acceptable (Experiment 2) than sentences with null pronouns when the antecedents were salient. Sentences with repeated names showed weaker effects than overt pronouns. The corpus analysis confirmed that BP is changing, but that null subjects are not yet infrequent, especially in academic writings. We argue that these results reflect a “pronoun avoidance strategy” in BP related to its transitory state, and propose a new view that integrates elements from both the pragmatics and usage-based accounts.

This research was funded by European Cooperation in Science and Technology Action A33 “Cross-Linguistically Robust Stages of Children’s Linguistic Performance.” In addition, N.K., C.C., and I.N. were supported by the European Science Foundation Euro-XPrag Network; N.K., C.C., and N.S. were supported by the United Kingdom Economic and Social Research Council XPrag-UK Network; N.K. was supported by United Kingdom British Academy Grant SG090676; A.G. was supported by Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad Project FFI2014-56968-C4-1; A.G. and K.K.G. were supported by University of Cyprus Project 8037-61017; K.J.d.L. and L.S. were supported by Danish Council for Independent Research (Humanities) Grant 09-063957; M. Vija and S.Z. were supported by Estonian Science Foundation Grant ETF7492 and Estonian Research Council Grant SF0180056s08; K.Y. and U.S. were supported by European Commission for Education and Culture Grant 135295-LLP-2007-UK-KA1SCR and German Federal Ministry of Education and Research Grant 01UG0711; A.A. and J.v.K.T. were supported by a grant from the L. Meltzers Høyskolefond; E.H. and A.M. were supported by Grant 809/N-COST/2010/0 from the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education and National Science Centre; and D.A., M.S., and S.J. were supported by Grant ON179033 (2011-2014) from the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science, and Technological Development., Learners of most languages are faced with the task of acquiring words to talk about number and quantity. Much is known about the order of acquisition of number words as well as the cognitive and perceptual systems and cultural practices that shape it. Substantially less is known about the acquisition of quantifiers. Here we consider the extent to which systems and practices that support number word acquisition can be applied to quantifier acquisition and conclude that the two domains are largely distinct in this respect. Consequently, we hypothesize that the acquisition of quantifiers is constrained by a set of factors related to each quantifier’s specific meaning. We investigate competence with the expressions for ‘all’, ‘none’, ‘some’, ‘some ... not’ and ‘most’ in 31 languages, representing 11 language types, by testing 768 5-year-old children and 536 adults. We found a cross-linguistically similar order of acquisition of quantifiers, explicable in terms of four factors relating to their meaning and use. In addition, exploratory analyses reveal that language- and learner-specific factors, such as negative concord and gender, are significant predictors of variation., peer-reviewed

Learning people's names is a challenging task for most individuals and becomes increasingly difficult with age. In the current study, we investigated the role of the fronto-temporal network in this task by applying tDCS over the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) and the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) during unfamiliar face-name association learning. Proper name retrieval was tested with a face naming and a face-name association task. In Experiment 1, we found that real anodal tDCS over the left ATL decreased naming accuracy compared to sham stimulation because participants produced significantly more intrusions. The stimulation may have increased interference among arising competitors when retrieving the correct name associated to the presented face, as indicated by the longer response latencies in the association task after real tDCS. In Experiment 2, cathodal tDCS applied over the left ATL did not affect the participants' performance in the same tasks, ruling out a possible effect of discomfort or stimulation side effects. In Experiment 3, anodal tDCS over the left IFG led to a significant decrease in intrusions compared to sham stimulation, possibly improving a selection mechanism. Our results confirm the role of the left ATL and the IFG in the retrieval of proper names, and demonstrate the importance of their functional interaction in processing proper names.

The Aspect Hypothesis assumes that – in early interlanguages – the perfective past spreads from telic to atelic verbs because events occuring in the past are easier to be associated with predicates having an inherent endpoint in their lexico-conceptual representation. In this study it is questioned whether for initial L2ers knowing the general meaning of a verb entails knowing also its actional template and that learners have innate principles that drive them to distinguish telic and atelic verbs from scratch. Data from our experiment of prompted narrative suggest that L1 English, L2 Italian tutored learners – although having knowledge of some telic verbs of motion – prefer to use the underspecified andare `go' and to build telicity compositionally. The overuse of most frequent and “basic verbs” and the promotion of adjuncts to the rank of real arguments is a challenge for both the Aspect Hypothesis and the parametric view to the acquisition of the tense-aspect system in a second language.