Two current issues in research on first language (L1) attrition among adoptees are explored: whether adoptees have lost their L1 completely and whether relearning can help them recover their L1 if it is not completely lost. These issues are investigated by examining whether Swedish monolingual Korean adoptees’ preexisting knowledge of L1 Korean has an impact on their relearning of Korean as adults. The results suggest that Korean adoptees’ early L1 experience has left traces of the language and that these traces can have an effect on their phonetic perception when relearning the language. The finding that reexposed adoptees performed better than native Swedish learners indicates that the greatest impact on retrieving L1 knowledge comes from relearning. Given the lack of the statistically significant findings, the results demonstrate possibilities but remain open to discussion.

This study examines the contribution of early phonological processing (PP) and language skills on later phonological awareness (PA) and morphological awareness (MA), as well as the links among PA, MA, and reading. Children 4–6 years of age with poor PP at the start of school showed weaker PA and MA 3 years later (age 7–9), regardless of their language skills. PA and phonological and morphological strategies predict reading accuracy, whereas MA predicts reading comprehension. Our findings suggest that children with poor early PP are more at risk of developing deficits in MA and PA than children with poor language. They also suggest that there is a direct link between PA and reading accuracy and between MA and reading comprehension that cannot be accounted for by strategy use at the word level.

This study investigates whether and how individual differences modulate the adult second language (L2) processing of syntactic ambiguities. In a linear mixed regression analysis, we test how proficiency, working memory, reading speed, automaticity in lexical access, and grammatical integration ability affect the resolution of temporary object–subject ambiguities in L2 English. The results from 75 first language German advanced learners attest that individual differences in syntactic integration ability modulate the reliance on morphosyntactic and plausibility information. Similar to native speakers, L2 learners are found to adopt two different routes in L2 processing. The findings highlight the role of individual differences and qualify previous generalizations about the relative use of morphosyntactic and other types of information in L2 processing.

The present study addresses the questions of (a) whether Korean learners of English show sensitivity to subject–verb agreement violations in an eye-tracking paradigm, and (b) how reading goals (reading for comprehension vs. translation) and second language (L2) proficiency modulate depth of morphological agreement processing. Thirty-six Korean speakers of L2 English and 32 native English speakers read 40 stimulus sentences, half of which contained subject–verb agreement violations in English. The factors were whether a head and a local intervening noun matched in number and whether a sentence was grammatical or not. In linear mixed models analyses, both agreement violations and noun phrase match/mismatch were found to be disruptive in processing for native speakers at the critical regions (verb and following word), and locally distracting number-marked nouns yielded an asymmetric pattern depending on grammaticality. When L2 speakers were asked to produce offline oral translations of the English sentences into Korean, they became more sensitive to agreement violations. In addition, higher L2 proficiency predicted greater sensitivity to morphological violations. The results indicate that L2 speakers are not necessarily insensitive to morphological violations and that L2 proficiency and task modulate the depth of L2 morphological processing.

This paper addresses verbal performance and overuse of “not fully lexical verbs” by children with specific language impairment (SLI) and peers with typical language development (TLD). Experimental data come from picture-naming and retell narratives. Fourteen school-aged children with SLI (mean age = 6 years, 9 months) participated alongside 50 language- and age-matched peers with TLD. The results revealed that children with SLI do not use light verb constructions but only general all-purpose (GAP) verbs when unable to produce single-word, specific lexical verbs. Moreover, they do not differ from language-matched TLD children in this respect. As such, GAP verbs should be viewed as symptoms of immature language or absent representations rather than impaired language. Consequently, when discussing not fully lexical verbs productions in (a)typical development, researchers should make the fundamental distinction between GAP verbs and light verbs, and focus on GAP verbs as the relevant category in SLI.

Recently researchers have become increasingly interested in the influence of orthographic forms on second language (L2) phonology. Orthographic forms (or spellings) represent the sounds and words of a language in writing. L2 learners, in particular those in instructed settings, are simultaneously exposed to the orthographic forms and the phonological forms of the target language. Recent investigations have indicated that orthographic input can affect learners’ phonological development and word learning in their second language in various ways. The availability of L2 orthographic forms in the input to L2 learners can facilitate speech production, perception, and/or word form learning (Escudero, Hayes-Harb, & Mitterer, 2008; Showalter & Hayes-Harb, 2013). It can hinder targetlike acquisition (Bassetti, 2007; Hayes-Harb, Nicol, & Barker, 2010), or it can have mixed effects or no effect at all (Escudero & Wanrooij, 2010; Simon, Chamblessb, & Alvesc, 2010).

This study examined how adult L2 learners make use of grammatical and extragrammatical information to interpret reflexives and pronouns. Forty adult English native speakers and 32 intermediate–advanced Korean L2 learners participated in a visual world paradigm eye-tracking experiment. We investigated the interpretation of reflexives (himself) and pronouns (him) in contexts where there is a potential coargument antecedent and in the context of picture noun phrases (a picture of him/himself), where the distribution of reflexives and pronouns can overlap. The results indicated that the learners interpreted reflexives in a nativelike fashion in both contexts, whereas they interpreted pronouns differently from native speakers, even when learners had advanced English proficiency. Adopting the binding theory as developed in the reflexivity/primitives of binding framework (Reinhart & Reuland, 1993; Reuland, 2001, 2011), we interpret these results to mean that while adult L2 learners are able to apply syntactic binding principles to assign an interpretation to anaphoric expressions, they have difficulty in integrating syntactic information with contextual and discourse information.

While there is a consensus that speakers plan their utterances before they start producing them, the scope of the initial planning unit remains controversial. In subject-initial utterances, is the planning unit the whole subject phrase or a smaller “functional phrase” within the subject phrase? Allum and Wheeldon (2007) reported that speakers show faster onset latencies in producing utterances like The flower above the house is red, where the subject consists of two functional phrases (the flower and above the house) than in producing The flower and the house are red, where there is a single, longer functional phrase (The flower and the house), both in head-initial languages like English and head-final languages like Japanese. This has been taken to suggest that the functional phrase is a preferred unit of planning, rather than the whole subject. Experiment 1 in the present study replicates Allum and Wheeldon's study with speakers of another head-final language (Mandarin Chinese) and finds similar results. Experiments 2 and 3 investigate whether syntactic processing or visual grouping could potentially explain the pattern of responses, and find that they cannot. Together, these results provide further empirical support for the claim that the functional phrase is a primary unit of grammatical planning for speech production.

Some previous studies have shown that the availability of orthographic information leads to positive effects for second language (L2) phonology, while others document negative effects. In this paper, we examine the role of orthography on novel spoken-word learning by comparing word pairs that differed in most or all of their segments (nonminimal pairs) and those that only differed in one phoneme (minimal pairs) that was considered easy or difficult to discriminate. We tested the performance of learners whose native languages have transparent orthographies as well as learners with opaque orthographies. Our findings show that regardless of linguistic background and native orthographic system, availability of orthographic information during word learning did not have an effect on nonminimal pairs or perceptually easy minimal pairs. However, it had a positive effect on two minimal pairs that had the highest accuracy among the seven perceptually difficult ones, indicating that orthography only helped contrasts that were relatively easy to discriminate. The implications of these findings for L2 teaching and for future directions within L2 phonology are discussed.

To test the effects of reading speed on second-language (L2) sentence processing and the potential influence of conflicting native language word order, we compared advanced L2 learners of English with native English speakers on a self-paced reading task. L2 learners read faster overall than native English speakers. When differences in reading speed were controlled for, L2 learners were as sensitive to grammaticality manipulations as native English speakers. On-line reading times did not reflect any effect of cross-language conflict in the learners. Results from an end-of-sentence verification task showed a stronger bias toward a subject–object order in the cross-language conflict conditions in speed-matched L2 learners but not in L2 learners reading faster than native speakers. Results are compatible with hypothesized differences in resource allocation between L2 and native language processing.

On account of both their functional and their morphosyntactic characteristics, relative clauses are often viewed as indicators of complexity in child language. Morphosyntactic properties of Turkish make use of particularly arduous relative clauses in spontaneous early discourse. A matching sticker selection task was used to determine whether Turkish-learning 3- and 4-year-olds can be trained to use subject relative clauses and uniquely identifying constructions. Upon their selection of the accurate sticker, the children were exposed to relative clause constructions (relative clause condition), sentences with demonstrative pronouns (demonstrative noun phrase condition), or a general approval (positive feedback condition). The number of relative clauses increased from pretest to posttest only in the relative clause condition; the rate of using adequately discriminating forms increased in all the three conditions, albeit with a steeper increase in the relative clause condition. The results are discussed in the framework of both structural and pragmatic priming.

The argument structure complexity hypothesis (Thompson, 2003) was introduced to account for the verb production pattern of agrammatic patients, who show greater difficulty in producing transitive versus unergative verbs (argument number effect) and in producing unaccusative versus unergative verbs (syntactic movement effect). The present study investigates these two effects in the reading performance of a patient (GR) suffering from deep dyslexia. GR read nouns significantly better than verbs; moreover, her performance was better on unergative than on transitive verbs, whereas the comparison between unergative and unaccusative verbs did not differ significantly. Data support the extension of the argument structure complexity hypothesis to word naming and suggest that the two aspects of argument structure complexity occur at different levels within models of lexical processing.

This study investigated the relationship between L2 oral narrative morphosyntactic quality and L2 reading comprehension in a sample of 81 students enrolled in a Canadian French immersion program in Grade 1. Measures of French narrative generation and reading comprehension were administered concurrently. The proportion of utterances in the narratives that were judged to be grammatically acceptable was found to explain unique variance in reading comprehension, controlling for nonverbal intelligence, maternal education, phonological awareness, vocabulary and word reading. The results suggest that even in the earliest stages of L2 literacy acquisition, L2 oral language skills contribute to reading comprehension outcomes. The results of our study suggest that there may be value in providing L2 children with classroom-based story-related experiences that expose them to literate language.

This study investigated the role of length and complexity on sentence repetition in children with dyslexia and typical readers. Length and complexity each had independent effects on sentence repetition, and children with dyslexia performed more poorly than typical readers. This group effect was attributable to individual differences in language rather than memory skills. Error analyses revealed that content words (specifically adjectives) were more likely to be omitted in longer than in shorter sentences independent of complexity. In complex sentences, function words (specifically prepositions) were the most vulnerable to errors, particularly for a subgroup of children with dyslexia who had oral language difficulties. It is proposed that deficits in sentence repetition are indicative of language difficulties in children with dyslexia.

This study addressed visual word recognition in deaf bilinguals who are proficient in German Sign Language (DGS) and German. The study specifically investigated whether DGS signs are activated during a monolingual German word recognition task despite the lack of similarity in German orthographic representations and DGS phonological representations. Deaf DGS–German bilinguals saw pairs of German words and decided whether the words were semantically related. Half of the experimental items had phonologically related translation equivalents in DGS. Participants were slower to reject semantically unrelated word pairs when the translation equivalents were phonologically related in DGS than when the DGS translations were phonologically unrelated. However, this was not the case in Turkish–German hearing bilinguals who do not have sign language knowledge. The results indicate that lexical representations are associated cross-linguistically in the bilingual lexicon irrespective of their orthographic or phonological form. Implications of these results for reading development in deaf German bilinguals are discussed.

Beyond academic vocabulary, the constellation of skills that comprise academic language proficiency has remained imprecisely defined. This study proposes an expanded operationalization of this construct referred to as core academic language skills (CALS). CALS refers to the knowledge and deployment of a repertoire of language forms and functions that co-occur with school learning tasks across disciplines. Using an innovative instrument, we explored CALS in a cross-sectional sample of 235 students in Grades 4–8. The results revealed between- and within-grade variability in CALS. Psychometric analyses yielded strong reliability and supported the presence of a single CALS factor, which was found to be predictive of reading comprehension. Our findings suggest that the CALS construct and instrument appear promising for exploring students’ school-relevant language skills.

Recent research has indicated that learners exposed to second language words’ orthographic forms of words can often use this information to make inferences about the words’ phonological forms. Here we asked, do learners benefit even when the orthography is unfamiliar? We taught native English speakers minimal nonword pairs differentiated by the Arabic velar–uvular contrast (e.g., [kubu], [qubu]) and manipulated the quality of orthographic input. We found that participants were consistently unable to associate the novel phonemes with novel words. Results are discussed in terms of (a) the role of orthographic input in second language word form learning, (b) the influence of orthographic familiarity in moderating the role of orthographic input, and (c) the issue of talker variability in word learning.

We investigated when children acquire class extension rules for denominal verbs and deverbal nouns using an intermodal preferential looking paradigm. We taught French-speaking 2.5-year-olds (mean age = 2 years, 8.56 months [2;8.56], range = 2;6–2;11) and 3-year-olds (mean age = 3;3.31, range = 3;0–3;5) novel parent nouns or verbs referring to unfamiliar instruments and their functions, and then tested their interpretation of both the parent word and its denominal verb or deverbal noun. Experiment 1 demonstrated that only the 3-year-olds understood the denominal verbs. Experiment 2 demonstrated that only 3-year-olds who learned the parent verbs were able to interpret the deverbal nouns correctly. These findings suggest that French-speaking children acquire class extension rules for denominal verbs and deverbal nouns by the age of 3 years and can demonstrate this knowledge as long as they are able to learn the parent words.

In second language (L2) research and testing, measures of oral fluency are used as diagnostics for proficiency. However, fluency is also determined by personality or speaking style, raising the question to what extent L2 fluency measures are valid indicators of L2 proficiency. In this study, we obtained a measure of L2 (Dutch) proficiency (vocabulary knowledge), L2 fluency measures, and fluency measures that were corrected for first language behavior from the same group of Turkish and English native speakers (N = 51). For most measures of fluency, except for silent pause duration, both the corrected and the uncorrected measures significantly predicted L2 proficiency. For syllable duration, the corrected measure was a stronger predictor of L2 proficiency than was the uncorrected measure. We conclude that for L2 research purposes, as well as for some types of L2 testing, it is useful to obtain corrected measures of syllable duration to measure L2-specific fluency.

This study examines if type of learner-modified output differentially demonstrates noticing and whether or not this relationship holds in both face-to-face (FTF) and synchronous computer-mediated chat (SCMC) environments. Twenty-four learners of Spanish as a foreign language interacted one-on-one with an interlocutor in the FTF and the SCMC modes, during which they received corrective feedback. After each interaction, learners participated in a mode-specific stimulated recall session to measure their noticing of feedback. Data were coded for (a) feedback episode, (b) type of modified output (none, partial, or full), and (c) accurate noticing. Binary logistic regressions indicated that after feedback, partial modified output was the greatest predictor of accurate noticing of feedback. This finding applied in both FTF and SCMC.