Bilingual language development might be characterized by transfer, deceleration, and/or acceleration, the first two being relevant for the language impairment diagnosis. Studies on bilingual children’s productive phonology show evidence of transfer, but little is known about deceleration in this population. Here, we focused on phonological transfer and deceleration in L1 speech of typically developing Polish-English bilingual children of Polish migrants to the United Kingdom (aged 4.7–7). We analyzed L1 speech samples of 30 bilinguals and 2 groups of Polish monolinguals, matched to the bilinguals on age or vocabulary size. We found that bilingual children’ speech (both simultaneous and early sequential) was characterized by transfer, but not by deceleration, suggesting that while phonological deceleration phases out in children above the age of 4.7, transfer does not. We discuss our findings within the PRIMIR model of bilingual phonological acquisition (Curtin et al., 2011) and show their implications for SLT practices.

Pitch perception plays a more important role in emotional communication in English than in Korean. Interpreting the semantic aspects of pitch levels therefore presents a challenge for Korean learners of English. This study investigated how 49 Korean learners of English perceived 20 English emotional utterances. Participants were asked to complete a congruency task in which they indicated whether the category of the semantic valence was congruent with the intonation type. They also described each emotional utterance by providing an adjective. The task results of Korean participants were compared with those of a control group of 49 Anglo-American students. Statistical analyses revealed that the incongruence between the semantic meaning and the intonation type interfered with American participants’ performance more than Korean participants. The adjective task results also showed that American participants were more attuned to the interplay between the semantic meaning and the intonation type than Korean participants.

Although this special issue reveals some promising achievements, most of the contributions show that tasks of implicit learning are not or are only weakly correlated with each other, and they have inconsistent predictive power on L2 acquisition. This commentary examines four possible explanations for this surprising pattern: The (suboptimal) selection of tasks, the low reliability of measures, the deep influence of the starting level even for nominally “new” implicit tasks, and the fact that the mastery of L2 may involve other implicit processes than implicit learning measured through laboratory tasks.

Subjective measures (SMs) of awareness assume (a) participants can accurately report the implicit/explicit status of their knowledge and (b) the act of reporting does not change that knowledge. However, SMs suffer from nonveridicality (e.g., overreporting of “guess” responses) and reactivity (e.g., prompting rule search). Attempting to improve the validity of “guess” responses, we conducted an exploratory mixed-methods replication of Rebuschat et al. (2013). Participants (N = 30) were randomly assigned to Traditional, True Guess, and NoSMs conditions. True Guess participants were led to believe the computer would replace “guess” responses with random answers. Confirming that SMs are reactive, Traditional and True Guess participants responded more slowly and accurately, with greater awareness of the linguistic target. Moreover, although True Guess participants responded “guess” less frequently, interviews revealed this was due not to greater veridicality, but rather to additional reactivity. We conclude with directions for further research to enhance the validity of SMs.

Singular

Nominative—Mein guter Freund, my good friend.Genitive—Meines guten Freundes, of my good friend.Dative—Meinem guten Freund, to my good friend.Accusative—Meinen guten Freund, my good friend.

Plural

Nominative—Meine guten Freunde, my good friends.Genitive—Meiner guten Freunde, of my good friends.Dative—Meinen guten Freunden, to my good friends.Accusative—Meine guten Freunde, my good friends.

Now let the candidate for the asylum try to memorize those variations, and see how soon he will be elected. One might better go without friends in Germany than to take all this trouble about them. I have shown what a bother it is to decline a good (male) friend; well this is only a third of the work, for there is a variety of new distortions of the adjective to be learned when the object is feminine, and still another when the object is neuter. Now there are more adjectives in this language than there are black cats in Switzerland, and they must all be as elaborately declined as the example above suggested. Difficult? Troublesome? (Mark Twain, ‘The Awful German Language,’ in Twain, 1879, pp. 271–272)

It is perhaps natural that in the early years of emergence of a new field of study and research its practitioners should from time to time ask themselves what is the nature of the activity they are engaged in. The need to do so may stem from a number of different causes: philosophical, sociological and psychological. The practitioners may feel the need to establish a personal identity, that is, some accepted place for themselves in the social structure of the academic world, to achieve respect and recognition as workers in the field of scholarship, a role in the institution of higher studies. They may feel that the discipline they profess is not properly recognised within the scholarly domain, its place not clearly determined in the structure of science or scholarship, its value to society not appreciated; and that consequently it does not attract research funds in its own name, permit the establishment of courses and programmes which lead to academic degrees or qualifications bearing its name, or of learned societies devoted to discussing its problems and disseminating its notions. All of these factors I believe play a part in the motivations for the constantly renewed discussion of WHAT IS APPLIED LINGUISTICS? None of them is in any way reprehensible or unworthy. The intensity or frequency with which these discussions occur is a response to the prevailing orthodox views about the discipline itself and its relation to neighbouring disciplines found in the society where the discussions take place, and to the degree to which its practitioners (i.e. people who call themselves applied linguists) feel oppressed, unrecognised or undervalued by the members of the institution in which they work and with whom they interact. This is a whole field of investigation open to the sociologist of science to describe and explain.

This paper describes the process of acquisition in learner varieties with respect to reference and referential movement in the domain of modality. The findings are based on data from the longitudinal ESF and P-MoLL projects and on cross-sectional data of Italian learners of German, as well as German and Italian native speech. The theoretical framework is provided by Klein and von Stutterheim's (e.g., 1987) “quaestio model” and their concept of referential movement. The concept of modality is based on Dietrich's (1992) theory of modality. The present findings show that, in instructional discourse, the German native speakers prefer implicit, contextual-based modal means when referring to maintained topic information in the domain of modality, whereas in the learner varieties at least three main stages can be observed: a phase of formulaic speech and pragmatic mode, a phase of high explicitness, and a phase of approach toward implicit reference based on (target) principles of referential movement. With the help of a new category—subquaestio—I show how, with respect to the change of modal means, the use of explicit modal marking in German native speech generally arises from specific local difficulties. In contrast, the use of explicit modal reference in learner varieties remains to a large extent unaffected by whether the modal marking depends on the overall text quaestio or on local problems.

This study explored the interaction between learning conditions, linguistic complexity, and first language (L1) syntactic transfer in semiartificial grammar learning by conceptually replicating and extending Tagarelli et al. (2016). We changed the L1 background, elicited production data during debriefing, and added a binary mixed-effects logistic regression analysis to compare variability at learner and item levels with group-level variation on exposure condition, linguistic complexity, and their interaction. Our results replicated those of the original study regarding the comparative efficacy of explicit instruction; however, we also found a condition × complexity interaction absent in the original study. Debriefing sentence-production data suggest that the changed L1-L2 typological distance may have leveled off the advantage of explicit instruction in the learning of the complex V2-VF structure. Finally, our mixed-effects modeling analysis revealed that variability at learner and item levels accounted for a larger proportion of the variance of the outcomes than all the predictors combined.

This study examines the second language (L2) development of variable /s/-weakening in the spontaneous speech of L2 learners of Spanish who studied abroad in either Dominican Republic, where /s/-weakening is widespread, or central Spain, where /s/-weakening is much less common. Learners’ realizations of /s/ were coded impressionistically and acoustically by measuring voicing, center of gravity, and duration. The results show that regardless of the study abroad location, students did not change the amount of sibilance they produced over time. However, they became more nativelike with respect to /s/-voicing and duration. Additionally, whereas some linguistic factors were found to significantly constrain /s/-weakening across groups, learners did not gain sensitivity to all factors that constrain native-speaker /s/-weakening. Findings suggest that exposure to /s/-weakening during a semester abroad is insufficient for learners to adopt this sociolinguistic variable and other social and cognitive factors likely mitigate its integration into the L2 learners’ phonological systems.

This study combines explicit (pen-and-paper) and sensitive (time-pressured) measures to gauge the impact of three instructional interventions (contextualized input with meaning-focused activities, contextualized input with word-focused activities, and decontextualized input with word-focused exercises) on the learning of 20 L2 French target verbs. Participants (N = 313, L1 = Dutch) completed a combination of explicit (form recognition, meaning recall, grammatical preference) and time-pressured sensitive tests (lexical decision, semantic relatedness, grammaticality judgment) as immediate and delayed posttests. Explicit posttests show the beneficial effects of word-focused instruction, and underline the efficiency of context for meaning-related knowledge. Sensitive posttests generally confirm the explicit results, but reveal differences between both word-focused conditions related to lexical processing and strength of knowledge. This study suggests that combining explicit and sensitive measures can provide a more complete picture about the effects of L2 vocabulary instruction and shows that contextualized and decontextualized word-focused instruction benefit vocabulary learning in a complementary way.

This study sought to investigate the psychological network structure of adult Spanish heritage language (HL) learners’ motivational profile by considering interconnections among the following variables: the possible HL selves, family influence, intended HL learning effort, HL achievement goal orientations, HL enjoyment, HL anxiety, perceived classroom environment, and critical language awareness. In line with a complex systems perspective, mutually interdependent connections among variables were estimated using psychological network modeling. The analysis revealed a majority of positive associations among the system constituents, with nodes representing the possible HL selves, HL enjoyment, and intended HL learning effort holding the most central influence on the network. Results also shed light on the unexplored relevance of critical language awareness in understanding HL learners’ motivational and emotional dispositions. We discuss the theoretical, pedagogical, and methodological implications of the study, highlighting the potential of network analysis for providing insights into complex psychological phenomena.

Previous research has shown that orthographic marking may have a function beyond identifying orthographic word forms. In two visual priming experiments with native speakers and advanced learners of German (Czech natives) we tested the hypothesis that orthography can convey word-class cues comparable to morphological marking. We examined the effect of initial letter capitalization of nouns (a specific property of German orthography) on the processing of five homonymous and grammatically ambiguous forms. Both populations showed the same pattern of results: deverbal nouns (conversions) patterned together with countable nouns while in a previous study (with eliminated orthographic word-class cues) they patterned together with infinitives. Together, findings suggest that orthographic cues can trigger word-class-specific lexical retrieval/access. They also suggest a lexical entry structure in which conversion nouns, infinitives, and inflected verbal forms share a category-neutral parent node and that specified subnodes are accessed only when specifying cues are available and/or necessary for processing.

One of the authors of this commentary conducted her dissertation research (Gass, 1979) on relative clause (RC) acquisition and, with the exception of a pedagogical intervention study (Gass, 1982), has since then participated in the discussion of RC acquisition only from afar. Therefore, the opportunity to provide commentary is particularly welcome. The framework adopted in Gass' earlier work was the earliest formulation of the Keenan and Comrie (1977) noun phrase accessibility hierarchy (NPAH). In what follows, we build on and extend that earlier work within the context of SLA.

This article reports on research aimed at identifying ways of improving the contribution of Dutch infant classes to the second language acquisition of nonnative children. Verbal interactions in 15 Dutch infant classes with immigrant children were investigated. Conversations were audiotaped during five types of activity: the pupil-centered conversation, the instructional exchange, the children's group, the small-group-with-teacher, and the special second-language group. Several input and production features, which are assumed to facilitate second language acquisition, were analyzed. Potentially, the special second language group offers the best opportunities for second language acquisition with respect to input and response production; the children's group is the most favorable activity with respect to self-initiated production. Regarding the actual contribution of the five activities to an average infant-class day, however, the children's group offers most of the beneficial interaction for second-language acquisition. Implications for the teaching of young multilingual children are presented.

For more than a decade, research on heritage speakers’ (HSs’) mood selection has documented a high degree of variability in their interpretation and use of mood morphology in variable contexts. Most of the previous literature, however, has focused on late-acquired alternations, and often limited analyses to one form (i.e., subjunctive), making it difficult to draw conclusions about HSs’ knowledge of mood distinctions. This study intends to fill this gap by examining Spanish HSs’ (n = 76) and Spanish-dominant controls’ (n = 25) interpretation and use of an early acquired mood alternation, where the presence of indicative or subjunctive conveys the report of an assertion or a command. Results from two experimental tasks reveal that, even though HSs’ performance tends to differ from that of controls’—especially at lower levels of proficiency—the nature and extent of their divergences suggests the need to embrace a more nuanced analysis of HSs’ linguistic outcomes when examining modal contrasts.

THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS. Robert B. Kaplan (Ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xxvii + 641. $74.00 cloth.

This edited volume is undoubtedly one of Oxford University Press's flagship publications in the broad area of applied linguistics and second language studies. Edited by one of the best known scholars in the field—Robert Kaplan—with help from three equally distinguished colleagues—William Grabe, Merrill Swain, and Richard Tucker—the book contains 39 chapters written by leading international experts in their particular domains. Thus, it is a kind of “all-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-applied-linguistics” venture, and my overall conclusion is that the book successfully delivers what it promises: It is a collection of serious scholarly articles covering all of the key aspects of applied linguistics, with a good mix of classic topics and novel, forward-pointing concepts.

This study examined how discriminability and prototypicality of nonnative phones modulate the amplitude of the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) event-related brain potential. We hypothesized that if a frequently occurring (standard) stimulus is not prototypical to a listener, a weaker predictive memory trace will be formed and a smaller MMN will be generated for a phonetic deviant, regardless of the discriminability between the standard and deviant stimuli. The MMN amplitudes of Japanese speakers hearing the English vowels /æ/ and /ɑ/ as standard stimuli and /ʌ/ as a deviant stimulus in an oddball paradigm were measured. Although the English /æ/-/ʌ/ contrast was more discriminable than the English /ɑ/-/ʌ/ contrast for Japanese speakers, when Japanese speakers heard the /æ/ standard stimulus (i.e., less prototypical as Japanese /a/) and the /ʌ/ deviant stimulus, their MMN amplitude was smaller than the one elicited when they heard /ɑ/ as a standard stimulus (i.e., more prototypical as Japanese /a/) and /ʌ/ as a deviant stimulus. The prototypicality of the standard stimuli in listeners’ phonological representations modulates the MMN amplitude more robustly than does the discriminability between standard and deviant stimuli.

This study examined the extent to which L2 writers with varied working memory display differential pausing and revision behaviors at different periods during writing. The participants were 30 advanced Chinese L2 users of English, who wrote an argumentative essay. While composing, participants’ keystrokes and eye-gaze movements were recorded to capture their pausing, revision, and eye-gaze behaviors. The working memory battery included tests of phonological and visual short-term memory and executive functions. We divided the writing process into five equal periods. The results revealed that participants’ pausing and revision patterns were consistent with previous findings that planning, linguistic encoding, and monitoring processes dominate the initial, middle, and later composing periods, respectively. Various working memory components had differential effects on pausing depending on period, largely reflecting the predictions of Kellogg’s (1996, 2001) model. However, we identified no differences in the temporal distribution of revision behaviors contingent on working memory.