We investigated how grapheme familiarity and grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) congruence affect adult learners’ ability to make use of orthographic input (OI) during phono-lexical acquisition. Native English speakers, with no Russian experience (naïve) or learners of Russian, heard auditory forms, saw pictured meanings, and saw written input either in a No Orthography condition or an Orthography condition for words that contained unfamiliar Cyrillic graphemes, familiar graphemes and congruent GPCs, and familiar graphemes and incongruent GPCs. Naïve participants evidenced incongruent GPC interference effects. Experienced learners acquired targetlike GPCs, although beginner learners did not. In a separate experiment, naïve learners were exposed to an intervention to mitigate effects of OI; the interventions did not improve test accuracy. Results support previous findings that incongruent GPCs interfere with phono-lexical acquisition. We also found evidence that target language experience mitigates negative effects of OI, but interventions may not sufficiently aid naïve learners’ phono-lexical acquisition.

This study investigates the validity of syntactic priming as a measure of implicit language aptitude. Syntactic priming refers to the tendency to reproduce a linguistic structure due to a previous exposure to the structure. The validity of the construct was verified by collating evidence for divergent validity—whether it is dissociable from explicit aptitude; convergent validity—whether it is correlated with other measures of implicit aptitude; and predictive validity—whether it is predictive of learning attainment. One hundred sixty-six university EFL learners completed three tests of implicit aptitude: syntactic priming, sequence learning, and LLAMA_D; three tests of explicit aptitude: LLAMA_B, _E, and _F; and three tests of L2 proficiency: untimed grammaticality judgment, metalinguistic knowledge, and elicited imitation. The results showed that syntactic priming was dissociable from explicit aptitude, but it failed to converge with the other measures of implicit aptitude, and it also failed to predict L2 proficiency. The results also showed that priming was negatively correlated with sequence learning and that sequence learning was a negative predictor of learners’ metalinguistic knowledge. On the other hand, the construct validity of explicit aptitude was strong. The results suggest the multidimensionality of implicit aptitude and the need for more research into the construct validity of syntactic priming as a cognitive ability for implicit learning.

The study investigates whether comprehension of derived words in text context requires a complete understanding of word parts. It explores comprehension of derived words as a function of learner proficiency and contextual clues. Ninety English-as-a-foreign-language learners at three proficiency levels participated in three successive tests representing three clues conditions, absence of clues, availability of syntactic clues, and availability of syntactic and semantic clues. They had to supply the meaning of 22 derived pseudowords constructed with nonword stems and 22 frequent affixes—for example, stacement, gummful. The meanings of the nonword stems were provided. Test scores were compared by 3 (proficiency level) × 3 (clue condition) analysis of variance with repeated measures. The results showed effects of both variables, proficiency and clues. The largest increase in comprehension scores occurred with the addition of syntactic clues. The results imply that derived forms of familiar base words can be understood even when learners’ receptive morphological knowledge is not complete.

Recently, several studies in SLA (e.g., for discourse, Alanen, 1995; Leow, 2001b; Rott, 1999; for problem-solving tasks, Leow, 1998a, 1998b, 2000, 2001a; Rosa & Leow, in press a, in press b; Rosa & O'Neill, 1999) have addressed the operationalization and measurement of attention (and awareness) in their research methodology. Studies have employed think-aloud protocols to gather concurrent, on-line data on learners' cognitive processes while they interacted with L2 data. However, the issue of reactivity—the act of thinking aloud potentially triggering changes in learners' cognitive processes while performing the task—has not been empirically addressed in the SLA field. The present study empirically addresses the effects of thinking aloud during the reading process on learners' comprehension, intake, and controlled written production. Participants were first-year college-level students of Spanish exposed to the same passage, pretest, and posttest assessment tasks but differed on type of condition (±think aloud). Results indicate that reactivity does not play a significant role in learners' subsequent performances.We would like to especially thank the SSLA statistician and our own statistician Dr. Rusan Chen for improving the statistical section of our study.

This volume aims to rekindle interest in the question of whether insights from the study of second language (L2) acquisition can usefully be called on to provide explanations for pidgin and creole genesis, providing (mainly) creolist perspectives.1 Not surprisingly, the focus of several contributions is on transfer in pidginization, creolization, and L2 acquisition.

This paper discusses current literature dealing with the pedagogical implications of the ACTFL Provisional Proficiency Guidelines. In Higgs and Clifford (1982) and Omaggio (1984), for example, it is argued that grammatical accuracy needs to be stressed from the beginning of instruction. In this paper those arguments are reviewed in the light of second language acquisition research, and it is suggested that such emphasis on grammatical correctness is unwarranted.

In the current study of applied cognitive linguistics (CL), schematic diagrams that represent generalizations of physical-spatial experience were applied in a computer-based tutor that trained English prepositions for second language (L2) learners. Behavioral and electrophysiological (ERP) measures were used to examine whether schematic-diagram feedback provided by the tutor had an instructional advantage over the minimally informed correctness feedback. Behavioral results confirmed this prediction and further revealed that the treatment difference was more striking when the participants had a lower L2 proficiency. The ERP results also supported the prediction. Violation uses of prepositions yielded an N270 and an N400. Schematic-diagram feedback motivated significant changes in brain potentials, whereas correctness feedback failed to do so. Overall, our findings suggest that CL-inspired instruction of a relatively short duration led to significant improvements in learners’ behavioral productive performance and in their sensitivity to semantic violation of preposition use during online sentence processing. The study provided strong neurolinguistic evidence for CL-inspired pedagogy in supporting L2 learning.

A subtest of the LLAMA test battery (LLAMA_D) has been proposed as a potential test of implicit learning aptitude. To improve its construct validity, in the present study, the original LLAMA_D (a) instructions for incidental learning were modified, and (b) confidence ratings of test responses and (c) reaction time (RT) measurements were added. This revised LLAMA_D was administered along with the other LLAMA subtests (LLAMA-B, -E, and -F). Unconscious knowledge that may (not) result from the exposure was assessed through the relationship between the accuracy/RT and confidence ratings. The results suggest that LLAMA_D accuracy largely reflects conscious retrieval of previously heard sound sequences. However, an index derived from the LLAMA_D RT measure (coefficient of variance) was associated with an aspect of oral fluency, which is presumably dependent on proceduralization. Several recommendations are proposed to redesign and extend LLAMA_D as a potential aptitude test for proceduralization.

Understanding how language modality (i.e., signed vs. spoken) affects second language outcomes in hearing adults is important both theoretically and pedagogically, as it can determine the specificity of second language (L2) theory and inform how best to teach a language that uses a new modality. The present study investigated which cognitive-linguistic skills predict successful L2 sign language acquisition. A group (n = 25) of adult hearing L2 learners of American Sign Language underwent a cognitive-linguistic test battery before and after one semester of sign language instruction. A number of cognitive-linguistic measures of verbal memory, phonetic categorization skills, and vocabulary knowledge were examined to determine whether they predicted proficiency in a multiple linear regression analysis. Results indicated that English vocabulary knowledge and phonetic categorization skills predicted both vocabulary growth and self-rated proficiency at the end of one semester of instruction. Memory skills did not significantly predict either proficiency measures. These results highlight how linguistic skills in the first language (L1) directly predict L2 learning outcomes regardless of differences in L1 and L2 language modalities.

This most recent exposition of Chomsky's ideas about the language faculty strives to reach a deeper level of explanatory adequacy. Rather than the question of “What does knowledge of language consist of?” Chomsky asks the question “Why is the language faculty the way it is?” His basic answer to this question is the following: Two sorts of conditions are imposed on the language faculty, conditions arising from its place in the cognitive architecture “bare output conditions” and conditions of conceptual naturalness such as economy, simplicity, and nonredundancy. Minimalism is thus a call for theoretical simplicity with respect to the constructs used to explain language phenomena: “It is all too easy to succumb to the temptation to offer purported explanation for some phenomenon on the basis of assumptions that are roughly of the order of complexity of what is to be explained. . . . Minimalist demands at least have the merit of highlighting such moves, thus sharpening the question of whether we have a genuine explanation or a restatement of the problem in other terms” (pp. 234–235).

In this article, the bilingual speech of members of Spanish, Portuguese, and Algerian communities in France is examined. After having conducted a systematic inventory of all the instances of code-switching in the corpus, the authors propose a model for their classification. This is followed by a quantitative analysis of a sample of interactions. Finally, a qualitative analysis is presented which aims to determine the different functions fulfilled by code-switching according to the speaker's intentions and the dynamics of the interaction.

Little is known about how nonnative speakers process novel language patterns in the input they encounter. The present study examines whether nonnatives develop a sensitivity to novel binomials and their ordering preference from context. Thirty-nine nonnative speakers of English (L1 Arabic) read three short stories seeded with existing binomials (black and white) and novel ones (bags and coats) while their eye movements were monitored. The existing binomials appeared once in their forward (conventional) form and once in their reversed form. The novel binomials appeared in their experimentally defined forward form in different frequency conditions (two vs. four encounters) and once in the reversed form. Results showed no advantage for existing binomials over their reversed forms. For the novel binomials, the nonnative speakers read subsequent encounters significantly faster than initial ones for both frequency conditions. More importantly, the final reversed form also led to faster reading, suggesting that L2 speakers process the reversed form of a novel binomial as another encounter, ignoring the established order.

This peer commentary emphasizes the importance of placing frequency in an overarching theoretical framework of language acquisition. Three issues are raised that appear to be both important and timely: (a) the question of how innate, or initial, cognition can deal with stimulus frequency; (b) the likelihood that frequency has a differential impact depending on the type of knowledge concerned; and (c) preliminary evidence that frequency affects receptive language knowledge more than productive knowledge, which raises the issue of a possible dissociation between the two knowledge types.

This study is the first to investigate subject-level variability in sociolinguistic evaluative judgements by 30 adult L2 German learners and explore whether the observed variability is characterizable as a function of individual differences in proficiency, exposure, and motivation. Because group-level estimates did not paint an accurate picture of the individual, we propose methods capable of integrating population-level estimates with person- and ensemble-centered approaches so as to reconcile generalizability and individuality. Using random effects from Bayesian mixed-effects models, we found that global subject-level variability in evaluative judgements was not predicted by individual differences. By building homogeneous ensembles (i.e., subgroups of individuals with similar evaluative judgements), however, it was possible to assess whether ensembles were characteristic of certain levels of individual differences. This ensemble-centered approach presents an innovative way to address the group-to-individual generalizability issue in cross-sectional data and transcend individual variability in order to make tentative generalizations of individual cases to wider populations.

Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST), an instantiation in applied linguistics of complexity epistemology that transcends disciplinary boundaries, has gained much traction and momentum over the last decade, finding expressions in a fast-growing number of empirical second language developmental studies. However, the literature, while rapidly expanding, has displayed much confusion, notably oscillating between invoking CDST as a metatheory and as an object theory. Then, too, the metaphorical genesis of CDST—the metaphorical adoption of complexity epistemology from physical sciences—has seemed to invite miscellaneous interpretations, rendering CDST an ostensibly all-in-one conceptual prism. This article explores the epistemology of CDST, tracing its ontology and examining its role in second language developmental research. This enables a more nuanced understanding of CDST, while at once surfacing critical issues and directions for future research, as it moves toward a pluralistic approach to investigating CDST as a potentially unique lens on second language development.

In recent years, considerable attention has been given to the way native speakers (NSs) of a language address nonnative speakers (NNSs). Indeed, research of NS-NNS conversation has become a point of convergence of a number of language research interests. Various claims have been made regarding the nature and significance of the characteristics of speech between NSs and NNSs, most important among these the notion that there exists an identifiable linguistic register which NSs consistently select for addressing less than fully proficient NNS participants.

Although lexical diversity is often used as a measure of productive proficiency (e.g., as an aspect of lexical complexity) in SLA studies involving oral tasks, relatively little research has been conducted to support the reliability and/or validity of these indices in spoken contexts. Furthermore, SLA researchers commonly use indices of lexical diversity such as Root TTR (Guiraud’s index) and D (vocd-D and HD-D) that have been preliminarily shown to lack reliability in spoken L2 contexts and/or have been consistently shown to lack reliability in written L2 contexts. In this study, we empirically evaluate lexical diversity indices with respect to two aspects of reliability (text-length independence and across-task stability) and one aspect of validity (relationship with proficiency scores). The results indicated that neither Root TTR nor D is reliable across different text lengths. However, support for the reliability and validity of optimized versions of MATTR and MTLD was found.