Phrasal Learning Is a Horse Apiece: No Recognition Memory Advantages for Idioms in L1 and L2 Adult Learners

Native (L1) and to some extent non-native (L2) speakers have shown processing advantages for idioms compared to novel literal phrases, and there is limited evidence that this advantage also extends to memory in L1 children. This study investigated whether these advantages generalize to recognition memory in adults. It employed a learning paradigm to test whether there is a recognition memory advantage for idioms compared to literal phrases in adult L1 and L2 learners considering both form and meaning recognition. Additionally, we asked whether the presence of unfamiliar vocabulary interferes with phrasal learning by looking at recall of such unfamiliar words. When encountering new idioms, L2 learners often must cope with both figurative meaning and unfamiliar vocabulary. While single word meaning need not interfere with idiomatic meaning, it is a building block for the meaning of literal phrases. In Experiment 1, L2 learners showed equal recall for the form and meaning of literal and idiomatic phrases in which either all words were highly familiar, or one word was unfamiliar. However, unfamiliar words decreased overall recognition and were also remembered significantly better in literal compared to idiomatic phrases. In Experiment 2, L1 speakers also showed no recall differences between phrase types, but they displayed a trending increase in recognition in the presence of unfamiliar words. We conclude that there is no inherent recognition memory advantage for idioms based on figurativeness alone, and word- and phrasal meaning interact differently in learner groups.

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The acquisition of word order in Dutch and German as L1 and L2

Interlanguage studies bulletin (Utrecht) ◽

10.1177/026765838800400103 ◽

1988 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 41-65 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Peter Jordens

Keyword(s):

Simple Model ◽

Adult Learners ◽

Word Order ◽

Universal Grammar ◽

First Language ◽

Linguistic Theory ◽

L2 Acquisition ◽

German Word ◽

L2 Learners ◽

L1 And L2

In a recent paper, Clahsen and Muysken (1986) argue that children acquiring German as their first language have access to the 'move alpha' matrix when constructing a grammar for German. This should explain why children have SOV base order and the rule of verb-fronting from the very beginning. In this paper, it is argued that children's OV utterances cannot be related trans formationally to VO utterances. Initially, children acquire OV and VO with different sets of verbs.Clahsen and Muysken (1986) also claim that interlanguage rules of adult L2 learners are not definable in linguistic theory. Du Plessis et al. (1987) reply to this in arguing that the interlanguage rules of adults acquiring L2 German word order fall within the range of systems permitted by the Headedness parameter, the Proper Government parameter, and the Adjunction parameter. Therefore, these adult learners should have access to Universal Grammar (UG). It is argued here that it is not necessary to make this assumption. The L2-acquisition data can be easily accounted for within a simple model of L1-structural transfer.

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Input frequencies in processing of verbal morphology in L1 and L2: Evidence from Russian

Oslo Studies in Language ◽

10.5617/osla.58 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 2 (2) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Elena Tkachenko ◽

Tatiana Chernigovskaya

Keyword(s):

Adult Learners ◽

Language Learning ◽

Morphological Processing ◽

Target Language ◽

Verbal Morphology ◽

L2 Learners ◽

Type Frequency ◽

L1 And L2 ◽

Grammatical Structures

In this study we take a usage-based perspective on the analysis of data from the acquisition of verbal morphology by Norwegian adult learners of L2 Russian, as compared to children acquiring Russian as an L1. According to the usage-based theories, language learning is input-driven and frequency of occurrence of grammatical structures and lexical items in the input plays a key role in this process. We have analysed to what extent the acquisition and processing of Russian verbal morphology by children and adult L2 learners is dependent on the input factors, in particular on type and token frequencies. Our analysis of the L2 input based on the written material used in the instruction shows a different distribution of frequencies as compared to the target language at large. The results of the tests that elicited present tense forms of verbs belonging to four different inflectional classes (-AJ-, -A-, -I-, and -OVA-) have demonstrated that for both Russian children and L2 learners type frequency appears to be an important factor, influencing both correct stem recognition and generalisations. The results have also demonstrated token frequency effects. For L2 learners we observed also effects of formal instruction and greater reliance on morphological cues. In spite of the fact that L2 learners did not match completely any of the child groups, there are many similarities between L1 and L2 morphological processing, the main one being the role of frequency.

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LEXICAL AND SYNTACTIC CONGRUENCY IN L2 PREDICTIVE GENDER PROCESSING

Studies in Second Language Acquisition ◽

10.1017/s0272263116000437 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 40 (1) ◽

pp. 171-199 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Holger Hopp ◽

Natalia Lemmerth

Keyword(s):

Adult Learners ◽

Eye Tracking ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Grammatical Gender ◽

Visual World ◽

L2 Learners ◽

Syntactic Differences ◽

L1 And L2 ◽

German Mark ◽

Gender Processing

This article investigates how lexical and syntactic differences in L1 and L2 grammatical gender affect L2 predictive gender processing. In a visual-world eye-tracking experiment, 24 L1 Russian adult learners and 15 native speakers of German were tested. Both Russian and German have three gender classes. Yet, they differ in lexical congruency, that is, whether a noun (“house”) is assigned to the same or a different gender class. Further, gender is syntactically realized on postnominal suffixes in Russian but on prenominal articles in German. For adjectives, both Russian and German mark gender on suffixes. In predictive gender processing, we find interactions of proficiency and congruency for gender-marked articles. Advanced L2 learners show nativelike gender prediction throughout. High-intermediate learners display asymmetries according to syntactic and lexical congruency. Predictive gender processing obtains for all nouns in the (syntactically congruent) adjective condition, yet only for lexically congruent nouns in the (syntactically incongruent) article condition.

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‘I me Mine’ The Acquisition of Dutch Pronominal Possessives by L1 Children, L2 Children and L2 Adults

ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics ◽

10.2143/itl.155.0.2032363 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 155 ◽

pp. 23-52

Author(s):

Elma Nap-Kolhoff ◽

Peter Broeder

Keyword(s):

Adult Learners ◽

Young Children ◽

First Language ◽

Spontaneous Speech ◽

L2 Acquisition ◽

Possessive Constructions ◽

Speech Data ◽

L2 Learners ◽

Dutch Language ◽

L1 Acquisition

Abstract This study compares pronominal possessive constructions in Dutch first language (L1) acquisition, second language (L2) acquisition by young children, and untutored L2 acquisition by adults. The L2 learners all have Turkish as L1. In longitudinal spontaneous speech data for four L1 learners, seven child L2 learners, and two adult learners, remarkable differences and similarities between the three learner groups were found. In some respects, the child L2 learners develop in a way that is similar to child L1 learners, for instance in the kind of overgeneralisations that they make. However, the child L2 learners also behave like adult L2 learners; i.e., in the pace of the acquisition process, the frequency and persistence of non-target constructions, and the difficulty in acquiring reduced pronouns. The similarities between the child and adult L2 learners are remarkable, because the child L2 learners were only two years old when they started learning Dutch. L2 acquisition before the age of three is often considered to be similar to L1 acquisition. The findings might be attributable to the relatively small amount of Dutch language input the L2 children received.

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Neural deficits in auditory phonological processing in Chinese children with English reading impairment

Bilingualism Language and Cognition ◽

10.1017/s1366728915000073 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 19 (2) ◽

pp. 331-346 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

XIANGZHI MENG ◽

HANLIN YOU ◽

MEIXIA SONG ◽

AMY S. DESROCHES ◽

ZHENGKE WANG ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Phonological Processing ◽

Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽

Superior Temporal Gyrus ◽

Neural Mechanism ◽

Reading Impairment ◽

English Reading ◽

L2 Learners ◽

L1 And L2 ◽

Esl Learners

Auditory phonological processing skills are critical for successful reading development in English not only in native (L1) speakers but also in second language (L2) learners. However, the neural deficits of auditory phonological processing remain unknown in English-as-the-second-language (ESL) learners with reading difficulties. Here we investigated neural responses during spoken word rhyme judgments in typical and impaired ESL readers in China. The impaired readers showed comparable activation in the left superior temporal gyrus (LSTG), but reduced activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and left fusiform and reduced connectivity between the LSTG and left fusiform when compared to typical readers. These findings suggest that impaired ESL readers have relative intact representations but impaired manipulation of phonology and reduced or absent automatic access to orthographic representations. This is consistent with previous findings in native English speakers and suggests a common neural mechanism underlying English impairment across the L1 and L2 learners.

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PROCESSING OF THE REDUCED RELATIVE CLAUSE VERSUS MAIN VERB AMBIGUITY IN L2 LEARNERS AT DIFFERENT PROFICIENCY LEVELS

Studies in Second Language Acquisition ◽

10.1017/s027226310999026x ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 32 (1) ◽

pp. 79-109 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Anne Rah ◽

Dany Adone

Keyword(s):

Relative Clause ◽

Native Speaker ◽

Control Group ◽

Garden Path ◽

Online Processing ◽

L2 Learners ◽

L1 Influence ◽

Versus Main ◽

Main Verb ◽

L1 And L2

This article presents new evidence from offline and online processing of garden-path sentences that are ambiguous between reduced relative clause resolution and main verb resolution. The participants of this study are intermediate and advanced German learners of English who have learned the language in a nonimmersed context. The results show that for second language (L2) learners, there is a dissociation between parsing mechanisms and grammatical knowledge: The learners successfully process the structures in question offline, but the online self-paced reading task shows different patterns for the L2 learners and the native-speaker control group. The results are discussed with regard to shallow processing in L2 learners (Clahsen & Felser, 2006). Because the structures in question differ in English and German, first language (L1) influence is also discussed as an explanation for the findings. The comparison of the three participant groups’ results points to a gradual rather than a fundamental difference between L1 and L2 processing.

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Lexicalized structural priming in second language online sentence comprehension

Second language Research ◽

10.1177/0267658317723684 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 34 (3) ◽

pp. 395-416 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Hang Wei ◽

Julie E. Boland ◽

Jonathan Brennan ◽

Fang Yuan ◽

Min Wang ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Adult Learners ◽

Relative Clause ◽

Relative Clauses ◽

Sentence Comprehension ◽

First Language ◽

Structural Priming ◽

Chinese Adult ◽

Education Levels ◽

L1 And L2

Prior work has shown intriguing differences between first language (L1) and second language (L2) comprehension priming of relative clauses. We investigated English reduced relative clause priming in Chinese adult learners of English. Participants of different education levels read sentences in a self-paced, moving window paradigm. Critical sentences had a temporarily ambiguous reduced relative clause. Across lists, critical sentences were rotated, so that they occurred either as prime or as target, and had either the same or different verb as the critical sentence with which they were paired. Prime/target pairs were separated by several filler sentences, which never contained a relative clause. Mean reading times for the disambiguating region in the target sentences were faster than in the prime sentences, but only in the same-verb condition, not in the different-verb condition. This pattern of results is consistent with L1 comprehension priming research, suggesting that similar lexically specific mechanisms are involved in L1 and L2 comprehension priming of reduced relative clauses. These findings are in line with lexicalist accounts of sentence comprehension (e.g. MacDonald et al., 1994), according to which syntactic information is bound to specific words. In addition, these findings argue against theories that postulate fundamental differences in processing of L1 and L2 (e.g. Clahsen and Felser, 2006a, 2006b).

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Investigation of Native Speaker and Second Language Learner Intuition of Collocation Frequency

10.26686/wgtn.13670635 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Anna Siyanova ◽

S Spina

Keyword(s):

Language Learning ◽

High Frequency ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Native Speaker ◽

Low Frequency ◽

Language Learner ◽

Very Low Frequency ◽

Second Language Learner ◽

L2 Learners ◽

L1 And L2

© 2015 Language Learning Research Club, University of Michigan. Research into frequency intuition has focused primarily on native (L1) and, to a lesser degree, nonnative (L2) speaker intuitions about single word frequency. What remains a largely unexplored area is L1 and L2 intuitions about collocation (i.e., phrasal) frequency. To bridge this gap, the present study aimed to answer the following question: How do L2 learners and native speakers compare against each other and corpora in their subjective judgments of collocation frequency? Native speakers and learners of Italian were asked to judge 80 noun-adjective pairings as one of the following: high frequency, medium frequency, low frequency, very low frequency. Both L1 and L2 intuitions of high frequency collocations correlated strongly with corpus frequency. Neither of the two groups of participants exhibited accurate intuitions of medium and low frequency collocations. With regard to very low frequency pairings, L1 but not L2 intuitions were found to correlate with corpora for the majority of the items. Further, mixed-effects modeling revealed that L2 learners were comparable to native speakers in their judgments of the four frequency bands, although some differences did emerge. Taken together, the study provides new insights into the nature of L1 and L2 intuitions about phrasal frequency.

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