Academic literature on the topic 'Neurolinguistics. Psycholinguistics. Second language acquisition'

The topic of this article is the link between research on the neurocognition of the teaching–acquisition interface and research on second language teaching. This recent scientific enterprise investigates whether and how different aspects of second language instruction may change both the anatomy and the functioning of an adult learner’s brain even in a short period of time. In this article, I analyse how neurolinguists have operationalized three aspects specifically related to second language teaching: (1) learners’ proficiency; (2) the between-groups experimental design; (3) the implicit vs. explicit teaching dichotomy. I suggest that the degree of replicability of such neurolinguistics studies can be increased by adopting non-circular operational definitions. Such definitions should not be based on psycholinguistic or neurolinguistic metrics, but on standards that are commonly discussed in the literature on instructed second language acquisition, second language teaching, and assessment. Finally, I suggest that for future research neurolinguists should consider the advantages of welcoming on board more developmental linguists and teachers.

Lexical knowledge is complex, multidimensional, and difficult to pin down to a set of defined components. The development, organization, and use of lexical knowledge in the first and additional languages are studied in a number of neighbouring disciplines beyond second language acquisition and applied linguistics, including psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, computational linguistics, and language education. In this introduction, we highlight how the five articles in this special issue hone our understanding of different aspects of second language (L2) lexical knowledge, its acquisition, and use by adopting innovative research design, methods, and approaches to data collection and analysis from these distinct but related disciplines, affording new theoretical and empirical insights.

In this paper, I argue that current approaches to modeling of concepts in bilingual memory privilege word representation at the expense of concept representation. I identify four problems with the study of concepts in bilingual memory: conflation of semantic and conceptual levels of representation; scarcity of methods targeting conceptual representation; assumption of the static nature of the conceptual store; and insufficient acknowledgment of linguistic and cultural specificity of concepts. Basing my arguments on recent developments in the fields of neurolinguistics, linguistics, psychology, linguistic anthropology, and second language acquisition, I suggest new approaches to the study of concepts in bilingualism, based on notions of concept comparability and concept encoding. Subsequently, I discuss various ways in which concepts could develop and interact with each other in bilingual memory and address possible individual, psycholinguistic, and sociolinguistic constraints on conceptual representation and interaction in bilingual memory.

Although both Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and grammatical gender acquisition have been the focus of scientific interest for decades, a few research has been conducted in order to explore how DLD Russian-speaking children acquire this linguistic category. One of the main reasons for this is the difficulty of recruiting DLD children as we still cannot reliably identify these children. Previous studies claim that typically developing children acquire grammatical gender at about 3-4 years of age, but have difficulties with neuter gender up to 6 years of age. This brief report aims at providing the theoretical background of a research in process. The review deals with the issue of grammatical gender acquisition by Russian-speaking children diagnosed with DLD. Specifically, this paper reviews i) the main findings of studies on gender acquisition in typically developing Russian-speaking children, ii) the outcomes of research on how Russian-speaking DLD children make use of grammatical gender. References Anderson, R.T. & Souto, S.M. (2005). The use of articles by monolingual Puerto Rican Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26(4), 621-647. Bedore, L. M., & Leonard, L. B. (2001). Grammatical morphology deficits in Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 44(4), 905–924 Bishop, D.V.M., Snowling M.J., Thompson, P. A., Greenhalgh Y., & The CATALISE Consortium. (2017): Phase 2 of CATALISE: a multinational and multidisciplinary Delphi consensus study of problems with language development: Terminology. PLoS ONE, 11(7), 1-26. Clahsen, H., Bartke, S. & Göllner S. (1997). Formal features in impaired grammars: A Com­parison of English and German SLI children. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 10(2/3), 151-171. Corbett, G. G. (1991). Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Гвоздев, А.Н. (1961). Формирование у ребенка грамматического строя русского языка. Москва: АПН РСФСР. Jackson-Maldonado, D. & Maldonado, R. (2017). Grammaticality differences between Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment and their typically developing peers. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 52(6), 750-765. Leonard, Laurence B. (2014). Children with Specific Language Impairment. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Mitrofanova, N., Rodina, Y., Urek, O. & Westergaard, M. (2018). Bilinguals’ Sensitivity to Grammatical Gender Cues in Russian: The Role of Cumulative Input, Proficiency, and Dominance. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01894 Orgassa, A., & Weerman, F. (2008). Dutch gender in specific language impairment and second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 24(3), 333–364. Popova, M. I. (1973). Grammatical elements of language in the speech of pre-preschool children. In Studies of child language development, (pp. 269–80). C. A. Ferguson & D. I. Slobin (eds). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Rakhlin, N., Kornilov, S., & Grigorenko, E. (2014). Gender and agreement processing in children with Developmental Language Disorder. Journal of Child Language, 41(2), 241–274. Rodina, Y. (2008). Semantics and morphology: The acquisition of grammatical gender in Russian. Doctoral thesis. Tromso: University of Tromso. Retrieved from: https://munin.uit.no/handle/ 10037/2247. Rodina, Y. & Westeergard M. (2012). A cue-based approach to the acquisition of grammatical gender in Russian. Journal of Child Language, 39(5), 1077-1106. Roulet-Amiot, L., & Jacubowicz, C. (2006). Production and perception of gender agreement in French SLI. Advances in Speech Language Pathology, 8(4), 335–346. Silveira, M. (2006). A preliminary investigation of grammatical gender abilities in Portuguese speaking children with Specific Language Impairment. Unpublished working paper, University College London, Department of Phonetics and Linguistics. Retrieved from: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ psychlangsci/research/linguistics/publications/wpl/06papers/silveira Tribushinina, E., & Dubinkina, E. (2012). Adjective production by Russian-speaking children with specific language impairment. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 26(6), 554–571. Tribushinina, E., Mak, M., Dubinkina, E. & Mak, W.M. (2018). Adjective production by Russian-speaking children with developmental language disorder and Dutch-Russian simultaneous bilinguals. Applied Psycholinguistics, 39(5), 1033-1064. Цейтлин, С. Н. (2005). Категория рода в детской речи. Проблемы функциональной грамматики: полевые структуры. А.В. Бондаренко (ред.). Санкт-Петербург: Наука, 346-375. Цейтлин, С.Н. (2009). Очерки по словообразованию и формообразованию в детской речи. Москва: Знак. Varlokosta, S. & Nerantzini, M. (2013). Grammatical gender in Specific Language Impairment: Evidence from Determiner-Noun Contexts in Greek. Psychology, 20(3), 338-357. References (translated and transliterated) Anderson, R.T. & Souto, S.M. (2005). The use of articles by monolingual Puerto Rican Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26(4), 621-647. Bedore, L. M., & Leonard, L. B. (2001). Grammatical morphology deficits in Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 44(4), 905–924 Bishop, D.V.M., Snowling M.J., Thompson, P. A., Greenhalgh Y., & The CATALISE Consortium. (2017): Phase 2 of CATALISE: a multinational and multidisciplinary Delphi consensus study of problems with language development: Terminology. PLoS ONE, 11(7), 1-26. Clahsen, H., Bartke, S. & Göllner S. (1997). Formal features in impaired grammars: A Com­parison of English and German SLI children. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 10(2/3), 151-171. Corbett, G. G. (1991). Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Гвоздев, А.Н. (1961). Формирование у ребенка грамматического строя русского языка. Москва: АПН РСФСР. Gvozdev, A. N. (1961). Formirovanie u Rebenka Grammatičeskogo Stroja Russkogo Jazyka [The Construction of the Grammatical Basis of the Russian Language in a Child]. Moscow: The Russian Academy of Pedagogical Sciences. Jackson-Maldonado, D. & Maldonado, R. (2017). Grammaticality differences between Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment and their typically developing peers. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 52(6), 750-765. Leonard, Laurence B. (2014). Children with Specific Language Impairment. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Mitrofanova, N., Rodina, Y., Urek, O. & Westergaard, M. (2018). Bilinguals’ Sensitivity to Grammatical Gender Cues in Russian: The Role of Cumulative Input, Proficiency, and Dominance. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01894 Orgassa, A., & Weerman, F. (2008). Dutch gender in specific language impairment and second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 24(3), 333–364. Popova, M. I. (1973). Grammatical elements of language in the speech of pre-preschool children. In Studies of child language development, (pp. 269–80). C. A. Ferguson & D. I. Slobin (eds). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Rakhlin, N., Kornilov, S., & Grigorenko, E. (2014). Gender and agreement processing in children with Developmental Language Disorder. Journal of Child Language, 41(2), 241–274. Rodina, Y. (2008). Semantics and morphology: The acquisition of grammatical gender in Russian. Doctoral thesis. Tromso: University of Tromso. Retrieved from: https://munin.uit.no/handle/ 10037/2247. Rodina, Y. & Westeergard M. (2012). A cue-based approach to the acquisition of grammatical gender in Russian. Journal of Child Language, 39(5), 1077-1106. Roulet-Amiot, L., & Jacubowicz, C. (2006). Production and perception of gender agreement in French SLI. Advances in Speech Language Pathology, 8(4), 335–346. Silveira, M. (2006). A preliminary investigation of grammatical gender abilities in Portuguese speaking children with Specific Language Impairment. Unpublished working paper, University College London, Department of Phonetics and Linguistics. Retrieved from: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ psychlangsci/research/linguistics/publications/wpl/06papers/silveira Tribushinina, E., & Dubinkina, E. (2012). Adjective production by Russian-speaking children with specific language impairment. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 26(6), 554–571. Tribushinina, E., Mak, M., Dubinkina, E. & Mak, W.M. (2018). Adjective production by Russian-speaking children with developmental language disorder and Dutch-Russian simultaneous bilinguals. Applied Psycholinguistics, 39(5), 1033-1064. Цейтлин, С. Н. (2005). Категория рода в детской речи. Проблемы функциональной грамматики: полевые структуры. А.В. Бондаренко (ред.). Санкт-Петербург: Наука, 346-375. Ceitlin, S. N. (2005). Kategorija roda v detskoj reči [The category of gender in child speech]. In Problemy funkcional'noj grammatiki: Polevye struktury [Issues in functional grammar: Field structures], (pp. 346–375). A. V. Bondarko (ed.). S.-Petersburg: Nauka. Цейтлин, С.Н. (2009). Очерки по словообразованию и формообразованию в детской речи. Москва: Знак. Ceitlin, S. N. (2009). Ocherki po slovoobrazovaniju i formoobrazovaniju v detskoj rechi [On Inflection and Derivation in Child Language]. Moscow: Znak. Varlokosta, S. & Nerantzini, M. (2013). Grammatical gender in Specific Language Impairment: Evidence from Determiner-Noun Contexts in Greek. Psychology, 20(3), 338-357.

In the last few decades, the studies in second language acquisition have not answered the question what mechanisms a human’s brain uses to make acquisition of language(s) possible. A neurocognitive model which tries to address SLA from such a perspective was suggested by Ullman (2005; 2015), according to which, “both first and second languages are acquired and processed by well-studied brain systems that are known to subserve particular nonlanguage functions” (Ullman, 2005: 141). The brain systems in question have analogous roles in their language and nonlanguage functions. This article is meant to critically analyse the suggested DP model within the context of neurocognitive studies of L2; and evaluate its contribution to the field of SLA studies. References Aboitiz, F. (1995). Working memory networks and the origin of language areas in the human brain. Medical Hypothesis, 25, 504-506. Aboitiz, F. & Garcia, R. (1977). The anatomy of language revisited. 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Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Embick, D., Marantz, A., Miyashita, Y., O’Neil, W., & Sakai, K. L. (2000). A syntactic specialization for Broca’s area. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 97, (6150–6154). Fabbro, F., Clarici, A., Bava, A. (1996). Effects of left basal ganglia lesions on language production. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 82(3), 1291–1298. Ferman, S., Olshtain, E., Schechtman, E. & Karni, A. (2009). The acquisition of a linguistic skill by adults: procedural and declarative memory interact in the learning of an artificial morphological rule. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 22, 384-412. Retrieved from: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jneuroling. Fredriksson, A. (2000). Maze learning and motor activity deficits in adult mice induced by iron exposure during a critical postnatal period. Developmental Brain Research, 119(1), 65-74. Friederici, A. (2002). Towards a neural basis of auditory sentence processing. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6(2), 78–84. 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Park, D., Lautenschlager, G., Hedden, T., Davidson, N., Smith, A. & Smith, P. (2002). Models of visuospatial and verbal memory across the adult life span. Psychology and Aging, 16, 299-320. Peelle, J.E., McMillan, C., Moore, P., Grossman, M. & Wingfield, A. (2004). Dissociable patterns of brain activity during comprehension of rapid and syntactically complex speech: evidence from fMRI. Brain and Language, 91, 315-325. Pinker, S. (1994). The Language Instinct. New York: William Morrow. Poldrack, R., Packard, M. G. (2003). Competition among multiple memory systems: converging evidence from animal and human brain studies. Neuropsychologia, 41(3), 245–251. Roediger, H.L., Butler, A.C. (2011). The critical role of retrieval practice in long-term retention. Trends in Cognitive Science, 15, 20-27. Schlaug, G. (2001). The brain of musicians: a model for functional and structural adaptation. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 930(1), 281-299. Squire, L.R., Knowlton, B.J. (2000). 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Abstract The major task of this paper is the implementation of new emerging phraseological disciplines, such as phraseodidactics and phraseotranslation. The author discusses the attempt to specify and deploy those new disciplines. Taking into account a wide range of phraseological phenomena in all natural languages and the need to implement effective glottodidactis and translation, the development of phraseodidactics and phraseotranslation may appear to be useful and of high importance. Phraseodidactics, also known as didactics of phraseology, is a new emerging research discipline within the scope of applied linguistics. It is an interdisciplinary field with elements of phraseology, glottodidactics, as well as contrastive linguistics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics and sociolinguistics. The term phraseodidactics has a Germanic etymology (phraseodidaktik) and became present in the literature primarily through the work of German authors such as H.H.Lüger (1997, 2001) and S.Ettinger (1998). Nonetheless, the very concept of phraseodidactics and the discipline to which it relates still are not widespread. Phraseodidactics, in accordance with its objectives, examines the processes associated with the natural assimilation of collocations, idioms, proverbs and other reproducible word forms in the mother language, and, foremost, processes related to the teaching and learning of these structures in the second and subsequent languages. Idiomatic expressions are understood here as established combinations of at least two words with a reproducible character. The scope of phraseology also includes compound words and fixed collocations. In other words, the didactics of phraseology aspires to deal with everything that is associated with the most effective teaching and learning of broadly understood phraseology. On the other hand, phraseotranslation, as a specialized interdisciplinary science postulated in this text, is situated at the crossroads of phraseology, translation studies, contrastive studies and phraseodidactics. Recently there is a growing need for an efficient interlinguistic translation; the education of future translators of foreign languages develops more and more, but the problem of phraseologization in translation is still very rarely undertaken in scientific research. An effective translation implies equivalent messages in two different linguistic codes, which becomes extremely difficult in case of phraseology. The multiple-word structures entrenched in natural languages are therefore a major challenge in the process of translation and can be a prominent difficulty even for professional translators. At present, the need of the development of phraseological competences in the process of the didactics of foreign languages is obvious. The lack of an idiomatic understanding of speaker's language can cause serious distortions in the process of verbal communication. That is why each foreign language learner should aim at mastering receptive phraseological competences. When it comes to the level of the language production, what is the most important is the acquisition of such expressions that are most needed in user's idiolect. The needs within the scope of phraseological competences are much bigger in the case of foreign language teachers or translators to be, whose phraseological competences should be highly-developed not only in terms of reception, but also at the productive level. Thus, one should not avoid such needs in educational processes.

The past decade has seen an increasing interest within the second language (L2) field in drawing on psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic-neurobiological, and cognitive psychological theories when explaining various aspects of L2 acquisition and use (e.g., Schmidt, 1995; Schuman, 1997; Skehan, 1998). Although Sydney Lamb's account of the neurocognitive basis of language does not focus specifically on second languages, its general analysis of how the brain's linguistic system operates and develops provides highly relevant background knowledge to these recent L2 research directions.

In the incessant attempts to overcome second language (L2) acquisition difficulties and to improve second language proficiency, most of the proposed methodological approaches which address this issue place high value on individual vocabulary and grammar of a second language and fall short of integrating lexical phrases/multi-unit expressions into the teaching approaches. This, if does not exacerbate acquisition difficulties, does not by any means improve it. On this view, the ubiquitous interest in lexical phrases gave rise to their investigation in language acquisition. This paper reviews the importance of lexical phrases in language acquisition by providing further insight into their peripheral role in first language and second language acquisition alike. Also, Evidence from neurolinguistic and psycholinguistic studies are provided to account for lexical phrases representation and brain-adaptability. Further, this paper suggests the implementation of lexical phrases, in general, and the Lexical Approach, in particular, in second language acquisition. Finally, further pedagogical implications as well as self-paced ones are proposed.

The hypothesis that children surpass adults in long-term second-language proficiency is accepted as evidence for a critical period for language. However, the scope and nature of a critical period for language has been the subject of considerable debate. The controversy centers on whether the age-related decline in ultimate second-language proficiency is evidence for a critical period or something else. Here we argue that age-onset effects for first vs. second language outcome are largely different. We show this by examining psycholinguistic studies of ultimate attainment in L2 vs. L1 learners, longitudinal studies of adolescent L1 acquisition, and neurolinguistic studies of late L2 and L1 learners. This research indicates that L1 acquisition arises from post-natal brain development interacting with environmental linguistic experience. By contrast, L2 learning after early childhood is scaffolded by prior childhood L1 acquisition, both linguistically and neurally, making it a less clear test of the critical period for language.

Interest in third language (L3) acquisition has increased exponentially in recent years, due to its potential to inform long-lasting debates in theoretical linguistics, language acquisition and psycholinguistics. From the very beginning, researchers investigating child and adult L3 acquisition have considered the many diverse cognitive factors that constrain and condition the initial state and development of newly acquired languages, and their models have duly evolved to incorporate insights from the most recent findings in psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics and cognitive psychology. The articles in this Special Issue of Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, in dealing with issues such as age of acquisition, attrition, relearning, cognitive economy or the reliance on different memory systems – to name but a few – provide an accurate portrayal of current inquiry in the field, and are a particularly fine example of how instrumental research in language acquisition and other cognitive domains can be to each other.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2002.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 241-288). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

This investigation focused on the treatment of English deictic verbs of motion by Spanish-English bilinguals in Miami. Although English and Spanish share significant overlap of the spatial deixis system, they diverge in important aspects. It is not known how these verbs are processed by bilinguals. Thus, this study examined Spanish-English bilinguals’ interpretation of the verbs come, go, bring, and take in English. Forty-five monolingual English speakers and Spanish-English bilinguals participated. Participants were asked to watch video clips depicting motion events and to judge the acceptability of accompanying narrations spoken by the actors in the videos. Analyses showed that, in general, monolinguals and bilinguals patterned similarly across the deictic verbs come, bring, go and take. However, they did differ in relation to acceptability of word order for verbal objects. Also, bring was highly accepted by all language groups across all goal paths, possibly suggesting an innovation in its use.

Two conflicting findings characterize cognitive processing accompanying bilingualism. The “bilingual advantage” refers to improved cognitive performance for bilingual compared to monolingual participants. Most bilingual advantages fall under the umbrella of cognitive control mechanisms, most frequently demonstrated using the Stroop task and the Simon task (e.g., Bialystok, 2008; Coderre, Van Heuven, & Conklin, 2013). The “bilingual disadvantage,” on the other hand, refers to bilinguals’ diminished performance on tasks that require word retrieval or switching between languages. This study examined the intersection of the bilingual advantage and the bilingual disadvantage to investigate whether they stem from a single cognitive control process. The bilingual advantage was measured as speech onset time differences between monolingual and bilingual participants in the Stroop task after being primed in the same language (i.e., English prime and English Stroop for monolinguals, and either English prime and English Stroop or Spanish prime and Spanish Stroop for bilinguals). The bilingual disadvantage was measured as differences in bilingual participants’ speech onset times between the same-language conditions described above and cross-language conditions (i.e., either English prime and Spanish Stroop or Spanish prime and English Stroop). Monolinguals performed better than bilinguals did on the same-language Stroop [F(3,1) = 83.5, p < 0.001, MSE = 15415], so a bilingual advantage was not demonstrated. However, bilinguals did perform better in same-language blocks than cross-language blocks [F(7,3) = 24.6, p < 0.001, MSE = 22648]. This suggests that the current protocol successfully elicits the bilingual disadvantage. Further research is needed to evaluate whether the same cognitive control processes are responsible for the two effects. Possible extensions of this work include observing a larger number of participants to rule out between-subjects effects and using a button press rather than spoken response during the Stroop task.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2006.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 235-258). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

The Japanese language exhibits a free word-order phenomenon called scrambling. Because each noun phrase (NP) is case-marked with postpositional particles, it allows a freer word order than such languages as English. For simple transitive sentences, Subject-Object-Verb is the canonical word order while OSV is the scrambled word order. Previous studies with native speaker (NS) children have found that they go through a developmental stage during which they consistently misunderstand scrambled sentences, taking the first NP in OSV sentences to be the subject. It has also been found that NS adults experience slowdowns in reading and comprehending scrambled sentences. However, investigations into the processing of scrambled sentences by second language (L2) learners have been scarce, and it is not entirely clear how scrambled sentences are processed and acquired by L2 learners. This three-article dissertation aimed at investigating how simple transitive sentences with a scrambled word order (i.e., OSV) are processed and acquired by L2 learners whose native language is English. The first article (Chapter 2) examined L2 learners’ grammatical knowledge and production performance of the OSV sentences through two tasks (fill-in-the-blank and picture description). The results indicated a positive relationship between the learners’ general proficiency in Japanese and their knowledge/production performance of the OSV sentences, although there was a rather large individual difference even within proficiency groups. It was also found that the difficulty in producing OSV sentences was mostly due to a lack of grammatical knowledge, but the relationship of grammatical knowledge and production performance interacted with the types of sentences. For reversible sentences (in which both the subject and object NPs are animate), there was evidence that errors in the production of OSV sentences were caused by the overuse of the canonical template (i.e., SOV). For non-reversible sentences (in which the subject NP is animate and the object NP is inanimate), on the other hand, there was little evidence that a processing problem such as the overuse of the SOV template caused the production difficulty. The second article (Chapter 3) examined the comprehension processes of OSV sentences. While the results of a pilot study (sentence correctness decision task) indicated that both the L2 learners and NSs took longer to read and comprehend OSV sentences than SOV sentences, the results of a self-paced reading task suggested that the processing of OSV sentences by L2 learners might be quite different from that of NSs. The NS participants read more slowly at the second NP position when they read the OSV sentences. On the other hand, the L2 learners, regardless of their proficiency level, did not show such slowdowns. However, the data provided evidence that the advanced L2 learners integrated the case particles more consistently in their sentence comprehension than the learners with lower proficiency. The third article (Chapter 4) examined whether a psycholinguistic task (syntactic persistence with picture description) might facilitate the production of scrambled sentences among L2 learners, for the purpose of exploring the possibility of using such a method as an L2 instructional tool. While the main task (Task 4, which used regular SOV/OSV sentences as primes) was not very effective in eliciting the production of OSV sentences, the follow-up task (Task 6, which used questions in SOV/OSV orders as primes) observed a more positive effect of syntactic persistence. Based on the results, explicit instruction and practice on scrambling is suggested. Since processing of scrambled sentences requires that L2 learners be aware of the functions of case markers (and other postpositional particles) instead of relying on the canonical template, such explicit instruction and practice may also contribute to the acquisition of the particles that mark case.

The studies included in this thesis had as aim to elucidate how individual differences in phonetic learning abilities might be related to differences in more general, psychoacoustic learning abilities, and in how they might be related to differences in brain function and brain morphology.
We tested and trained English speaking volunteers to perceive the Hindi dental-retroflex phonetic contrast. We found evidence suggesting that the ability to accurately perceive "difficult" non-native contrasts is not permanently lost during development. We also tested and trained subjects to perceive the difference between non-linguistic rapidly changing and steady-state tonal sounds, and found evidence supporting the hypothesis that successful phonetic learning is in part a function of a more general psychoacoustic ability to process rapidly changing sounds.
The aim of the second study was to determine how the pattern of brain activity may change as a result of training with non-native speech sounds, and in whether it is possible to differentiate "learners" from "non-learners" on the basis of neural activation patterns. Results of this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) investigation suggested that successful learning of a non-native contrast results in the recruitment of the same areas that are involved in the processing of native contrasts; but the degree of success in learning is accompanied by more efficient neural processing in classical frontal speech regions, while making greater processing demands in left parieto-temporal speech regions.
In the final study, we correlated phonetic learning measures with brain morphology throughout the whole brain volume. We found evidence for overall larger parietal volumes in the left relative to the right hemisphere, and for more white relative to gray matter in the left hemisphere in the learners and not in the nonlearners. This finding is consistent with findings by other investigators suggesting that left-hemispheric dominance for speech may be in part accounted for by hemispheric differences in white matter connectivity, which may allow faster intra- and inter-hemispheric neural transmission. This latter feature may be critical for the processing of consonant speech sounds, which depends on the ability to process sounds that change on the time scale of 30--50 milliseconds.

This study investigates student and instructor perceptions of the causes and effects of anxiety and motivation's effect on a student's ability to learn a second language. The study focused on the participant's perceptions of the causes and effects of anxiety, and relationships between anxiety and motivation, in both short-term and long-term learners.