Language, Interaction and Acquisition - Volume 13, Issue 1, 2022

Through a survey of crosslinguistic empirical studies on narratives and in the domain of motion events, we argue that the principles of language use pose a hurdle for second language acquisition, an issue that has not been given adequate attention in earlier research. These principles are part of our pragmatic knowledge which encompasses language-specific information organization at the discourse level as well as event schemata at the level of construing reportable units. The findings show how highly competent L2 speakers activate L1-based knowledge that reflects deeply entrenched principles and seems resistant to change.

This study deals with the creation of cardinal numerals and accommodation in Gulf Pidgin Arabic (GPA) as it is spoken among foreign workers (FWs) and native Saudi Arabic speakers (Ss) in Saudi Arabia. Under the Feature Pool Hypothesis (Mufwene, 2001) and the Mutual Accommodation Theory (Thomason & Kaufman, 1988), this study looks at the features of gender and number agreement, and word order of the cardinal numeral and the noun. Data comes from interviews between Ss and FWs in GPA, and photo elicitation interviews used with Ss to identify how cardinals are used in Najdi Arabic. Through the lens of the Feature Pool Model, I offer a brief account of how cardinal numeral forms are selected in GPA. In particular, I examine how well cognitive factors account for the development and restructuring processes of the cardinal numeral system in GPA by taking into account factors such as frequency, perceptual salience (detectability), and pattern regularization, as well as the Foreigner-Talk register and accommodation. The results reveal strong tendencies of accommodation and conventionalization in numeral form selection.

Cet article compare la production des clitiques objets directs (OD) et indirects (OI) chez les enfants francophones. L’analyse s’appuie, d’une part, sur des données spontanées du corpus York de la base de données CHILDES, et d’autre part, sur des données induites récoltées auprès de 48 enfants francophones âgés de 3;03 à 5;02 ans. Les résultats montrent que les enfants préfèrent l’omission des clitiques OD et OI à toute autre possibilité, et maintiennent l’omission des clitiques OI pendant plus longtemps que celle des clitiques OD. Nous concluons qu’il existe une asymétrie dans l’acquisition des clitiques objets. Nous proposons que cette asymétrie provient d’une asymétrie structurelle dans la grammaire cible en ce que les enfants possèdent la configuration computationnelle, mais doivent toujours apprendre le contenu lexical de chaque verbe afin de restreindre la portée des omissions.

Languages express events in the world by means of transitive and intransitive constructions, whose properties differ according to language typology. Children witness how specific languages express transitivity by listening to linguistic input, which varies according to contextual variables (such as the age of the speaker and the addressee). In this study, we investigated word order, one feature that typically helps discriminate between transitive and intransitive constructions but is more reliable in some languages than others. The frequency and consistency of word order as a cue towards clause transitivity was analysed in the input to 19 monolingual Spanish-learning children from Argentina (20 months old on average, SD = 0.3), diverse in terms of socioeconomic status (SES). We found that some word orders occur far more frequently and/or indicate clause transitivity much more reliably than others. In addition, their consistency as transitivity cues varied across the registers and was crucially affected by SES.

This article provides an overview of research showing the advantages of audiovisual input in enhancing second/foreign language learning. It reviews the theoretical frameworks that explain the processing of audiovisual input and its language learning outcomes, presents the multimodal complexity of audiovisual input, and discusses its various components, focusing largely on research findings that indicate the potential of subtitles and captions for enhancing language learning. The paper goes on to address the learning that occurs through audiovisual input and issues related to processing and attention, examined primarily through eye-tracking data. Lastly, it discusses learner-specific factors, namely the role of working memory and aptitude, and learner perceptions of the viewing experience.