Nonnative Language Acquisition Research Articles

Individual differences in the consistency of neural and behavioural responses to speech sounds

There are documented individual differences among adults in the consistency of speech sound processing, both at neural and behavioural levels. Some adults show more consistent neural responses to speech sounds than others, as measured by an event-related potential called the frequency-following response (FFR); similarly, some adults show more consistent behavioural responses to native speech sounds than others, as measured by two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) and visual analog scaling (VAS) tasks. Adults also differ in how successfully they can perceive non-native speech sounds. Interestingly, it remains unclear whether these differences are related within individuals. In the current study, native English-speaking adults completed native phonetic perception tasks (2AFC and VAS), a non-native (German) phonetic perception task, and an FFR recording session. From these tasks, we derived measures of the consistency of participants’ neural and behavioural responses to native speech as well as their non-native perception ability. We then examined the relationships among individual differences in these measures. Analysis of the behavioural measures revealed that more consistent responses to native sounds predicted more successful perception of unfamiliar German sounds. Analysis of neural and behavioural data did not reveal clear relationships between FFR consistency and our phonetic perception measures. This multimodal work furthers our understanding of individual differences in speech processing among adults, and may eventually lead to individualized approaches for enhancing non-native language acquisition in adulthood.

On the acquisition of tense and agreement in L2 English by adult speakers of L1 Chinese

Abstract This study investigates whether forms associated with verbal inflection can be acquired in relation to two UG-based L2 acquisition hypotheses: the Full Transfer Full Access (FTFA) Hypothesis (Schwartz, Bonnie & Rex Sprouse. 1994. Word order and nominative case in nonnative language acquisition: A longitudinal study of (L1 Turkish) German interlanguage. In Teun Hoekstra & Bonnie D. Schwartz (eds.), Language acquisition Studies in generative grammar, 317–368. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, Schwartz, Bonnie & Rex Sprouse. 1996. L2 cognitive states and the ‘full transfer/full access’ model. Second Language Research 12. 40–72) and the Interpretability Hypothesis (Tsimpli, Ianthi-maria & Maria Dimitrakopoulou. 2007. The Interpretability hypothesis: Evidence from wh-interrogatives in second language acquisition. Second Language Research 23. 215–242). The former captures the insight that convergence on grammars like those of native speakers is possible, whereas the latter argues that a native/non-native divergence results from the inaccessibility of some uninterpretable syntactic features. Ninety adult L1 speakers of Chinese of different English proficiency levels were asked to interpret and produce tense and agreement in various contexts in three tasks. Results suggest that the underlying grammatical representations in the end-state grammar may not be the same as native speakers’. We speculate that the inaccessibility of the uninterpretable [uInfl:] feature of v and the uninterpretable [uInfl:*] feature of be are the potential source of difficulty in acquiring verbal inflection in L2 English.

A Qualitative Phenomenological Investigation of Pre-university English as a Second Language Learners’ Experiences in Malaysia

This research study explicitly analyses pre-university learners’ individual learning experiences of English as a second language in a public university in Malaysia. In an attempt to gauge participants’ individual learning experiences, this study drew from Skinner’s (1957) behaviourism, Krashen’s (2020) nonnative language acquisition and Vygotsky’s (1974) sociocultural theories of learning. The behaviourism theory puts forth that learning a second language is a mechanical process which relies heavily on habit formation (Skinner, 1957). Krashen’s (2020) nonnative language acquisition and Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theories, on the other hand, posit that a new language is naturally and effortlessly acquired through social interactions that require cognitive reasoning (Vygotsky, 1978). The qualitative findings received from one to one unstructured interviews were analysed in relation to the aforesaid theories. The findings revealed that informants studied English for university admission and that their sociocultural environment inhibited them from speaking the language outside the classroom. Discerning that the conventional teaching of English would not help them to attain their goal, informants though asserted to experience a drop in motivation throughout their English course, established an artificial linguistic environment for them to receive comprehensible inputs of English from various sources. Four out of five informants affirmed their preference to learn English in English speaking nations to be able to practice English in the wider community, while one underlined his/her preference for non-English speaking nations due to the fear of having difficulties in understanding accented English and of being laughed for his/her poor command English by native English speakers. Frequent addition of the linguistic suffix ‘lah’ from Bahasa Malaysia was added to standard English by local informants, leading to the creation of a hybrid landscape. Pedagogical implications for second language teaching and learning are raised alongside a revision of the structure, content and teaching strategies of existing English as a second language course.

The influence of language learner’s Buddhist background on non-native written language processing

In today’s digitalized world, discovering approaches to enhance written language processing is crucial for successful non-native language acquisition. Whereas psycholinguistic literature suggests that background knowledge generally facilitates written language processing, hardly anything is known about whether religious affiliation as a part of language learner’s background affects non-native written language processing.
 Consequently, the current paper addresses the gap by conducting a small-scale web-based self-paced reading study. It explores whether English language learners with Buddhist background process the Buddhist-related and religiously neutral texts similarly to those with the same proficiency level but with no religious affiliation. Thus, the experiment involved 20 Buddhist and non-religious learners of English from Russia’s regions of Kalmykia, Tuva, and Buryatia.
 The results of the experiment suggest that the Buddhist background of English language learners contributes to faster processing and better recall of Buddhist-related texts in the target language. The paper argues for the need to supply written materials related to religion in a target language with notes and glossaries in order to hasten processing and improve recall in non-religious language learners.

In defense of ‘copying and restructuring’

In her keynote article advocating the Linguistic Proximity Model for third language (L3) acquisition, Westergaard (2021) presents several arguments against ‘copying and restructuring’ in nonnative language acquisition, mechanisms central to Schwartz and Sprouse’s (1996) Full Transfer/Full Access model of second language (L2) acquisition. In this commentary, we seek to counter her arguments and also show that the results of a large body of studies on nonnative language acquisition are explained only by ‘copying and restructuring’.

Exploring variation in nonnative Japanese learners’ perception of lexical pitch accent: The roles of processing resources and learning context

AbstractThis article reports findings on the effects of processing resources and learning context on the perceptual learning of lexical pitch accent in beginning nonnative Japanese learners. Native English speakers in at-home and study-abroad contexts were tested twice during a semester of Japanese study on their ability to judge the correctness of and categorize nouns by their pitch pattern. Regression analyses indicated that the ability to store nonnative-like sound sequences in phonological short-term memory (PSTM), as well as auditory processing ability, predicted a significant degree of perceptual gains made over a 12-week interval. However, these predictors were task specific in that PSTM capacity predicted correctness judgment gains, while auditory processing accounted for variation in categorization. Furthermore, despite learners in the at-home context performing slightly better overall, processing resources adhered to the same predictive pattern when context was taken into account. The results suggest that (a) neither increased input during study-abroad nor targeted instruction is sufficient for most learners to acquire lexical accent; (b) processing resources support the acquisition of lexical prosody, but these may depend on how learning is assessed; and (c) PSTM operates across learning contexts, suggesting it to be a domain-general capacity in early-stage nonnative language acquisition.

INFLUENCE OF THE NATIVE LANGUAGE ON SENSITIVITY TO LEXICAL STRESS

AbstractArabic stress is predictable, varies across words, and does not have a contrastive role, whereas, Hebrew stress although nonpredictable, carries contrastive value. Stress processing was assessed in speakers of the two languages at three processing levels: discrimination, short-term memory, and metalinguistic awareness. In Experiment 1, Arabic speakers with Hebrew as L2 (n = 15) and native Hebrew speakers (n = 15) were tested on discrimination and memory of stress placements. Arabic speakers had fewer correct responses and longer reaction times compared to Hebrew speakers. In Experiment 2, the influence of nonnative language acquisition on metalinguistic awareness of stress was assessed. Arabic speakers (n = 10) were less able to identify stress in their native and nonnative languages compared to Arabic speakers with advanced knowledge of English and Hebrew (n = 10) and Hebrew speakers (n = 10). Our findings support the assumption that variations in stress at the surface level of L1 are insufficient to facilitate awareness and memory for stress placement.

Emergent knowledge of a universal phonological principle in the L2 acquisition of vowel harmony in Turkish: A ‘four’-fold poverty of the stimulus in L2 acquisition

A significant body of theoretically motivated research has addressed the role of Universal Grammar (UG) in the nonnative acquisition of morphosyntax and properties of the syntax–semantics interface, but very little research has addressed the role of phonological principles of UG in nonnative language acquisition. Turkish has a regular and pervasive system of vowel harmony for which classroom second language (L2) learners receive explicit instruction and abundant input; however, there are also cases of non-canonical vowel harmony in Turkish, for which classroom learners receive no instruction and rather little input. In this study, we show that English–Turkish L2ers come to exhibit sensitivity to the ‘No Crossing Constraint’ of UG (Goldsmith, 1976; Hammond, 1988) when calculating non-canonical vowel harmony in the context of underlyingly pre-specified non-velarized laterals (i.e. ‘light’ [l]), despite the poverty of the stimulus and potentially misleading effects of classroom instruction and standard Turkish orthography. We argue that this supports the view that nonnative phonological development is guided by (at least one principle of) UG.

Individual language experience modulates rapid formation of cortical memory circuits for novel words

Mastering multiple languages is an increasingly important ability in the modern world; furthermore, multilingualism may affect human learning abilities. Here, we test how the brain’s capacity to rapidly form new representations for spoken words is affected by prior individual experience in non-native language acquisition. Formation of new word memory traces is reflected in a neurophysiological response increase during a short exposure to novel lexicon. Therefore, we recorded changes in electrophysiological responses to phonologically native and non-native novel word-forms during a perceptual learning session, in which novel stimuli were repetitively presented to healthy adults in either ignore or attend conditions. We found that larger number of previously acquired languages and earlier average age of acquisition (AoA) predicted greater response increase to novel non-native word-forms. This suggests that early and extensive language experience is associated with greater neural flexibility for acquiring novel words with unfamiliar phonology. Conversely, later AoA was associated with a stronger response increase for phonologically native novel word-forms, indicating better tuning of neural linguistic circuits to native phonology. The results suggest that individual language experience has a strong effect on the neural mechanisms of word learning, and that it interacts with the phonological familiarity of the novel lexicon.

Initial processing of morphological marking in nonnative language acquisition

This paper addresses the question of how learners break into a novel morpho-syntactic system, extract elements of this new system from the input they receive, process them, and begin to acquire the new system. The data for this project were collected as part of a large European project (VILLA – Varieties of Initial Learners in Language Acquisition) comparing the processes of perception, comprehension, and production during the acquisition of a novel target language (Polish) in adults of different source languages within the first hours of instruction under controlled input conditions. Two experiments, a grammaticality judgment task and an oral question-answer task, were conducted longitudinally to investigate learners’ perception and use of Polish nominal morphology in two groups of adults (French and German native speakers) after 4.5 hours and after 10.5 hours of instruction. In addition to contributing new insights into the role of the source language in the initial stages of acquisition, results speak to the influence of overall exposure to the input, and reveal interesting interactions between factors such as the frequency of a lexical item in the input and its transparency relative to the learner’s source language.

Morphologische Komplexität des Deutschen im Vergleich mit den skandinavischen Sprachen – typologisch und sprachhistorisch

This paper deals with some cases of morphological complexity within Germanic. Special attention is paid to forms of over-/underspecification and the in-/decrease of linguistic irregularity. Non-native language acquisition has to be considered crucial for grammatical simplification and inter-linguistic realignment. The main focus lies on the divergent representations of definiteness and passive between German and the Scandinavian languages. German proves to be less complex in this respect. Starting point is the assumption that Ancient Germanic was a contact language and the subsequent reimplementation of the Germanic dialects shows how genetically related languages may diverge typologically.

Morphological dissociations in the L2 acquisition of an inflectionally rich language

This study investigates the validity of Pinker’s (1991, 1999) Dual-Mechanism Model in the mental representation of regular and irregular active past perfective verbs in adult non-native Greek. In this model, regular inflection is computed by a symbolic rule, while irregular words are fully stored in the lexicon. A nonce-probe elicitation task showed that both natives and non-natives generalized the regular affix -s, and more so in regular than in irregular perfective verb stems. Moreover, the degree of similarity of the nonce verbs to real ones did not affect the affixation of regulars. Dissimilar irregulars were affixed less often than similar ones by the intermediate learners but neither by the advanced learners, nor by the natives. Our findings support computation for regulars, as proposed by the Dual Mechanism Model, both in native and in non-native language acquisition. Yet, the model’s claim for full storage of all irregular words is not verified.

Generative Syntactic Transfer in L2 and L3 Acquisition via the Channel of Translation

The purpose of this study was two-fold: it primarily intended to incorporate some insights into the newly-explored field of L3A: secondly, it aimed to highlight the significance of translation as a valid language activity in exploring the native language influence on non-native language acquisition process. To this end, it investigated the acquisition of two syntactic properties of head and operator movements in English by L2 and L3 learners within UG framework. The participants consisted of 144 Persian monolingual and Arabic-Persian bilingual learners of English who were assigned to three proficiency bands after taking the general proficiency test (ECPE). The results showed no significant difference between the performance of monolinguals and bilinguals at each level of proficiency. Nonetheless, significant differences were found across the levels of proficiency.

Accounting for Context and Experience in German (L2) Language Acquisition: A Critical Review of the Research

With its focus on simplification universals, developmental orders, teachability, and functional-grammatical bases for acquisition, the well-known research on German (L2) language acquisition has contributed much to SLA research in general. At the same time, sociolinguistic investigations focus squarely on the difficult social conditions that accompany non-native language acquisition in Germany. In keeping with emerging approaches in SLA in general, German language acquisition (GLA) research requires a more holistic focus if we hope to account for individual experience as well as universal influences on attainment. This broad survey of the research highlights several significant factors in L2 German: (1) informal contact with native speakers, offering personal, interactive practice; (2) formal instruction, representing targeted practice focused on linguistic accuracy and complexity; and (3) affective orientations, particularly identity and affiliation, as reflections of learner engagement in the process. These aspects of learner experience appear relevant across an array of theoretical and empirical perspectives. I therefore argue that cognitive models of GLA fail to adequately account for the constraints on both input and contact experienced by most non-native acquirers of German, and that only a purposeful integration of methodologies can capture the complex relationships between cognitive, social and psychological factors inherent in the process.

Learnability and grammar reorganization in L2A: against negative evidence causing the unlearning of verb movement

This paper reassesses the role of Negative Evidence (NE) in nonnative language acquisition. We argue that the grammar-building process cannot make use of NE to restructure (Interlanguage) grammars - irrespective of logical need. The empirical basis comes from White's (1991a; 1991b) study of French speakers acquiring English, where the 'Verb Movement' parameter and the particular learnability problem of 'unlearning' thematic Verb- movement were the focus. The L2ers start off assuming the L1 value of [+] Verb-movement, thus incorrectly allowing the order S V Adv O in English, and the issue is whether NE can force a switch to the [-] value, whereby S V Adv O should be excluded. While it is indisputable that the L2ers changed their linguistic behaviour as a direct consequence of their exposure to NE, the conclusion we draw is quite distinct from that of White. Based on both the postinstruction data and an argument grounded in formal learnability theory, we show that an inherent contradiction must be imputed to the Interlanguage 'grammar' to account for the results: in addition to no longer permitting S V Adv O, the L2ers also (incorrectly) disallow S V Adv PP; to exclude the latter, the grammar must have 'un learned' base-generating Adverbs to the right of VP but other data dispute this, i.e., S V O/PP Adv is still allowed. Since natural language grammars cannot contain such inherent contradictions, we conclude that a natural language grammar could not be the source of this L2 behaviour. Our explanation is that the L2ers simply extended the *S V Adv O pattern that they were taught. In sum, there is no evidence that NE caused the L2ers to unlearn Verb-movement and hence NE did not restructure the Interlanguage grammar. Implications of this conclusion are discussed in relation to the issues of learnability and 'UG-accessibility' in L2A.