Learning a specific skill during childhood may partly determine the functional organization of the adult brain. This hypothesis led us to study brain activation patterns using positron emission tomography (PET), in which we compared word and nonword repetition in 10 right-handed native English-speakers (L1) who were proficient in their second language, French (L2), which was learned after the a...

INTRODUCTION If ever attained, adopting native-like accent is achieved late in the learning process. Resemblance between L2 and mother tongue can facilitate L2 learning. In particular, cognates (phonologically and semantically similar words across languages), offer the opportunity to examine the issue of foreign accent in quite a unique manner. METHODS Twelve Spanish speaking (L1) adults lear...

This study examined language-specific links among auditory processing, linguistic prosody awareness, and Mandarin (L1) and English (L2) word reading in 61 Mandarin-speaking, English-learning children. Three auditory discrimination abilities were measured: pitch contour, pitch interval, and rise time (rate of intensity change at tone onset). Linguistic prosody awareness was measured three ways: ...

We investigate factors that affect speaking rate in conversation, using large corpora of conversational telephone speech in English and Chinese. We find that speaking rate as a function of “turn” length rises rapidly for turns from one to seven words; remains level (when final words are included) or falls gradually (if final words are excluded) for turns of medium length; and rises slowly for l...

We investigate factors that affect speaking rate in conversation, using large corpora of conversational telephone speech in English and Chinese. We find that speaking rate as a function of “turn” length rises rapidly for turns from one to seven words; remains level (when final words are included) or falls gradually (if final words are excluded) for turns of medium length; and rises slowly for l...

Abstract This study explored the effect of speaking task on midclause pausing characteristics in L1 and L2 speech same speakers to gain further insights into potential relationship between pause location stages production. Participants included English learners French ( n = 29) or Spanish 27) from publicly available, longitudinal LANGSNAP corpus. completed two oral tasks their L2: a picture-bas...

1.1 Disfluencies in L2 speech For most of us, speaking a second language (L2) is a challenging task. Even if we call ourselves ‘fluent’ in the L2, we may at times find ourselves unsure about the grammar or at a loss for the right words. In fact, we are often not so fluent at all. The most obvious reason for this lack of fluency is a lack of proficiency, that is, a speaker has insufficient knowl...

Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou (2007) observed that uninterpretable features are unavailable in second language (L2) acquisition after the critical period. In this paper, we verify this claim by providing evidence from Persian speaking learners of English as an L2 on the status of resumptive pronouns (RPs) as uniterpretable features. Unlike English which does not allow RPs, Persian shows various b...

tsimpli and dimitrakopoulou (2007) observed that uninterpretable features are unavailable in second language (l2) acquisition after the critical period. in this paper, we verify this claim by providing evidence from persian speaking learners of english as an l2 on the status of resumptive pronouns (rps) as uniterpretable features. unlike english which does not allow rps, persian shows various b...

this is a longitudinal case study of two farsi-speaking children learning english: ‘bernard’ and ‘melissa’, who were 7;4 and 8;4 at the start of data collection. the research deals with the initial state and further development in the child second language (l2) acquisition of syntax regarding the presence or absence of copula as a functional category, as well as the role and degree of l1 influe...