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...

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...

second language acquisition (sla) always happens when the learners live and have contact with the native speakers of a second language. although this study investigates learning english by ten native children of farsi, the authors try to simulate the second language acquisition environment. the research deals with the initial state and further development in the child second language learning o...

This experimental study investigated the learners’ integrative acquisition of obligatory overt subjects and subject-verb clause agreement in English as an L2. In L1 acquisition research, correlations between superficially unrelated linguistic phenomena are analyzed in terms of integrative effects. For instance, in English L1 acquisition, there is evidence for an integrative appearance of subjec...

Second language acquisition research often compares non-native acquirers (L2ers) with other learner populations. Such cross-population comparisons include: (i) child native language (L1) acquisition~child L2 acquisition (e.g. Gavruseva 2000; Weerman et al. 2003); (ii) child L2~adult L2 (e.g. Cancino et al. 1978; McDonald 2000; Montrul 2002; Weerman et al. 2003) and (iii) child L1~adult L2 (Canc...

Abstract Contraction of want to wanna is sometimes possible (e.g., Who do you to/wanna stay with ___ ? ), but impossible to/*wanna stay? ). This contrast attributable the grammatical constraint that a wh -trace blocks contraction and . Most first language (L1) second (L2) acquisition studies testing learner knowledge this have used elicited production tasks focused on adult participants, incons...

Studies of language development suggest that child learners nearly always reach an error-free stage in the acquisition of grammar whereas adult learners who reach an error-free proficiency level are rare. Moreover, children achieve this “perfect” stage seemingly effortlessly and quickly unlike adults. One explanation for these differences comes from an idea of an innate language device which is...

According  to  a  basic  prediction  made  by  the  Revised  Hierarchical  Model  (RHM),  at  early  stages  of language  acquisition,  strong  L2-L1  lexical  links  are  formed.  RHM  predicts  that  these  links  weaken with  increasing  proficiency,  although  they  do  not  disappear  even  at  higher  levels  of  language development. To test this prediction, two groups of highly proficie...

In his seminal paper on the ‘fundamental difference’ between first and second language (L1 and L2) acquisition, Bley-Vroman (1990) proposed that this disparity is due to the lack of continued access to Universal Grammar and the unavailability of ‘domain-specific learning procedures’ beyond a critical period in child language development. He considered four possible alternative accounts of this ...