Each of us as language learners had different language experiences, yet somehow we have converged upon broadly the same language system. From diverse, often noisy samples, we have attained similar linguistic competence. How so? What mechanisms channel language acquisition? Could our linguistic commonalities possibly have converged from our shared…

We present one of the first behavior-genetic studies of individual differences in school students' levels of achievement in instructed second language acquisition (ISLA). We assessed these language abilities in Australian twin pairs (maximum N pairs = 251) by means of teacher ratings, class rankings, and self-ratings of proficiency, and used the…

This article presents an analysis of interactions in the usage, structure, cognition, coadaptation of conversational partners, and emergence of linguistic constructions. It focuses on second language development of English verb-argument constructions (VACs: VL, verb locative; VOL, verb object locative; VOO, ditransitive) with particular reference…

Language has a fundamentally social function. Processes of human interaction along with domain-general cognitive processes shape the structure and knowledge of language. Recent research in the cognitive sciences has demonstrated that patterns of use strongly affect how language is acquired, is used, and changes. These processes are not independent…

McCormack and Hoerl's state of the art review of the development of temporal concepts from the end of infancy to the end of the fifth year shows that young children's conception of time is quite different from that of adults. Adults and 5-year-old children can construe an event from a range of temporal perspectives and can describe it from a…

Summarizes a range of theoretical approaches to language acquisition. Argues that language representations emerge from interactions at all levels from brain to society. Connectionism, which provides a set of computational tools for exploring the conditions under which emergent properties arise, is discussed, and simulations of emergence of…

In a study of psycholinguistic factors, 47 students' learning of German under repetition, keyword, or "own" strategy conditions was investigated. Native-to-foreign learning is shown to be easier the more the foreign language words conform to the phonological and orthographic patterns of the native language; the relationships are less pronounced in…

Summarizes current cognitive psychological knowledge concerning second language vocabulary acquisition and discusses implications for the development of effective computer-assisted vocabulary acquisition methods. (85 references) (Author)