In this article, Lardiere responds to peer comments regarding her earlier article "Some Thoughts on the Contrastive Analysis of Features in Second Language Acquisition" (EJ831786). Lardiere acknowledges the reviewers' thoughtful contributions and expert expansion on various facets of the original article. While she states that it is clear from the…

This article tests a prediction made by Processability Theory (Pienemann, 1998; 2005) that morphological acquisition is the driving force in English as a second language (ESL) development. It first outlines the model of psycholinguistic processing assumed by Processability Theory and shows how stages fall out from it. It then presents the…

Studies on bilingualism from a neurocognitive perspective have begun to attract considerable interest recently. Contextual variables--such as age of acquisition, level of proficiency and frequency of use--have been identified as significantly impacting on the convergence or divergence of representations in first language (L1) and second (L2)…

This article examines the question of whether university-based high-level foreign language and linguistic training can influence brain activation and whether different L2 proficiency groups have different brain activation in terms of lateralization and hemispheric involvement. The traditional and prevailing theory of hemispheric involvement in…

Neuroimaging techniques are becoming not only more and more sophisticated but are also coming to be increasingly accessible to researchers. One thing that one should take note of is the potential of neuroimaging research within second language acquisition (SLA) to contribute to issues pertaining to the plasticity of the adult brain and to general…

In this review we show how magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a constructive tool for language research and review MEG findings in second language (L2) research. MEG is the magnetic analog of electroencephalography (EEG), and its primary advantage over other cross-sectional (e.g. magnetic resonance imaging, or positron emission tomography) functional…

The ways in which age of acquisition (AoA) may affect (morpho)syntax in second language acquisition (SLA) are discussed. We suggest that event-related brain potentials (ERPs) provide an appropriate online measure to test some such effects. ERP findings of the past decade are reviewed with a focus on recent and ongoing research. It is concluded…

Previous research on event-related potentials (ERPs) on second language processing has revealed a great degree of plasticity in brain mechanisms of adult language learners. Studies with natural and artificial languages show that the N400 as well as the P600 component appear in learners after sufficient training. The present experiment tests if and…

Lardiere's keynote article adverts to a succession of "units of comparison" that have been employed in the study of cross-linguistic differences, including mid-twentieth-century structural patterns, generative grammar's parameters, and (within contemporary Minimalism) features. This commentary expands on the idea of units of cross-linguistic…

While agreeing with Lardiere that the "parameter-resetting" approach to understanding second language acquisition (SLA) needs rethinking, it is suggested that a more construction-based perspective runs the risk of losing deductive and explanatory power. An alternative is to investigate the constraints on feature assembly/re-assembly in second…

Lardiere suggests that second language acquisition (SLA) researchers should pay more attention to the distribution of a given feature in source and target languages, using the distribution of [plural] in English, Chinese and Korean to illustrate. I argue that the distribution of [definite] in English shows a similar complexity, and that this has…

The novelty of Lardiere's proposal does not reside in her so-called "rehabilitation" of Contrastive Analysis. In generative second language acquisition research, appeal to the best available analyses and descriptions of the languages under investigation has always been a top priority, whether the focus was parameters, functional categories or…

Lardiere's discussion raises important questions about the use of features in second language (L2) acquisition. This response examines predictions for processing of a feature-valuing model vs. a frequency-sensitive, associative model in explaining the acquisition of French past participle agreement. Results from a reading-time experiment support…

It is argued that new phonological features can be acquired in second languages, but that both feature acquisition and feature re-assembly are affected by the robustness of phonetic cues in the input.

Seeing the logical problem of second language acquisition as that of primarily selecting and re-assembling bundles of features anew, Lardiere proposes to dispense with the deductive learning approach and its broad range of consequences subsumed under the concept of parameters. While we agree that feature assembly captures more precisely the…