This study tests native Brazilian Portuguese (BP) speakers of second language (L2) Spanish in the domain of phonologically null object pronouns. This is a worthwhile first language (L1)-L2 pairing given that these languages are historically and typologically related and both seemingly allow for object drop. Nevertheless, the underlying syntax of…

Adult learners have persistent difficulty processing second language (L2) inflectional morphology. We investigate associative learning explanations that involve the blocking of later experienced cues by earlier learned ones in the first language (L1; i.e., transfer) and the L2 (i.e., proficiency). Sagarra (2008) and Ellis and Sagarra (2010b) found…

Research has consistently shown there is a negative correlation between age of onset (AO) of acquisition and ultimate attainment (UA) of either pronunciation or grammar in a second language (L2). A few studies have indeed reported nativelike behavior in some postpuberty learners with respect to either phonetics/phonology or morphosyntax, a result…

High-proficiency second language (L2) learners challenge much theory and methodology in contemporary sociolinguistic and L2 acquisition research, which suggests the need for honest interdisciplinarity when working in the interstices of style, stylization, and advanced acquisition processes. When to consider fluent and highly competent speakers of…

Morphological variability and the source of these errors have been intensely debated in SLA. A recurrent finding is that postpuberty second language (L2) learners often omit or use the wrong affix for nominal and verbal inflections in oral production but less so in written tasks. According to the missing surface inflection hypothesis, L2 learners…

Over the last 40 years, there have been successive attempts to define or refine a set of key concepts intended to guide theory and experimentation in SLA. These include "input," "intake," and "consciousness." This article tries to take these attempts a stage further by integrating the conceptualization of these notions into a larger…

The purpose of this study is to begin work toward a grammatical assessment measure that could bridge the gap between theoretical work on grammatical development, on the one hand, and tools such as the Michigan Test (which uses multiple-choice questions on vocabulary and grammar) or the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages scale…

This study contributes to a central debate within contemporary generative second language (L2) theorizing: the extent to which adult learners are (un)able to acquire new functional features that result in a L2 grammar that is mentally structured like the native target (see White, 2003). The adult acquisition of L2 nominal phi-features is explored,…

This article presents new evidence from offline and online processing of garden-path sentences that are ambiguous between reduced relative clause resolution and main verb resolution. The participants of this study are intermediate and advanced German learners of English who have learned the language in a nonimmersed context. The results show that…

Foreign language learning contrasts with native language development in two key respects: It is unreliable and it is nonconvergent. At the same time, it is clear that foreign languages are languages. The fundamental difference hypothesis (FDH) was introduced as a way to account for the general characteristics of foreign language learning. The FDH…

This article examines how changes in linguistic theory affect the debate between the fundamental difference hypothesis and the access-to-Universal Grammar (UG) approach to SLA. With a focus on subjacency (Chomsky, 1973), a principle of UG that places constraints on "wh"-movement and that has frequently been taken as a test case for verifying…

The fundamental difference hypothesis (FDH), as formulated by Bley-Vroman (1990), claims that SLA tends to be nonconvergent because domain-specific linguistic mechanisms available in early childhood cannot be used for language learning in adulthood: Instead, second language (L2) learners deploy domain-general problem solving skills. I claim that…

The fundamental difference hypothesis (FDH; Bley-Vroman, 1989, 1990) contends that the nature of language in natives is fundamentally different from the nature of language in adult nonnatives. This study tests the FDH in two ways: (a) via second language (L2) poverty-of-the-stimulus (POS) problems (e.g., Schwartz & Sprouse, 2000) and (b) via a…

Results from a number of recent studies suggest that nativelike adult second language (L2) learners possess a high degree of language learning aptitude, the positive effects of which may have compensated for the negative effects of a critical period in these learners. According to the same studies, child learners seem to attain a nativelike…

This study investigates the interface between speech and gesture in second language (L2) narration within Slobin's (2003) thinking-for-speaking (TFS) framework as well as with respect to McNeill's (1992, 2005) growth point (GP) hypothesis. Specifically, our interest is in whether speakers shift from a first language (L1) to a L2 TFS pattern as…