This article investigates how animacy in interaction with the syntactic function of a referent's antecedent determines the interpretation of different types of pronouns and demonstratives in German and Italian. The results of a sentence continuation task conducted in both languages show that Italian null pronouns and German p-pronouns have a…

"Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio," a renowned classical literary work by Pu Songling from the Qing Dynasty, has been translated into English by Herbert Giles (1842) and John Minford (2006), both retaining the same title. This study examines and compares these two English translations, analysing their respective translation…

Phonological models of early word learning often assume that child forms can be understood as structural mappings from their adult targets. In contrast, the whole-word phonology model suggests that on beginning word production children represent adult targets as holistic units, reflecting not the exact sound sequence but only the most perceptually…

This study compares two linguistic landscapes and the concurrent language policies of two scenarios where minority languages coexist with Spanish. On one hand, in the Archipelago of San Andres, Colombia, Spanish is in contact with an English-based Creole (Raizal Creole). Similarly, Valencian (Spain) coexists with Spanish as a national language.…

Language is a systematic means of communication that employs sound or conventional symbols. Using a foreign language can be problematic when attempting to communicate or translate written or spoken language from one's native language due to structural differences between languages. Among the most widely spoken languages in the world, English is…

This article compared three-word move-specific lexical bundles (MLBs) in dissertation abstracts authored by linguistics doctoral students from China and the United States. Two separate corpora were constructed for analysis: (1) The China Linguistics PhD Abstracts Corpus (CLC), consisting of 700 abstracts totaling 613,713 words generated by…

This article discusses the positioning of "wh" words in Modern Laos Sign Language. Research indicates that there are two common patterns for the position of "wh" words in spoken languages: the initial position and in situ (Dryer 2013). However, in some sign languages, it seems that "wh" word positioning is…

Reading numbers aloud involves visual processes that analyze the digit string and verbal processes that produce the number words. Cognitive models of number reading assume that information flows from the visual input to the verbal production processes--a feed-forward processing mode in which the verbal production depends on the visual input but…

Cross-linguistic studies describing the syllabic structures of babbling productions agree on the high prevalence of the CV structure, but few have addressed the other types of syllables emerging during this pre-linguistic stage. However, studying the evolution of the distribution of syllabic structures during babbling would make it possible to…

Languages that have complex syllable patterns also share linguistic features with each other. These features can be identified through diachronic paths developed by these syllable patterns this study aimed to show the universality of syllabemes in Kazakh and other languages, focusing on questions like evolution of syllables in the Turkic…

Event segmentation tests have shown substantial overlaps in how adults recognize starts and endpoints as events unfold. However, far less is known about what role different language systems play in the process. Variations in grammatical aspect have been shown to influence event processing. We tested how closely first language (L1) speakers of…

Words that describe sensory perception give insight into how language mediates human experience, and the acquisition of these words is one way to examine how we learn to categorize and communicate sensation. We examine the differential predictions of the typological prevalence hypothesis and embodiment hypothesis regarding the acquisition of…

The unique orthographic complexities of Japanese, which utilizes multiple types of scripts (morphographic kanji and syllabic hiragana and katakana) for the same spoken language, place unique demands on early learners. Much research has centered on the average ability of Japanese readers, but given the varying challenges of these scripts, attention…

Over the last two decades, the question of to which linguistic cues learners pay attention when they decode a new language has been subject to controversy in the field of third language (L3) acquisition. In this article, we present an artificial language learning experiment that investigated how lexical and syntactic similarities between an…

Purpose: This study investigates whether crosslinguistic effects on auditory word recognition are modulated by the quality of the auditory signal (clear and noisy). Method: In an online experiment, a group of Spanish--English bilingual listeners performed an auditory lexical decision task, in their second language, English. Words and pseudowords…