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This study aimed to explore the linguistic factors that influence the development and diversification of World Englishes along with implications for language teaching, learning, and policy, and to examine the trends in research related to WEs. Using a systematic review process with MAXQDA 20.2.1, the findings indicate that research on World Englishes has focused on a variety of linguistic elements, with a particular emphasis on syntax, phonology, and discourse and pragmatics. The study also highlights the importance of understanding the cultural and linguistic contexts in which English is being used, as these contexts can have a significant impact on the linguistic features and pragmatic norms of different varieties of English. Regarding the challenges that learners face when learning WEs, the findings suggest that learners may struggle with the different semantic features and pragmatic norms of different WEs varieties. In terms of trends in research related to WEs, the findings show a growing interest in the study of WEs from various linguistic and cultural perspectives, including sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and language education. However, there is a need for a more interdisciplinary approach to research on WEs, incorporating diverse perspectives and methodologies.

Comparing language tests and test preparation materials holds important implications for the latter's validity and reliability. However, not enough studies compare such materials across a wide range of indices. Therefore, this study investigated the text complexity of IELTS academic reading tests (IRT) and IELTS reading practice tests (IRPrT). Fine-grained quantitative analyses were undertaken to delineate measures of lexical, syntactic, and discourse complexity across a corpus of 108 IRT and 108 IRPrT published by Pearson, Macmillan, and Cengage Learning. The results suggest little difference between IRT and IRPrT at the lexical level; however, there were significant differences in some measures of syntactic and discourse level complexity. The findings bear implications for stakeholders including learners as test takers, instructors, material developers, and language testing researchers. We interpret this to mean that while IRPrT materials are lexically conducive to the practice for IRT and can provide a similar experience, the IRPrT do show some differences in the amount of subordination and idea repetition at the discourse level. Therefore, instructors and learners may seek to supplement practice with these structures when preparing for IRT, and the designers of such practice materials should consider aligning these factors in the future.

Idioms are highly conventionalized expressions that allow users to express beyond literal meanings. Despite the language difference, counterparts of idioms may overlap cross-culturally due to similar origin, social habits, and experiences. It is therefore interesting to probe whether L2 learners may benefit from deliberate instructions built on shared counterparts existing in both L1 and L2, known as cross-language overlaps. Although the phenomenon of cross-language overlap has been reported by lexical and collocation processing research (e.g., Carrol & Conklin, 2017; Hubers et al., 2020), it is yet uncertain whether its impact is influential for L2 idiom learning with the absence of semantic or syntactical similarity. To address this gap, the current study attempted to investigate whether raising English as a foreign language learners' awareness of cross-language overlap may facilitate L2 idiom teaching and how such overlap-enhancement instruction may change over different congruence conditions (congruence-available and incongruence conditions) and time. The study collected L2 idiom learning data from forty-five Chinese English learners, following a pretest-posttest design. While the experimental group (n=26) learned twenty-eight target L2 idioms with an enhancement instruction emphasizing the overlaps, the control group (n=28) learned these idioms with a conventional instruction method. Findings of this study revealed that participants were able to benefit from cross-language overlaps from both conditions, and the enhancement instruction on the semantic overlaps would result in significant learning improvement. It is therefore pedagogically advisable for language teachers to marry up L1-L2 idiom phrases containing similar counterparts and deliberately focus on the semantic congruency.

This study applies the Apriori algorithm to analyse patterns, syntactic structures, and thematic clusters in Chinese studies data from various genres. This study aims to identify recurring linguistic elements in order to shed light on the dynamic nature of the Chinese language across different contexts and time periods. The Apriori algorithm is used to identify frequent item sets and establish associations between linguistic constructs in large datasets (over 20 years). This study examines the complexity of the Chinese language by analysing co-occurrence patterns, syntactic tendencies, and thematic categorizations. This study examines the evolution of language, regional word choices, and cultural nuances. Thematic clusters and sensory associations establish the relationship between language and culture. The study of Chinese language patterns and cultural implications utilises data to advance computational linguistics and theory. Computational models prioritize cultural and historical context analysis for more comprehensive language processing. Theoretical implications help researchers understand language evolution and culture, while practical implications improve language technology tools. The conclusion provides support for research in computational linguistics, cultural studies, and linguistic theory-based holistic language analysis and application.

Lexical bundles (LBs) are frequent groups of words that appear repeatedly in different academic texts. A plethora of research has explored their distribution and usage in general, particularly in academic texts. However, to our knowledge, the extent of research investigating LBs in the discussion sections of Medical Research Articles (MRAs) is scant. The present study examined the diversity and density of four-word LBs in the discussions of 1400 MRAs. Four-word bundles totaling 413, including general and subject-bound LBs, were extracted using the freeware "concordance software program" AntConc and categorized based on their syntactic structures and discourse functions. The findings revealed that discussions structurally rely heavily on phrasal LBs (i.e., prepositional phrases and noun phrases) in general and subject-bound LBs compared to clausal bundles, which include VP-based and Clause-based LBs. Regarding functional categories, the general referential bundles with their subcategories were found to have the most considerable proportion in the medical RA genre. Given the importance of LBs in disciplinary writing and academic discourse, the findings could be instrumental in crafting suitable pedagogical materials and activities on general and subject-specific LBs for academic writing in English for Medical Purposes.

This study aimed to analyze common syntactic errors found in the argumentative essays of third-year English major students at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Van Lang University, Vietnam. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to obtain data in this study. The quantitative approach involved counting and calculating the frequency, percentage, and ranking of syntactic errors, while the qualitative method was adopted to explain these errors. The instrument for collecting data was argumentative essays written by 37 third-year English majors enrolling in Writing-5 at Van Lang University. Microsoft Word was used to collect and analyze syntactic errors and sentence structures, while Microsoft Excel was employed to calculate the frequency and rank of these errors and structures. The results found that the five most frequent errors in their essays were at the noun phrase and sentence levels. These errors included run-on sentences, preposition errors, article errors, sentence fragments, and pronoun errors. Through error analysis, it was indicated that the majority of errors made by students were due to the negative transfer from their first language and the literal translation. Based on the findings, language teachers and syllabus designers could use these results as guidance to design appropriate teaching methods and materials.

This longitudinal case study from a Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) perspective touches upon an under-researched issue: L1 development over the lifespan. Levinson (1978) predicts three stages in adulthood: early, mid and late, with a decline in late adulthood. We examine Diane Larsen-Freeman's publications over a period of 50 years (from age 27 to 77) and trace seven complexity measures--three lexical (density, sophistication and diversity) and four syntactic (mean length of sentence, finite verb ratio, dependent clause per T-unit and complex nominals per clause)--to investigate whether early, middle, and late stages in adulthood occur as predicted. After employing common CDST methods to find out if there are significant peaks or interactions among the variables over time, we used a Hidden Markov time-series analysis to locate moments of self-organization, suggesting a new stage of development. The HMM shows a clear phase shift between middle and late adulthood when the writer was 63. Her vocabulary became more diversified, but her sentences were shorter, but not less complex. Therefore, we argue that this shift should not be seen as a decline in complexity but a shift in style as more precise words may lessen the need for more words.

The study described in this article evaluates the effectiveness of methods of improving phonetic, grammatical, and syntactic skills in children with general speech underdevelopment in a bilingual environment. The method is based on a theoretical study of severe speech disorders, a structural analysis of linguistic samples, and a comparative study of the results of research by various scientists in an interdisciplinary discourse. An experimental study was carried out concerning the assessment of the effectiveness of speech therapy exercises for forming linguistic skills (phonetic-phonemic, morphological, word-formation, lexical, and syntactic) at different language levels in preschoolers with a general speech disorder in the context of bilingualism (Kazakh was considered the main language, and Russian was considered an additional language). The materials presented in this paper can be used to develop linguistic skills for various speech defects.

Educators and researchers have been interested in supporting sentence-level language comprehension for struggling readers, but it has been challenging to research. To investigate the properties of sentences that might be useful targets for future research in instruction and assessment, we coded several features of the items in a computer-adaptive scale of sentence comprehension. The Syntactic Knowledge Task is designed for students in Grades 3-10. We then explored how the features of the sentences were related to the item's difficulty value to determine which aspects of sentence-level language made sentences more and less challenging for students across a range of development. We found that genre, words that represent a logical connection, number of idea units, long words, and words on the Academic Word List were significantly associated with item difficulty. Implications for understanding students' sentence-level language development are discussed.

This study examined the relationship of linguistic complexity, captured using a set of lexical richness, syntactic complexity, and discoursal complexity indices, to second language (L2) learners' perception of text difficulty, captured using L2 raters' comparative judgment on text comprehensibility and reading speed. Testing materials were 180 texts abridged from college English coursebooks, and raters were 90 advanced Chinese learners of L2 English. Forty-five raters read paired texts and determined which text was harder to understand in each pair, and another 45 raters read paired texts and determined which text they read faster in each pair. Two stepwise linear regression models containing lexical, syntactic, and discoursal features explained 48.1% and 54.6% of the variance in L2 learners' estimates of text comprehensibility and reading speed, respectively, outperforming four commonly used language readability models. These findings contribute useful insights into the relationship between linguistic complexity and L2 learners' perception of text difficulty.

Purpose: There is limited research on the writing of young Spanish-English bilinguals and their writing in both languages. In the current study, we addressed whether written syntax features differed by language (English and Spanish) and varied as a function of grade level, English learner status, and instructional program (dual or English immersion). We also examined whether Spanish and English syntax features were related cross-linguistically and related to writing quality within languages and whether these relations to writing quality were moderated by grade level, English learner status, and instructional program. Method: We examined written syntax features of Spanish and English essays by simultaneous and emergent bilinguals in Grades 1, 2, and 3 in either Spanish-English dual immersion or English immersion instruction in the United States (N = 278). Essays were scored for quality and evaluated for mean length of T-units, number of verbs, number of noun agreement words, and number of subject agreement words accurately conjugated. Results: Written syntax features significantly differed by language and varied as a function of grade level, English learner status, and instructional program. Grades 2 and 3 wrote longer utterances, more verbs, and greater noun agreement accuracy than Grade 1. Syntax features were related to writing quality within languages, but Spanish relations were weaker for English learners than non-English learners and for dual immersion students than English immersion students. Conclusion: Our findings suggest written syntax features may be useful for evaluation of English-Spanish simultaneous and emergent bilinguals' writing.

Purpose: There is limited research on the writing of young Spanish-English bilinguals and their writing in both languages. In the current study, we addressed whether written syntax features differed by language (English and Spanish) and varied as a function of grade level, English learner status, and instructional program (dual or English immersion). We also examined whether Spanish and English syntax features were related cross-linguistically and related to writing quality within languages and whether these relations to writing quality were moderated by grade level, English learner status, and instructional program. Method: We examined written syntax features of Spanish and English essays by simultaneous and emergent bilinguals in Grades 1, 2, and 3 in either Spanish-English dual immersion or English immersion instruction in the United States (N = 278). Essays were scored for quality and evaluated for mean length of T-units, number of verbs, number of noun agreement words, and number of subject agreement words accurately conjugated. Results: Written syntax features significantly differed by language and varied as a function of grade level, English learner status, and instructional program. Grades 2 and 3 wrote longer utterances, more verbs, and greater noun agreement accuracy than Grade 1. Syntax features were related to writing quality within languages, but Spanish relations were weaker for English learners than non-English learners and for dual immersion students than English immersion students. Conclusion: Our findings suggest written syntax features may be useful for evaluation of English-Spanish simultaneous and emergent bilinguals' writing.

This study delves into the syntactic parsing abilities of children and infants exposed to Catalan as their first language. Focusing first on ages 3 to 6, we conducted two sentence-picture matching tasks. In experiment 1, 3 to 4-year-old children failed in identifying singular third-person subjects within null-subject sentences, although they performed above chance in all other scenarios, including plural third-person subjects and sentences with overt full DP subjects. This is reminiscent of the results of Pérez-Leroux for Spanish. In experiment 2, with the same design but involving numeral distractors, children's performance was above chance level across all conditions from age 3 to 4. Then, in experiment 3, we moved to a younger age range with the help of eye-tracking techniques. The findings revealed that infants at 22 months had the ability to parse subject--verb agreement in sentences with third-person null subjects, and at 19 months there was evidence of parsing for third-person plural null subjects. These findings are inconsistent with the perception of children grappling with syntactic agreement computation. We argue that instances of underperformance in subject--verb agreement parsing identified in the literature often stem from task-related and pragmatic issues rather than core syntactic delay. If so, the putative asymmetry between early production of verbal inflection and late comprehension disappears; rather, the results suggest early establishment of matching operations and mastery of language-specific agreement properties before production starts.

Purpose: Despite the clinical utility of sentence production and sentence repetition to identify language impairment in autism, little is known about the extent to which these tasks are sensitive to potential language variation. One promising method is strategic scoring, which has good clinical utility for identifying language impairment in nonautistic school-age children across variants of English. This report applies strategic scoring to analyze sentence repetition and sentence production in autistic adolescents and adults. Method: Thirty-one diverse autistic adolescents and adults with language impairment (ALI; n = 15) and without language impairment (ASD; n = 16) completed the Formulated Sentences and Recalling Sentences subtests of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals--Fifth Edition. Descriptive analyses and regression evaluated effects of scoring condition, group, and scoring condition by group on outcomes, as well as group differences in finiteness marking across utterances and morphosyntactic structures. Results: Strategic and unmodified item-level scores were essentially constant on both subtests and significantly lower in the ALI than the ASD group. Only group predicted item-level scores. Group differences were limited to: percent grammatical utterances on Formulated Sentences and percent production of overt structures combined on Sentence Repetition (ALI < ASD). Discussion: Findings support the feasibility of strategic scoring for sentence production and sentence repetition to identify language impairment and indicate that potential language variation in finiteness marking did not confound outcomes in this sample. To better understand the clinical utility of strategic scoring, replication with a larger sample varying in age and comparisons with dialect-sensitive measures are needed.

Given the lack of computational tools available for assessing second language (L2) production in Korean, this study introduces a novel automated tool called the Korean Syntactic Complexity Analyzer (KOSCA) for measuring syntactic complexity in L2 Korean production. As an open-source graphic user interface (GUI) developed in Python, KOSCA provides seven indices of syntactic complexity, including traditional and Korean-specific ones. Its validity was tested by investigating whether the syntactic complexity indices measured by it in L2 written and spoken production could explain the variability of L2 Korean learners' proficiency. The results of mixed-effects regression analyses showed that all seven indices significantly accounted for learner proficiency in Korean. Subsequent stepwise multiple regression analyses revealed that the syntactic complexity indices explained 56.0% of the total variance in proficiency for the written data and 54.4% for the spoken data. These findings underscore the validity of the syntactic complexity indices measured by KOSCA as reliable indicators of L2 Korean proficiency, which can serve as a valuable resource for researchers and educators in the field of L2 Korean learning and assessment.

Purpose: Transcription of conjoined independent clauses within language samples varies across professionals. Some transcribe these clauses as two separate utterances, whereas others conjoin them within a single utterance. As an inquiry into equitable practice, we examined rates of conjoined independent clauses produced by children and the impact of separating these clauses within utterances on measures of mean length of utterance (MLU) by a child's English dialect, clinical status, and age. Method: The data were archival and included 246 language samples from children classified by their dialect (African American English or Southern White English) and clinical status (developmental language disorder [DLD] or typically developing [TD]), with those in the TD group further classified by their age (4 years [TD4] or 6 years [TD6]). Results: Rates of conjoined independent clauses and the impact of these clauses on MLU varied by clinical status (DLD < TD) and age (TD4 < TD6), but not by dialect. Correlations between the rate of conjoined clauses, MLU, and language test scores were also similar across the two dialects. Conclusions: Transcription decisions regarding conjoined independent clauses within language samples lead to equitable measurement outcomes across dialects of English. Nevertheless, transcribing conjoined independent clauses as two separate utterances reduces one's ability to detect syntactic differences between children with and without DLD and document syntactic growth as children age.

Purpose: We investigated the effectiveness of a highly individualized morphosyntactic intervention using the SHAPE CODING™ system delivered at different dosages. Method: Eight children with developmental language disorder aged 8;0-10;10 (years;months) received 10 hr of explicit individualized intervention for morphosyntax delivered in 30-min individual sessions once per week for 20 weeks. Following at least four baseline probe tests, two grammatical targets per session received explicit instruction until they reached criterion (90%), when the next target was introduced. To control for session length and teaching episode density, either both targets received 20 teaching episodes per session or one target received 10 teaching episodes and the other 30. Maintenance testing of completed targets was also carried out. Results: Scores on probe tests post-intervention were significantly higher than during the baseline phase (d = 1.6) with no change during the baseline or maintenance phases. However, progress during the intervention phase was highly significant. One participant showed significantly faster progress with intervention, while one (with the lowest attention score) made little progress. When considering progress relative to cumulative intervention sessions, progress was faster with 30 teaching episodes per session and slower with 10. However, when cumulative teaching episodes were used as the predictor, all three within-session dosages showed very similar rates of progress, with the odds of a correct response increasing by 3.9% for each teaching episode. The targets that were achieved required an average of 40-60 teaching episodes. Conclusions: With the exception of one participant, the individualized intervention was highly effective and efficient. Thus, the individualized target identification process and intervention method merit further research in a larger group of children. The cumulative number of teaching episodes per target provided across sessions appeared to be key. Thus, clinicians should aim for high teaching episode rates, particularly if the number of sessions is constrained. Otherwise, intervention scheduling can be flexible.

As one type of the most extensively used sentences, English questions are must-learn grammatical structures for learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). However, it is commonly seen that English learners across proficiency levels produce ungrammatical English questions. To determine the source of learners' erroneous production, we conducted a written test to collect hands-on data of four types of English questions produced by 81 Chinese EFL preliminary learners. Learners' achievement scores showed that learners from both higher and lower proficiency groups had similar difficulty producing questions. The statistics also showed morphosyntactic inconsistencies in learners' production were congregating on auxiliaries' choice and tense variation. Cross-linguistic transfer from first language (L1) in English question acquisition for Chinese EFL learners was measured against the three dimensions of Jarvis' (2000) methodological model. Influence from learners' L1 was found to be related to preliminary learners' morphosyntactic inconsistencies. The findings suggest that practitioners in an EFL context should raise learners' grammatical consciousness, and design production-oriented tasks, to improve learners' morphosyntactic accuracy in English question formation.

While it is known that heritage speakers diverge from the homeland baseline, there is still no consensus on the mechanisms triggering this divergence. We investigate the impact of two potential factors shaping adult heritage language (HL) grammars: (1) cross-linguistic influence (CLI), originally proposed for second language acquisition (SLA), and (2) background factors associated with input. To assess the role of CLI and input we compared two groups of adult heritage speakers of Russian (n = 66) with two typologically distinct societal languages (SLs), Hebrew and American English. Their production was evaluated for three morphosyntactic phenomena: adjective-noun agreement, accusative case morphology, and numerical phrases. Using self-rating and baseline vocabulary tasks as proficiency measures, we conducted controlled experiments to assess mastery of the target phenomena. Our results show that, while CLI is the main mechanism behind HL grammar maintenance, increased input and proficiency can modulate performance in the absence of grammatical similarities between the HL and SL. An analysis of non-target responses revealed systematic patterns, including reliance on default, or unmarked, forms in both groups, in line with previous research. These findings contribute to the literature on the mechanisms of HL grammar formation and maintenance.

This study investigates feature acquisition and feature reassembly associated with Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD). The article compares the acquisition of CLLD in second language (L2) Italian to L2 Romanian to examine effects of first language (L1) transfer, construction frequency and the type of interface involved (external vs. internal interface) within the same syntactic construction. The results from an acceptability judgment task and a written elicitation task show that while English near-native speakers of Italian/Romanian acquired the L2 constraints on CLLD, which is [+anaphor] for Italian and [+specific] for Romanian, data from both Romanian L2 learners of Italian and Italian L2 learners of Romanian showed persistent L1 transfer effects. Target-like acquisition for these groups requires both grammatical expansion and retraction; Romanian CLLD requires the addition of an L1-unavailable [+specific] feature and the loss of a [+anaphor] feature, while Italian CLLD requires the addition of an L1-unavailable [+anaphor] and the loss of a [+specific] feature. The reported findings extend evidence in favour of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis to the syntax-discourse interface, as reassembly of interpretational features associated with CLLD proved more difficult than feature acquisition. While learners at the near-native levels were able to broaden the contexts that allow a clitic in the L2 (grammatical expansion), L1 preemption difficulties were attested as well. This was the case regardless of the frequency of the relevant construction in the input and the type of L2 feature that needed to be added/removed.

This article reports on two experiments that examine the computation of contrastive focus in Russian on the part of adult English-dominant heritage speakers and second language learners of Russian, in comparison with baseline monolinguals. The first experiment uses an acceptability judgment task to determine whether bilingual and monolingual speakers use both contextual and prosodic cues to determine the location of contrastive focus. A follow-up experiment uses two prominence detection tasks in order to separately examine participants' sensitivity to contextual vs. prosodic cues. The findings indicate that, at higher proficiency, bilingual speakers of Russian successfully use both contextual and prosodic cues to contrastive focus; with proficiency controlled for, heritage speakers do not have an advantage over second language learners in this domain. These findings are discussed in light of cross-linguistic influence and interface vulnerability.

Quantifier-Negation sentences allow an inverse scope reading in Tibetan but not in Chinese. This difference can be attributed to the underlying syntactic difference: the negation word can be raised at Logical Form in Tibetan but not in Chinese. This study investigated whether Chinese-dominant Tibetan heritage speakers know such difference. We conducted a sentence-picture matching truth value judgment task with 28 Chinese-dominant Tibetan heritage speakers, 25 baseline Tibetan speakers and 31 baseline Chinese speakers. Our baseline data first confirmed the difference between Tibetan and Chinese: the inverse scope reading is allowed in Tibetan but prohibited in Chinese. Our heritage participants' data showed a divergence: one group of heritage speakers allow the inverse scope reading in both Tibetan and Chinese while another group prohibit it in both languages. There is a third group of heritage speakers who are aware of the difference between Tibetan and Chinese. Our findings suggest that while it is possible for heritage speakers to attain nativelike knowledge of an interface phenomenon that differs in their two languages, they may also be subject to crosslinguistic influence and adopt one of two opposite strategies. Both strategies can minimize syntactic differences between their two grammars so an economy of syntactic representations in their repository of grammars can be achieved.

Many studies have explored the second language (L2) acquisition of relative clauses (RCs) and whether L2 speakers transfer a resumptive strategy from first language (L1) to L2. While evidence seems to suggest that there are significant L1-L2 differences in the processing of RCs, relatively little is known about the source of non-target-like L2 behaviour. The present study investigates the grammatical acceptability of different RC types in L2 English and whether reliance on a resumptive strategy is a syntactic or processing issue. The participants included 71 L1-Persian L2-English, 52 L1-French L2-English, and 44 native English speakers, who completed a proficiency c-test, a grammaticality judgment task, and a reading span working memory (WM) task. Unlike French, which is similar to English in the syntactic derivation of RCs, Persian is a structurally wh-in-situ language that syntactically allows resumption in direct object and object-of-preposition RCs. The results showed that unlike L1-French speakers, L1-Persian speakers were more likely to accept resumptive pronouns in L2-English RCs; however, both L1 and L2 groups overwhelmingly preferred a gap over a resumptive strategy. The results suggest that given sufficiently high proficiency and long immersion experience, L2 speakers can match native speakers in terms of RC syntactic representations, suggesting that the issue faced by learners is a processing issue rather a representational one as suggested by the Interpretability Hypothesis.

Purpose: Production of complex syntax is a hallmark of later language development; however, most of the research examining age-related changes has focused on adolescents or analyzed narrative language samples. Research documenting age-related changes in the production of complex syntax in elementary school-aged children in conversational language samples is limited. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to examine age-related changes in the production of coordinate and subordinate clauses in children between 5 and 10 years of age obtained from 50-utterance conversational language samples. Method: The analytic sample included 196 children with typical language development, who ranged in age from 5;0 to 10;11 (years;months; girls = 103; boys = 96; three cases were excluded). Fifty-utterance conversational language samples were examined for use of coordinate and subordinate clauses. Results: Results of regression analyses indicated that the production of coordinate and subordinate clauses could be predicted from age. The proportion of utterances that included subordinate clauses increased 0.20% for every month increase in age (p < 0.001). Coordinate clauses also continued to grow, although at a slower rate (0.10% increase for every month increase in age, p < 0.001). Finally, the proportion of simple utterances (i.e., utterances without coordinate or subordinate clauses) decreased with age (0.40% decrease for every month increase in age, p < 0.001). Conclusions: This study indicated that as children's age increased, they used fewer, simple, one-clause sentences and more utterances that included subordinate clauses, with or without coordinate clauses. These results were obtained from 50-utterance language samples, further supporting use of language sampling to develop intervention goals and monitor progress in therapy.

Most of the previous studies focused on lexical and syntactic features in adapted texts while little attention has been paid to the structural complexity from the perspective of the amount of information. In this study, we intend to examine the differences in structural complexity in adapted texts from the perspective of the amount of information at the lexical and grammatical levels. We also aim to identify the lexical and grammatical features that contribute most to such differences. The data used in this study were reading texts from Newsela, that is, reading materials for English learners under the educational system of K-12 in the United States. This study yields several findings of interest. First, the adapted texts differ in the structural complexity at both lexical and grammatical levels in terms of their amount of information. Second, the differences display a decreasing trend. That is, the differences become smaller when the level of the text increases. Third, function words and part-of-speech trigrams with a preposition(s) and/or a noun(s) contribute most to the differences. The findings provide significant implications for the adaptation of language materials such as reading texts and test materials.

This article provides three major contributions to the literature: we provide granular information on the development of student argumentative writing across secondary school; we replicate the MacArthur et al. model of Natural Language Processing (NLP) writing features that predict quality with a younger group of students; and we are able to examine the differences for students across language status. In our study, we sought to find the average levels of text length, cohesion, connectives, syntactic complexity, and word-level complexity in this sample across Grades 7-12 by sex, by English learner status, and for essays scoring above and below the median holistic score. Mean levels of variables by grade suggest a developmental progression with respect to text length, with the text length increasing with grade level, but the other variables in the model were fairly stable. Sex did not seem to affect the model in meaningful ways beyond the increased fluency of women writers. We saw text length and word level differences between initially designated and redesignated bilingual students compared to their English-only peers. Finally, we see that the model works better with our higher scoring essays and is less effective explaining the lower scoring essays.

This article offers a descriptive account of seven interjections, "eish", "yho", "tjo", "sho", "hayi", "hau", and "mxm", which are adopted from different local South African languages into South African English. It investigates the frequencies, orthography, syntactic position, collocational forms and discourse-pragmatic roles of these seven interjections, through the lens of pragmatic borrowing and postcolonial corpus pragmatics. The data were retrieved from the South African segment of the Global Web-based English corpus and underwent quantitative and qualitative analysis. The findings indicate that the interjections are all emotive interjections, which mostly express negative emotions, except "hayi", which is a phatic interjection that is largely used to show disapproval of some information. All the interjections favour clause-initial position except "mxm", which is a loan interjection that represents the kiss-teeth or suck-teeth oral gesture that is common in some parts of Africa and the Caribbean. The article affirms that these loaned interjections accentuate the distinction of South African English from other varieties of English.

This study intends to examine the reading process in Chinese of two young heritage language learners through the use of retrospective miscue analysis (RMA). Retrospective miscue analysis involves both the author and the reader in reflectively discussing the reader's oral reading miscues--responses that differ from the actual text. This study confirms the notion that reading is an active sense-making process where the graphophonic, syntactic, and semantic cues as well as translanguaging skills function interdependently to assist heritage language readers with meaning construction. Strategies of sampling, predicting, substituting, and correcting are also evident in their reading. These active but "invisible" reading behaviors are not available through asking comprehension questions. Instead, they are obtained from the reflective conversations between the researcher and the students. Retrospective miscue analysis helps readers gain a deeper understanding of the reading process and enhances their metacognitive skills. This study also includes language and reading behaviors that are unique to Chinese heritage language learners as well as implications for parents and teachers.

This study investigated the feasibility of a vocabulary-based teacher intervention to increase preschool teachers' production of complement clauses (e.g. "I wonder if we can put the monkey in the tree") in teacher-children play interactions. Using a multiple baseline across participants design we measured the impact of an intervention that promoted preschool teachers' production of four complement clause verbs (CCVs)--"figure out," "notice," "remember," "wonder." Based on visual analysis we established a functional relation between the teacher intervention and the teachers' production of the target CCVs produced with a complement clause. Asking teachers to increase their use of CCVs in verbal interactions with children is a promising approach to increase teacher complex syntax input in the preschool classroom.

This study examined the interrelationships among and combined effects of word reading skills and syntactic knowledge on reading prosody in fifth-grade monolingual Spanish-speaking students. We used Spanish standardized tests to assess the participants (n = 169, 79 girls) on word and pseudoword reading skills, syntactic knowledge, and reading prosody. The results revealed significant relationships among these factors and reading prosody. Word reading emerged as a pivotal predictor, whereas syntactic knowledge, although playing a smaller role compared to word reading, was linked to improvements in expression, phrasing, and the reduction of ungrammatical pauses. We also found a non-significant interaction between the independent effects of word reading and syntactic knowledge on reading prosody. The study suggests the potential benefits of integrating explicit syntactic instruction into reading curricula and intervention programs to support the development of reading prosody in Spanish.

We conducted a meta-analysis to investigate reading-writing relations. Beyond the overall relation, we systematically investigated moderation of the relation as a function of linguistic grain size (word reading and spelling versus reading comprehension and written composition), measurement of reading comprehension (e.g., multiple choice, open-ended, cloze), and written composition (e.g., writing quality, writing productivity, writing fluency, writing syntax), and developmental phase of reading and writing (grade levels as a proxy). A total of 395 studies (k = 2,265, N = 120,669) met inclusion criteria. Overall, reading and writing were strongly related (r = 0.72). However, the relation differed depending on the subskills of reading and writing such that word reading and spelling were strongly related (r = 0.82) whereas reading comprehension and written composition were moderately related (r = 0.44). In addition, the word reading-spelling relation was stronger for primary-grade students (r = 0.82) than for university students/adults (r = 0.69). The relation of reading comprehension with written composition differed depending on measurement of reading comprehension and written composition--reading comprehension measured by multiple choice and open-ended tasks had a stronger relation with writing quality than reading comprehension measured by oral retell tasks; and reading comprehension had moderate relations with writing quality, writing vocabulary, writing syntax, and writing conventions but had weak relations with writing productivity and writing fluency. Relations tended to be stronger when reliability was higher, and the relation between word reading and spelling was stronger for alphabetic languages (r = 0.83) than for Chinese (r = 0.71). These results add important nuances about the nature of relations between reading and writing.

We tested whether second language (L2) learners rely more on explicit memory during structural priming at lower than at higher proficiency levels (Hartsuiker & Bernolet, 2017). We compared within-L2 priming with lexical overlap in 100 low and 100 high proficiency French L2 speakers under low versus high working memory load conditions induced with a letter series recall task presented between primes and targets. The high load condition would prevent explicit recall of primes during target production. Both groups primed more under low than high load. The effect of load was similar across groups, but exploratory analyses with proficiency as a continuous variable suggested that, with increasing proficiency, participants primed less under high load. We discuss how these findings support the idea that learners exploit explicit memory more during priming in early versus later stages of acquisition. Overall, this study showed that explicit memory influences syntactic processing across the L2 learning trajectory.

In a series of sentence-picture verification studies we contrasted, for example, "… choose the balloon with "… inflate the balloon" and "… the inflated balloon" to examine the degree to which different representational components of event representation (specifically, the different object states entailed by the inflating event; minimally, the balloon in its uninflated and inflated states) are jointly activated after state-change verbs and past participles derived from them. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that the initial and end states are both activated after state-change verbs, but that the initial state is considerably less accessible after participles. Experiment 3 showed that intensifier adverbs (e.g., completely) before both state-change verbs and participles further modulate the accessibility of the initial state. And in Experiment 4, we ruled out the possibility that the initial state is accessible only because of the semantic overlap. We conclude that although state-change verbs activate representations of both the initial and end states of their event participants, their accessibility is graded, modulated by the morphosyntactic devices used to describe the event.

Purpose: Syntax provides critical support for both academic success and linguistic growth, yet it has not been a focus of language research in school-age African American children. This study examines complex syntax performance of African American children in second through fifth grades. Method: The current study explores the syntactic performances of African American children (N = 513) in Grades 2-5 on the Test of Language Development--Intermediate who speak African American English. Multilevel modeling was used to evaluate the growth and associated changes between dialect density and syntax. Analyzed data were compared both to the normative sample and within the recruited sample. Results: The results suggest that dialect density exerted its impact early but did not continue to influence syntactic growth over time. Additionally, it was not until dialect density was accounted for in growth models that African American children's syntactic growth resembled normative expectations of a standardized language instrument. Conclusion: The current study suggests that failure to consider cultural language differences obscures our understanding of African American students' linguistic competence on standardized language assessments.

Many English language proficiency (ELP) tests used for university admissions and placement now include integrated writing tasks that require examinees to use external sources when writing. Integrated writing tasks improve test authenticity and impact, but they raise several validity questions, such as what academic language skills they engage and whether performance on these tasks varies with examinee ELP level. This study addresses these questions with reference to an integrated writing task from the Canadian Academic English Language (CAEL) Test that involves reading, listening, and writing in academic contexts. Responses by 59 students to one of the CAEL integrated writing tasks are analyzed in terms of various grammatical, discourse, sociolinguistic, strategic, content, and source use aspects and compared across ELP levels (high and low) and score levels. The findings indicate that both ELP level and score level had significant effects on most writing features examined in the study, except for syntactic complexity. Additionally, except for syntactic complexity, all writing dimensions examined in the study were significantly associated with writing scores. The findings and their implications for the validity argument of source-based writing tasks are discussed.

Purpose: Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) tend to interpret noncanonical sentences like passives using event probability (EP) information regardless of structure (e.g., by interpreting "The dog was chased by the squirrel" as "The dog chased the squirrel"). Verbs are a major source of EP information in adults and children with typical development (TD), who know that "chase" implies an unequal relationship among participants. Individuals with DLD have poor verb knowledge and verb-based sentence processing. Yet, they also appear to rely more on EP information than their peers. This paradox raises two questions: (a) How do children with DLD use verb-based EP information alongside other information in online passive sentence interpretation? (b) How does verb vocabulary knowledge support EP information use? Method: We created novel EP biases by showing animations of agents with consistent action tendencies (e.g., clumsy vs. helpful actions). We then used eye tracking to examine how this EP information was used during online passive sentence processing. Participants were 4- to 5-year-old children with DLD (n = 20) and same-age peers with TD (n = 20). Results: In Experiment 1, children with DLD quickly integrated verb-based EP information with morphosyntax close to the verb but failed to do so with distant morphosyntax. In Experiment 2, the quality of children's sentence-specific verb vocabulary knowledge was positively associated with the use of EP information in both groups. Conclusion: Depending on the morphosyntactic context, children with DLD and TD used EP information differently, but verb vocabulary knowledge aided its use.

Purpose: According to the interpersonal synergy model of spoken dialogue, interlocutors modify their communicative behaviors to meet the contextual demands of a given conversation. Although a growing body of research supports this postulation for linguistic behaviors (e.g., semantics, syntax), little is understood about how this model applies to speech behaviors (e.g., speech rate, pitch). The purpose of this study is to test the hypothesis that interlocutors adjust their speech behaviors across different conversational tasks with different conversational goals. Method: In this study, 28 participants each engaged in two different types of conversations (i.e., relational and informational) with two partners (i.e., Partner 1 and Partner 2), yielding a total of 112 conversations. We compared six acoustic measures of participant speech behavior across conversational task and partner. Results: Linear mixed-effects models demonstrated significant differences between speech feature measures in informational and relational conversations. Furthermore, these findings were generally robust across conversations with different partners. Conclusions: Results suggest that contextual demands influence speech behaviors. These findings provide empirical support for the interpersonal synergy model and highlight important considerations for assessing speech behaviors in individuals with communication disorders.

The present study investigated the potential of writing in English as a foreign language (EFL) for language learning by manipulating cognitive task complexity based on related models and hypotheses. English essays written by 59 Chinese postgraduate EFL students from different subject areas were analysed with reference to writing complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF). Results showed that task complexity had no significant effect on EFL learners' lexical complexity but had an influence on their syntactic variation in EFL writing. Findings suggest that manipulating writing task complexity could be a feasible means to promoting and enhancing EFL learners' language learning. Such findings might broaden our understanding of the relationship between EFL writing and language learning in an EFL learning context. The interplay of EFL writing and EFL learning is also pedagogically relevant to those who are interested in appropriately sequencing tasks for more effective language teaching.

Background: We examined linguistic features in fourth graders' narrative and opinion writing and their relations to writing quality. We analysed narrative and opinion essays in terms of lexical sophistication and diversity as well as syntactic complexity, syntactic accuracy, and morphological complexity. Methods: Data were from English-speaking students in Grade 4 (N = 129; 50% female) in the United States, majority of whom were from low socioeconomic status background. Paired t tests were used to analyse differences of linguistic features between the two genres. Hierarchical regression models were run to examine how language features are related to writing quality. Results: Words in the narrative task were more diverse and included more diverse verbal inflectional morphemes than those in the opinion task; syntactic complexity was significantly greater in the opinion genre, manifested by longer T-units and the more frequent use of adverbial and relative clauses. Approximately 80% of T-units were grammatical and 20% were ungrammatical. Syntactic accuracy and verbal morphological complexity of words were positively related to writing quality in the narrative task. Additionally, syntactic complexity measured by clauses per T-unit, verbal and nominal morphological complexity of words were uniquely related to writing quality in the opinion genre. Conclusions: The findings highlight the limited extent to which Grade 4 students use complex syntax in their writing. The study also supports the critical role of linguistic features in writing quality and shows both similarities and differences in language use in two important writing genres, narrative and opinion, in elementary grades.

This study modeled the effects of essay length and language features on the rated quality of second language (L2) expository and argumentative essays composed by Chinese university students. Latent variables were writing quality captured by essay scores, and lexical sophistication, syntactic complexity and cohesion, each of which was measured by different linguistic features in the essays. Results showed that: (1) essay length, sophisticated words (i.e., words eliciting longer lexical decision times, and used in academic texts), complex nominals and coordinate phrases could account for approximately 45% of the variance in the scores of argumentative essays, and (2) essay length, sophisticated words (i.e., academic words, words used in restricted context, and words that have fewer orthographic neighbors), complex nominals, coordinate phrases and word type-token ratio could explain approximately 49% of the variance in the scores of expository essays. Such findings indicate that, although differing in genre, raters tended to give higher scores to the essays of two genres that contained more sophisticated words, complex phrases, and distinct types of words.

This study investigates the extent to which (a) Spanish heritage (HL) and second language (L2) writers' linguistic complexity differs across register contexts and (b) Spanish proficiency and writing motivational beliefs differentially affect HL and L2 writers' performance. Participants were 58 HL and 54 L2 Spanish learners who completed two persuasive writing tasks - the Email to Friend and Letter to Dean tasks - designed to be topically similar while eliciting different registers. Proficiency measures included an elicited imitation task (EIT) and a cloze test. Mixed-effects models indicated that both HL and L2 writers evidenced greater lexico-syntactic complexity in the Letter to Dean task; nonetheless, HL writers demonstrated more robust cross-register distinctions in syntactic complexity. The EIT and cloze test positively predicted syntactic and lexical complexity, respectively, although differential patterns were also observed by group. Intrinsic/interest and cognitive/linguistic value beliefs about Spanish writing emerged as positive and negative predictors of linguistic complexity, respectively.

It has been proposed that second language (L2) learners differ from native speakers in processing due to either influence from their native language or an inability to integrate information from multiple linguistic domains in a second language. To shed new light on the underlying mechanism of L2 processing, we used an event-related potentials (ERP) paradigm to examine the processing of sentences with "only" in English by native speakers of English and advanced Dutch learners of English. Successful processing of sentences with "only" requires rapid integration of prosodic information with semantic and syntactic information. We found that L2 listeners showed native-like processing of the acoustics of contrastive pitch accents when adjacent to "only." However, they needed more cues than L1 listeners to perform native-like in forming expectations for focus placement. Our results thus provide first ERP-based evidence for difficulty in the integration of information for focus expectation in difficult L2 constructs.

The development of L2 utterance fluency has been extensively researched, whereas that of cognitive fluency has rarely been examined. This study investigated the longitudinal development of L2 utterance and cognitive fluency and their relationship. Thirty-one Chinese learners of English completed speaking tasks and a set of tasks for cognitive fluency before and after 5 months' study abroad. The results showed that participants made a significant improvement in mean syllable duration, end-clause pause frequency, and the speed of syntactic encoding and articulation but not in mid-clause pause frequency or lexical retrieval speed. Mixed-effects modeling confirmed a significant relationship between syntactic encoding speed and mean syllable duration and mid-clause pausing. Furthermore, the significant relationships were maintained over time. The findings highlight (a) the differences between mid-clause and end-clause pausing in terms of their developmental patterns and relationship with cognitive fluency and (b) a significant role of syntactic encoding speed in L2 utterance fluency.

This case study describes the use of a syntax intervention with two deaf children who did not acquire a complete first language (L1) from birth. It looks specifically at their ability to produce subject-verb-object (SVO) sentence structure in American Sign Language (ASL) after receiving intervention. This was an exploratory case study in which investigators utilized an intervention that contained visuals to help teach SVO word order to young deaf children. Baseline data were collected over three sessions before implementation of a targeted syntax intervention and two follow-up sessions over 3-4 weeks. Both participants demonstrated improvements in their ability to produce SVO structure in ASL in 6-10 sessions. Visual analysis revealed a positive therapeutic trend that was maintained in follow-up sessions. These data provide preliminary evidence that a targeted intervention may help young deaf children with an incomplete L1 learn to produce basic word order in ASL. Results from this case study can help inform the practice of professionals working with signing deaf children who did not acquire a complete L1 from birth (e.g., speech-language pathologists, deaf mentors/coaches, ASL specialists, etc.). Future research should investigate the use of this intervention with a larger sample of deaf children.

Prediction-based accounts of language acquisition have the potential to explain several different effects in child language acquisition and adult language processing. However, evidence regarding the developmental predictions of such accounts is mixed. Here, we consider several predictions of these accounts in two large-scale developmental studies of syntactic priming of the English dative alternation. Study 1 was a cross-sectional study (N = 140) of children aged 3-9 years, in which we found strong evidence of abstract priming and the lexical boost, but little evidence that either effect was moderated by age. We found weak evidence for a prime surprisal effect; however, exploratory analyses revealed a protracted developmental trajectory for verb-structure biases, providing an explanation as for why prime surprisal effects are more elusive in developmental populations. In a longitudinal study (N = 102) of children in tightly controlled age bands at 42, 48, and 54 months, we found priming effects emerged on trials with verb overlap early but did not observe clear evidence of priming on trials without verb overlap until 54 months. There was no evidence of a prime surprisal effect at any time point and none of the effects were moderated by age. The results relating to the emergence of the abstract priming and lexical boost effects are consistent with prediction-based models, while the absence of age-related effects appears to reflect the structure-specific challenges the dative presents to English-acquiring children. Overall, our complex pattern of findings demonstrates the value of developmental data sets in testing psycholinguistic theory.

It remains an open question whether second language (L2) learners can process linguistic properties at the syntax-discourse interface. This study examines this issue in the context of the L2 processing of Korean dative sentences under different information structure requirements. Given that discourse constraints associated with information structure tend to manifest more strongly in noncanonical than in canonical structures, we tested whether L2 learners of Korean show sensitivity to such constraints during online processing. In a story-continuation task, both native and nonnative speaker groups showed a strong preference for producing canonical dative patterns, indicating their comparable knowledge of the canonical status of Korean dative sentences. In a self-paced reading task, both groups spent longer reading times when the word order of dative sentences did not follow given-new information structure, but only for the noncanonical and not the canonical structure. These results suggest that L2 processing of dative structures at the syntax-discourse interface relies on the same parsing architecture that guides native-speaker processing.

This study investigates the hypothesis that non-isomorphic syntax-semantics mappings pose a greater challenge for non-native (L2) than for native (L1) speakers, focusing on a previously understudied phenomenon. We carried out an antecedent judgment task with L1 German and L1 Russian-speaking, proficient L2 learners of German to examine Condition C connectivity effects in German pseudoclefts. Binding Condition C constrains the interpretation of cataphoric pronouns such that they cannot be interpreted as coreferential with a referential expression within their scope. In specificational pseudoclefts such as "What she liked was Jane's office," Condition C effects can be observed in the absence of the required structural configuration, indicating that these effects result from the computation of a non-isomorphic semantic representation. For superficially similar -- but semantically different -- predicational pseudoclefts, no connectivity effects are expected. While the L1 speakers' judgements showed the expected selective Condition C effect, the L2 speakers showed an across-the-board effect, with their antecedent judgements based on surface-level cues to cataphoric pronoun resolution and not affected by the semantic differences between the two types of pseudocleft. These findings support the claim that establishing syntax--semantics mappings is more difficult in a non-native than in a native language if there is no one-to-one correspondence between form and interpretation.

orInverse relations, or "trade-off effects," are a common outcome of interlanguage development: a learner may increase performance in one linguistic domain while simultaneously decreasing performance in another. In this study, we investigate the relationships between one aspect of fluency (pause usage) and two aspects of syntactic complexity (utterance length and subordination) in relation to the location of pauses (between-clause or within-clause) in second-language (L2) oral narratives. The longitudinal analysis is based on monologic data produced by 16 English-speaking L2 learners of Spanish who participated in a seven-week study-abroad program in Spain. Overall, the learners decreased their silent-pause rate over the course of the program while concurrently increasing their number of syntactically complex clauses. Notably, the data suggest a systematic trade-off between pausing and complexity: the learners consistently produced more pauses (i.e. decr/eased fluency performance) during the elocution of the most complex clauses involving clausal subordination (i.e. increased complexity performance) in comparison to utterances lacking such subordination. We contextualize the findings within models of oral production and discuss how this research generates new insight into the processing factors that modulate pause usage in L2 speeclh.