Tania Ionin

• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

This study investigates the acquisition of sentence focus in Russian by adult English-Russian bilinguals, while paying special attention to the relative contribution of constituent order and prosodic expression. It aims to understand how these factors influence perceived word-level prominence and focus assignment during listening. We present result...

This volume comprises studies and keynote addresses presented at the 16th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference hosted by The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, in Trondheim in 2022. The selection of cutting-edge studies presented covers a wide array of topics within generative linguistics, including the...

This volume comprises studies and keynote addresses presented at the 16th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference hosted by The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, in Trondheim in 2022. The selection of cutting-edge studies presented covers a wide array of topics within generative linguistics, including the...

This paper reports on an experimental study that examines the relationship between word order and information structure in the Russian of adult English-dominant and Hebrew-dominant heritage speakers of Russian. The objectives of the study were: (a) To examine whether the relationship between word order and information structure is acquirable by her...

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 speake...

This article investigates how different types of input and instruction can affect L1-Mandarin L2-English learners’ acquisition of English inverse scope. English quantifier–negation sentences such as All the kids didn’t climb the tree are ambiguous between a surface-scope reading (‘none of the kids climbed the tree’) and an inverse-scope reading (‘i...

Based on classic and cutting-edge research, this textbook shows how grammatical phenomena can best be taught to second language and bilingual learners. Bringing together second language research, linguistics, pedagogical grammar, and language teaching, it demonstrates how linguistic theory and second language acquisition findings optimize classroom...

This study investigates how L1-Korean L2-English learners perform with regard to articles in both explicit and implicit tasks. It also examines the role of L1-transfer from Korean demonstratives to English definites in L2 article production. 21 native English speakers and 27 adult intermediate L1-Korean L2-English learners were tested. The particip...

This volume brings together empirical studies and keynote addresses presented at the 15th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition conference hosted by the University of Nevada, Reno in 2019. The studies selected for the volume reflect how the latest developments in generative syntactic theory and psycholinguistic methodologies have imp...

This study investigates (1) whether second language learners (L2ers) acquire the Mandarin system of pronouns and reflexives despite differences from their first languages (L1s) and (2) whether L1-English and L1-Korean L2ers differ due to L1-transfer. Unlike English, Mandarin and Korean allow long-distance (LD) reflexives. While himself/ herself and...

Simple broad focus intransitives in English have been observed to occur with variable nuclear accent (NA) placement on either the subject or verb. This variability can be difficult to acquire in a second language (L2), especially when the speaker’s first language (L1), such as Spanish, has less flexible NA placement. Learners tend to transfer L1 in...

This paper reports on an experimental investigation of what second language (L2) learners and heritage speakers of Russian know about the relationship between word order and information structure in Russian. The participants completed a bimodal acceptability judgment task, rating the acceptability of SVO and OVS word orders in narrow-focus contexts...

This paper reports on a study that uses a novel methodology, the minimal part identification task, in order to probe the relationship between morphosyntax and interpretation. English, Korean and Mandarin Chinese differ from one another with regard to the count/mass distinction. Building on prior research but using a new methodology, this study exam...

The starting point of most experimental and clinical examinations of bilingual language development is the choice of the measure of participants’ proficiency, which affects the interpretation of experimental findings and has pedagogical and clinical implications. Recent work on heritage and L2 acquisition of Russian used varying proficiency assessm...

This article investigates whether explicit instruction can affect second language (L2) competence in the domain of English quantifier scope. An intervention study was conducted with L1-Mandarin L2-English learners in order to examine (1) whether these learners can learn inverse scope for the structure on which they are instructed (double-quantifier...

This commentary on Schwartz and Sprouse (2021) focuses on three aspects of their proposal for L3-acquisition: the need to test the role of UG in L3-acquisition; the question of what exactly transfers in the case of transfer from the L2 Interlanguage to the L3; and the distinction between transfer and cross-linguistic influence.

Advances in Learner Corpus Research (LCR) and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) have brought these two fast-moving fields significantly closer in recent years. This volume brings together contributions from internationally recognized experts in both LCR and SLA to provide an innovative, cross-collaborative examination of how both areas can provide...

This paper examines the effect of intonation contour on two types of scopally ambiguous constructions in English: configurations with a universal quantifier in subject position and sentential negation (e.g., Every horse didn’t jump) and configurations with quantifiers in both subject and object positions (e.g., A girl saw every boy). There is much...

This paper examines whether second language (L2)-English learners whose native languages (L1; Korean and Mandarin) lack obligatory plural marking transfer the properties of plural marking from their L1s, and whether transfer is manifested both offline (in a grammaticality judgment task) and online (in a self-paced reading task). The online task tes...

This commentary discusses the recent keynote article in Second Language Research by Westergaard (2019), which extends the Micro-cue Model to second language (L2) and third language (L3) acquisition. The commentary comments on such questions as: What makes a given property easy or hard to acquire? How do learners determine similarity? What exactly i...

This paper examines whether adult learners of English whose native languages (Korean and Mandarin Chinese) lack articles are influenced by transfer from demonstratives and numerals in their acquisition of English articles. To this end, the results of two studies are reported. The first study examines native Korean and Mandarin speakers’ preferences...

This study uses both offline and online tasks in order to investigate whether second language learners of English from an article-less first-language (Mandarin) are able to integrate the indefinite article into their grammar despite the lack of articles in their first language. This article reports on two studies, one on learners’ sensitivity to er...

This study investigates whether L2-learners from generalized classifier (GC) languages (Korean and Chinese) can acquire the count/mass distinction of English, in the domain of singular NP interpretation. We hypothesize that L1- Korean/Chinese L2-English learners transfer the properties of NP interpretation from their L1 to their L2. This hypothesis...

This edited volume contains a representative sample of papers presented at the 7th meeting of the Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition – North America (GALANA-7) conference. The book features three streams of research (Variation in Input, First Language Acquisition, and Second Language Acquisition), each of which investigates the nature of...

This paper contributes to the cross-linguistic study of indefinites by reporting on two experimental studies on the scopal and functional properties of the two Russian indefinites 'koe'- and -'to'. We show that 'koe'- allows not only wide scope readings out of syntactic islands, but also functional readings, much like English 'a certain'. -'to', on...

An argument that complex cardinals are not extra-linguistic but built using standard syntax and standard principles of semantic composition. In Cardinals, Tania Ionin and Ora Matushansky offer a semantic and syntactic analysis of nominal expressions containing complex cardinals (for example, two hundred and thirty-five books). They show that comple...

Parafoveal processing of Russian inflectional morphology was tested in native speakers (NS) and English L1/Russian L2-learners (L2-learners) via a boundary-change paradigm (Rayner, 1975). The NS elicited identical preview benefit for first-pass measures (SF/GD/GPT) and preview cost for the morphologically related for GPT. The L2-learners elicited i...

Parafoveal processing of inflectional morphology of Russian nouns was tested in Russian native speakers and Russian L2/English L1 via a boundary-change paradigm (Rayner, 1975) in a second post-verbal argument position not examined previously. The native speakers elicited identical preview benefit for both first -pass measures (SF, GD, GPT) on the...

This paper reports on an experimental investigation of quantifier scope in Russian SVO and OVS sentences. The factors of word order, prosody, information structure and indefinite form are manipulated experimentally. It is shown that native Russian speakers have a preference for surface scope under neutral prosody, though this preference is more pro...

Bare (determinerless) singular NPs in Brazilian Portuguese have been variously analyzed as indefinite terms, as kind terms, or as ambiguous between the two. It has furthermore been noted (Schmitt & Munn 1999 and subsequent literature) that bare singulars, unlike bare plurals, are degraded in the preverbal subject position of episodic sentences but...

This study investigates the second language (L2) acquisition of the English count/mass distinction by speakers of Korean and Mandarin Chinese, with a focus on the semantics of atomicity. It is hypothesized that L1-Korean and L1-Mandarin L2-English learners are influenced by atomicity in the use of the count/mass morphosyntax in English. This hypoth...

This paper provides an overview of recent work on the first language acquisition of Slavic languages. The focus is on those areas in which the most work has been done since the year 2000: referring expressions, nominal inflection, the verbal domain, and word order, with a brief mention of other topics, including the acquisition of phonology. Most o...

This project investigated the role of the preceding word order on the target word by examining neuronal oscillations evoked by violations of canonicity of word order and grammaticality in Russian. Russian, a language with free word order and rich inflectional system allowed to examine separate contributions of canonicity ((SVO (canonical/ more freq...

Fast oscillations in beta (13-30Hz) and gamma (>30Hz) neural activity are thought to be related to the integration of syntactic and lexico-semantic information (e.g. Baastiansen & Hagoort, 2015; Baastiansen, Magyari, & Hagoort, 2010; Lewis, Wang, & Bastiaansen, 2015, among others). However, the role of slow oscillatory dynamics in the delta/theta r...

This paper examines the interpretation of NPs in generic and existential contexts in the acquisition of Brazilian Portuguese (BrP) as a third language (L3) by learners who speak English and a Romance language (Spanish, French or Italian). The paper examines whether transfer / cross-linguistic influence is from English, Spanish/French/Italian, or bo...

Within formal semantics, research on the expression of modality in natural language has traditionally focused on verbs. This book brings together novel work on the semantics and pragmatics of some nominal expressions that also convey modality. The book focuses on indefinites that can convey ignorance on the part of the speaker with respect to which...

This volume brings together studies in the domain of weak referentiality, the phenomenon that a definite or indefinite noun phrase lacks its usual referential force. Several papers investigate syntactic or semantic properties of indefinite noun phrases, such as modality, number neutrality, narrow scope, incorporation, predication, and case marking,...

This article provides an overview of recent studies in second language acquisition that use tasks that elicit learners' judgments about the grammaticality of language or learners' interpretation of language. We discuss acceptability judgment tasks, preference tasks, truth-value judgment tasks, and other types of interpretation tasks. For each task...

This paper reports on an experimental study of the expression of genericity in the acquisition of English by native speakers of Spanish and Brazilian Por-tuguese, and in the acquisition of Brazilian Portuguese by native speakers of English and Spanish. English, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese exhibit a three-way distinction in terms of which NP ty...

This paper investigates how learners interpret definite plural noun phrases (e.g., the tigers) and bare (article-less) plural noun phrases (e.g., tigers) in their second language. Whereas Spanish allows definite plurals to have both generic and specific readings, English requires definite plurals to have specific, nongeneric readings. Generic readi...

This chapter examines the semantics and pragmatics of two markers of epistemic specificity: reduced indefinite this in English (Prince E, On the inferencing of indefinite-this NPs. In: Joshi A, Webber B, Sag I (eds) Elements of discourse understanding, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 231–250, 1981) and reduced odin “one” in Russian. It is...

This paper reports on a study investigating how native Russian speakers and second language learners of Russian interpret double-quantifier sentences with canonical SVO as well as scrambled OVS orders. A Truth-Value Judgment Task is used, in which participants are asked to evaluate sentences such as 'One girl strokes every kitten' (in Russian) as t...

This paper reports on a study investigating how native Russian speakers and second language learners of Russian interpret double-quantifier sentences with canonical SVO as well as scrambled OVS orders. A Truth-Value Judgment Task is used, in which participants are asked to evaluate sentences such as 'One girl strokes every kitten' (in Russian) as t...

The availability of different scope readings for double-quantifier sentences in Russian has been a source of an ongoing debate. The goal of our paper is to use experimental methodology to examine the availability of both surface-scope and inverse-scope readings in SVO and scrambled OVS word orders in Russian.

This study investigates dominant language transfer (from English) in adult Spanish second language (L2) learners and Spanish heritage speakers. We focus on contrasting properties of English and Spanish definite articles with respect to generic reference ('Elephants have ivory tusks' vs. Los elefantes tienen colmillos de marfil) and inalienable poss...

Background How to Design Judgment and Interpretation TasksSummaryProject Ideas and ResourcesStudy QuestionsReferences

This article investigates how adult Korean-speaking learners of English interpret English definite descriptions (the book, the books) and demonstrative descriptions (that book, those books). Korean lacks articles, but has demonstratives, and it is hypothesized that transfer leads learners to (initially) equate definites with demonstratives. Followi...

English uses three types of generic NPs: bare plurals (Lions are dangerous), definite singulars (The lion is dangerous), and indefinite singulars (A lion is dangerous). These three NP types are not interchangeable: definite singulars and bare plurals can have generic reference at the NP-level, while indefinite singulars are compatible only with sen...

This study examines NPs in generic environments cross-linguistically. According to the semantic literature, NPs obtain generic readings from two sources: characterizing sentences (Lions are dangerous) and kind-reference (Dodo birds are extinct). English, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese are known to differ in the types of NPs (definite vs. indefini...

This study examines second language (L2) acquisition of the interpretation of plural noun phrases. Languages with articles differ in whether they use bare plurals (English) or definite plurals (Spanish) to express generic interpretation (Chierchia, 1998; Dayal, 2004; among others). It is hypothesized that Spanish-speaking learners of English transf...

This paper reports on three experiments which investigate the availability of long-distance scope for different types of indefinite expressions, in order to test the predictions of different semantic theories of indefinite scope. The main findings of the experiments are: (i) local, narrow-scope readings are preferred for a indefinites, whereas long...

This study investigates the role of transfer from the stronger language by focusing on the interpretation of definite articles in Spanish and English by Spanish heritage speakers (i.e., minority language-speaking bilinguals) residing in the U.S., where English is the majority language. Spanish plural NPs with definite articles can express generic r...

This paper reports on an experimental investigation of the scope of English a indefinites and a certain indefinites. Three experiments test whether native English speakers allow indefinites to scope out of syntactic islands, and to take intermediate as well as widest scope. The experimental findings indicate that a indefinites and a certain indefin...

MEANING IN THE SECOND LANGUAGE. SlabakovaRoumyana. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2008. Pp. xi + 326. - Volume 32 Issue 3 - Tania Ionin

This article investigates the role of presuppositionality (defined as the presupposition of existence) in the second language (L2) acquisition of English articles. Building upon the proposal in Wexler 2003 that young English-acquiring children overuse the with presuppositional indefinites, this article proposes that presuppositionality also influen...

While much is known about article omission and misuse in L2-English production (Thomas, 1989; Ionin, Ko and Wexler, 2004; Trenkic, 2007), little is known of how learners perceive English articles. According to the Prosodic Transfer Hypothesis (Goad & White, 2004), L1-prosody constrains the production of L2 functional elements, including articles. W...

The studies in this collection address a topic that has recently become the focus of considerable interest in second language acquisition (SLA) research: the acquisition of articles. Languages appear to vary in whether they have articles (English, German, Norwegian do, but Chinese, Japanese, Russian do not). Languages that have articles also appear...

This paper examines article use in the L2-English of adult and child speakers of Russian, an article-less language. In earlier work on articles in adult L2-English, Ionin, Ko and Wexler (2004) proposed that speakers of article-less L1s fluctuate between dividing English articles on the basis of definiteness vs. specificity, as a result of direct ac...

In the present paper, we take a different approach: first, we investigate comprehension instead of production; second, we ask how L2-English learners whose L1s lack articles acquire the very concept of definiteness . Specifically, we investigate whether Mandarin Chinese-speakin g L2-English learners are sensitive to the semantic concept of uniquene...

This thesis examines article choice and parameter-setting in second language (L2) acquisition. It argues, on the basis of L2-English elicitation and production data, that L2- learners have access to UG-based semantic distinctions governing article choice, but do not know which distinction is appropriate for English. A Fluctuation Hypothesis (FH) is...

This volume presents recent generative research on the nature of grammars of child second language (L2) acquirers -- a learner population whose exposure to an L2 occurs between the ages of 4 to 8. The main goal is to define child L2 acquisition in relation to other types of acquisition such as child monolingual and bilingual acquisition, adult L2 a...

This paper examines three sources of knowledge in the acquisition of English articles by second language (L2) learners: L1-transfer, L2-input and Universal Grammar (UG). The paper examines patterns of English article (mis)use among L2-English learners whose L1 either has articles (Spanish) or lacks articles (Russian). It is shown that L1-Spanish le...

This paper investigates how semantic universals of definiteness, specificity, and partitivity affect L2-article choice with two typologically different L1-groups: L1-Serbo-Croatian and L1-Korean learners of L2-English. The paper also examines whether different semantic factors contribute to L2-article choice equally. Based on experimental data, the...

This paper proposes an analysis of the syntax and semantics of complex cardinal numerals, which involve multiplication (two hundred) and/or addition (twenty-three). It is proposed that simplex cardinals have the semantic type of modifiers (〈〈e, t〉, 〈e, t〉〉). Complex cardinals are composed linguistically, using standard syntax (complementation, coor...

This paper argues for the reality of specificity as noteworthiness, a concept built upon Fodor and Sag’s (1982) view of referentiality. Support for this view of specificity comes from the behavior of indefinite this in spoken English, as well as from specificity markers in Samoan, Hebrew, and Sissala. It is shown that the conditions on the use of t...

In this volume, second language (L2) acquisition researchers and creolists engage in a dialogue, focusing on processes at work in L2 acquisition and creole genesis. The volume opens with an overview of the relationship between L2 acquisition and pidgins/creoles (Siegel). The first group of papers addresses current language contact at a societal or...

Studies of second-language (L2) acquisition have often addressed the issue of parameter-setting among L2 learners. Much work has been done on the setting of syntactic parameters in L2 acquisition-e.g., the verb-raising parameter (see White (1990/1991), among others), the V2-parameter (see Robertson and Sorace (1999), among others), and the Governin...

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This study of first-language (L1) Russian children acquiring English as a second language (L2) investigates the reasons behind omission of verbal inflection in L2 acquisition and argues for presence of functional categories in L2 grammar. Analyses of spontaneous production data show that the child L2 learners (n = 20), while omitting inflection, al...

This paper examines errors of article use in L2-English, and argues for similarity between L1-and L2-acquisition of articles. Our experimental data show that partitivity as discourse-given set membership contributes to overuse of 'the' in place of 'a' in L2-English, as in child L1-English. We propose that adult L2-English learners have difficulty w...

This paper discusses frozen scope in Russian, and links it to discourse function. It is argued that covert QR as well as reconstruction are restricted by the availability of discourse-driven overt movement (Topicalization). It is suggested that short obligatory QR, driven by semantic interpretability, exists in Russian. This paper also discusses th...

This paper examines the phenomenon of optional thematic verb raising in the L2-English of adult L1-Russian speakers. The study finds that both finite verbs and participles undergo optional verb raising in L2-English, contra previous accounts linking verb raising to finiteness. It is also shown that verb-adverb order in L2-English is not a result of...

due to problems with morphological,mapping,from abstract categories to their surface representations,as well as to difficulties in learning English-specific affixal inflection, rather than to a general impairment of functional categories and/or features. We will focus on differences in the L2 learners’ production of suppletive vs. affixal inflectio...

In this paper, we investigate how L2-learners whose L1s lack articles acquire the semantics of articles, with special focus on article use by L1-Korean learners of L2-English. Based on our experimental studies, we argue that article choice in L2-acquisition reflects systematic access to universal semantic features: definiteness, specificity, and pa...

1 Introduction It is well-known that the English more is ambiguous: on the one hand, it is the synthetic comparative of much, as in (1a); on the other hand, more has been analyzed as the freestanding form of the comparative affix -er, as in (1b), a case of 'mo-support' akin to do-support (Bresnan (1973), Corver (1997)). In addition to having the tw...

L2-English article choice has attracted much attention in the literature. While previous analyses have concentrated on overuse of the with indefinites (e.g., Huebner 1983, Thomas 1989, Ionin 2003), we show that L2-English learners also overuse a with definites. We trace both error types to one source: the role of specificity as speaker knowledge in...