Israeli Russian: Case morphology in a bilingual context

The current study investigates case morphology development in a bilingual context. It is aimed at investigating potential mechanisms driving divergences in heritage language grammars as compared to the baseline monolingual standards. For the purposes of the study, 95 bilingual and monolingual children and adults were compared. Bilinguals residing in Israel acquired Russian from birth, while the age of onset of Hebrew varied. The participants completed a production task eliciting accusative case inflections. Both child and adult heritage speakers of Russian with early age of onset of Hebrew (before the age of 5) showed divergences in the production of the accusative case inflections as compared to monolingual Russian-speaking controls (adult and child), whereas grammars of Israeli heritage Russian speakers with later ages of onset of Hebrew, after the age of 5, were found to be intact. On the basis of Russian in contact with Hebrew, the study discusses how heritage language grammars differ from the baseline grammars of monolingual speakers and which mechanisms are associated with heritage language ultimate attainment. The effects of the age of onset and cross-linguistic influence from the dominant societal language are discussed as potential factors affecting the acquisition / maintenance of linguistic phenomena in heritage language grammars.

Effects of L1 Transfer Are Profound, Yet Native-Like Processing Strategy Is Attainable: Evidence From Advanced Learners’ Production of Complex L2 Chinese Structures

English as a verb-medial language has a short-before-long preference, whereas Korean and Japanese as verb-final languages show a long-before-short preference. In second language (L2) research, little is known regarding how L1 processing strategies affect the ultimate attainment of target structures. Existing work has shown that native speakers of Chinese strongly prefer to utter demonstrative-classifier (DCL) phrases first in subject-extracted relatives (DCL-SR-N) and DCLs second in object-extracted relatives (OR-DCL-N). But it remains unknown whether L2 learners with typologically different language backgrounds are able to acquire native-like strategies, and how they deviate from native speakers or even among themselves. Using a phrase-assembly task, we investigated advanced L2-Chinese learners whose L1s were English, Korean, and Japanese, because English lacks individual classifiers and has postnominal relative clause (RC), whereas Korean and Japanese have individual classifiers and prenominal RCs. Results showed that the English and Korean groups deviated from the native controls’ asymmetric pattern, but the Japanese group approximated native-like performance. Furthermore, compared to the English group, the Korean and Japanese groups favored the DCL-second configuration in SRs and ORs. No differences were found between the Korean and Japanese groups. Overall, our findings suggest that L1 processing strategies play an overarching role in L2 acquisition of asymmetric positioning of DCLs in Chinese RCs.

Identity, agency and intercultural dialogic competencies in L2 ultimate attainment

This preliminary study seeks to examine the role of agency and bilinguals’ identity negotiated in the processes of acculturation as key factors in attaining a very high or near-native L2 proficiency. Since these aspects appear to have been underestimated in research on L2 ultimate attainment, interviews were carried out with eight L2 speakers of Polish (four near-native and four highly advanced bilinguals) in order to obtain qualitative data on participants’ self-identity and acculturation. The results show that the near-native subjects identified themselves very strongly with the receiving society, whereas highly proficient L2 speakers retained a much stronger sense of L1-related identity. It is hypothesized that bilinguals’ acculturation strategies and intercultural dialogic competencies may be decisive factors in determining L2 near-nativeness.

Analyzing variability in L2 ultimate attainment

Ultimate attainment is typically more heterogeneous among second-language (L2) learners than among native speakers (e.g. Bley-Vroman, 1990). The present study offers a suite of simple analytical procedures aimed at exploring types and loci of variability in L2 attainment vis-à-vis those in the corresponding first language (L1), with special attention to certain learner-external factors that might condition such variabilities. To demonstrate the methods and their potential, we apply these procedures to learner and native acceptability judgment data published in Birdsong (1992). Under means analyses of item ratings and coefficients of variation (CV), a group of adult Anglophone learners of L2 French (ENS) are found to resemble native French controls (FNS). In contrast, under correlational analyses of ratings and CVs, ENS resemble FNS on grammatical items, but diverge on ungrammatical items. Correlational and means analyses of both CV and acceptability ratings reveal that ENS-FNS convergence is not predictable from the degree of FNS ratings variability, contra DeKeyser (2012). For both groups, we observe an interaction between FNS ratings variability and the grammatical status of items (ungrammatical vs. grammatical). Finally, for neither group do we find a relationship between the order of item presentation and ratings severity or CVs. We present our perspectives as a road map for future analyses of variabilities inherent in language learning outcomes.

Expanding the Definition of Aspect in L2 Acquisition: Assessing Advanced Levels of Competence to Understand Aspectual Knowledge

In part due to the significant influence of Andersen's Lexical Aspect Hypothesis, research on the L2 acquisition of tense and aspect has focused primarily on the construct of aspect representative of the beginning and intermediate stages of acquisition. In the present article, I review the significance of two recent developments in the study of aspectual knowledge: the expansive view of recent research proposals (e.g., shifted effect of lexical aspect toward intermediate and advanced stages), and the focus on specific sub-constructs that provide a more precise target to assess ultimate attainment (e.g., iterativity versus habituality). I argue that the relevance of advanced stages of development of aspect is central to the analysis of L2 aspectual knowledge. To that effect, the objective of future studies needs to incorporate the explicit description of the connection between lexical aspect and viewpoint aspect

The Role of Theory in SLA Empirical Research on the Critical Period Hypothesis

This paper sets out to peruse the role of various theories or more precisely, hypotheses invoked in SLA research by surveying three empirical studies pertaining to the critical period hypothesis in the SLA of phonetics and phonology. In particular, the three studies which will be reviewed in the next section are titled in chronological order as (1) A critical period for learning to pronounce foreign languages? (Flege, 1987); (2) Reexamining the critical period hypothesis: A case study of successful adult SLA in a naturalistic environment. (Ioup et al., 1994); (3) Ultimate attainment in L2 Phonology: The Critical Factors of Age, Motivation, and Instruction (Moyer, 1999).

The acquisition of English stress by Québec Francophones

In this chapter, we report the results of two production experiments, one in Canadian French (CF) and one in English, aimed at examining how advanced CF L2ers produce English stress. In other words, our focus is not on language development (i.e. whether learners actually acquire stress in English), but rather on ultimate attainment in L2 acquisition (i.e. how native speakers and advanced learners compare vis-à-vis stress production). In order to evaluate whether L2ers’ rhythmic patterns mirror native English patterns, we compare L2ers’ production with control data, focusing on three possi- ble acoustic correlates of prominence: duration, pitch (F0) and intensity. To verify whether L2ers transfer acoustic cues or rhythmic patterns from their first language (L1) into the L2, we also analyse how prominence is produced by L2ers in their L1.

Is There a Critical Period for Second Language Acquisition? A theoretical Social Physics Approach

The critical period (CP) phenomenon in language development ranks among the 125 conundrums facing scientists in the 21st century, according to Science. While the phenomenon itself has been noncontroversial in first language acquisition, it still warrants an adequate explanation. Predicated on language acquisition as a complex process, questions among the first to be raised include: How do children accomplish this remarkable feat in such a short amount of time? And how do nature and nurture come together to influence language learning? In second language acquisition, however, both the notion of CP, albeit popular, and its empirical evidence have remained contested to this date - among the questions, whether the observed evidence counts as CP-specific and/or whether or not it warrants an isomorphic attribution to maturational constraints. Entwined in this debate are two well-established facets of inter-learner differential attainment. The first is that there exists a stark difference in ultimate attainment between younger and older learners. A second facet is the vast differences in ultimate attainment among older learners. In this article, adopting a social physics approach, we mathematically establish both the relationship between nature and nurture contributions and the presence of a critical period, and, at once, tender a parsimonious and probable theory for the twin phenomena of inter-learner differential attainment.

Production of voice onset time (VOT) by senior Polish learners of English

Although research on foreign language learning among seniors has recently accelerated, studies on L2 phonology in this age group remain scarce. Seniors may be at a great disadvantage when it comes to learning the sounds of a foreign language because age of onset has been shown to correlate negatively with ultimate attainment especially for phonology (Piske et al. 2001). However, this is all the more reason to attempt a better understanding of the mechanisms of senior. This paper offers an attempt at shedding light on how senior learners with an age of L2 onset above 60 produce voiced and voiceless L2 word-initial stops. Twenty L1 Polish senior learners of English were asked to read a list of words containing word-initial voiced and voiceless plosives in their L2 English at A2+/B1 level according to CEFR. The results show that the senior Polish learners of English produce an in-between category for the English stops (with VOT longer than for Polish, but shorter than native English). The senior learners also experienced L1 drift, but mostly in the voiceless L1 Polish stops.

REBIRTH Epistemological Paradigm as a transformational tool for individuals and organizations post COVID-19 outbreak: a new normal adaptation model

COVID-19 has impacted how organisations function the world over. Adaptation models that will bring sustainability in the new normal will need to integrate humanistic perspectives beyond the five normal dimensions of emotional intelligence to inculcating the cultural perspectives and indegenous methods of community engagement and inquiry. This article is one of a series produced by authors, pursuant to an intense doctoral study by one of the authors which culminated in a Rebirth model. The setting of the study was at one of the largest banking groups in South Africa, whereby collective engagement for Organisational Change and Development (OCD) using multiple methods within the intepretivist ontological phylosophy was investigated. The study resulted in the establishment of Rebirth first as a paradigm for enquiry, complemented by phenomenological research strategy in conjuction with the Integral Research Approach (IRA) using both Feminist Transformative theories in a Participatory Action Research (PAR) mode for data collection. This paper provides basic steps into undertanding Rebirth philosophy through explication of its six (6) pillars, namely; Ubuntu-Botho, Nature, Dialogue, Story-telling, Symbols and Tribal Circle. Core to the Rebirth philosophy are the eight (8) human factors of behavior, classified as quotients in a spiral direction representing the womb as a place of seed germination to birth and ultimate attainment of knoledge that leads to productive execution.