Most studies on the acquisition of postverbal subjects (VS) in L2 Italian focus on a limited number of linguistic factors that tend to be associated with the production of VS in L1 (e.g., verb class and subject discourse status). Moreover, they analyze homogeneous groups of learners in terms of proficiency, mostly through controlled experiments. In this paper, we present a cross-sectional corpus study based on a multifactorial analysis of the L2 use of VS structures in semi-spontaneous speech. We analyze the production of VSs by learners of different levels of proficiency (A1-C2), considering linguistic factors that trigger the production of VS in L1, but have been unaccounted for in L2 studies (e.g., agentivity of the subject, syntactic configuration of the sentence, contrastive focus). We use a cumulative link mixed model to show how the features of verbs and subjects in VS structures change across proficiency levels. The results indicate learners’ progressive mastery of the mechanisms of assignment of the subject function to the postverbal constituent and increasing sensitivity to contrastive focus as a feature relevant for the use of VS. Furthermore, we observe that psychological verbs associated with the use of VS are produced from the earliest stages of L2 acquisition.

Drawing upon research on the visual complexity effect and Dual Coding Theory, this research examined the influence of character properties and the role of individual learner differences in Chinese character acquisition. The participants included 248 Chinese-speaking children in grades 1 through 3 in Taiwan. The study extended the scope of previous research by concurrently examining two types of cognitive processing: activation of verbal codes with nonverbal codes (activation of word form) and activation of nonverbal codes with verbal codes (activation of meaning). Results revealed the asymmetry in the two types of cognitive processing. Regarding the influence of character properties, while characters with less visual complexity and with radical presence are generally more acquirable, the interaction between these two properties was only present in the activation of meaning but not the activation of word form. Individual differences contributing to character acquisition did not mirror each other in the two directions of cognitive processing either. The contribution of radical awareness and visual skills remained the same across grade levels in the activation of meaning but varied with grades and the properties of the characters in the activation of word form. The methodological and theoretical contributions of the study were discussed.

The awareness of words’ morphological structure has been thought to allow generalizing meaning to other, similarly constructed words. Conversely, a large vocabulary is thought to facilitate the recognition of words’ morphological regularities, thereby contributing to morphological awareness. For this reason, morphological awareness and vocabulary have been suggested to be reciprocally associated across development. We followed 242 (girls = 119) Norwegian preschoolers (Mage = 5.5 years) from preschool through Grade 2 and examined the cross-lagged relations between morphological awareness (inflections and derivations) and vocabulary (receptive and expressive). Our results confirm that the traditional cross-lagged panel model shows significant cross-lagged relations between morphological awareness and vocabulary, as previous studies have shown. However, no cross-lagged relations were found when we accounted for longitudinal measured stability through a cross-lagged panel model with lag-2 paths or unmeasured stability through the random intercept cross-lagged panel model. We found that approximately 50% of the variation in morphology and vocabulary was due to highly stable and invariant factors across grades. We discuss how the significant cross-lagged relations found in previous studies could have been due to their not accounting for the right type of stability when using longitudinal panel data.

Lie detection research comparing manual and automated coding of linguistic cues is limited. In Experiment 1, we attempted to extend this line of research by directly comparing the veracity differences in manual coding and two coding software programs (Text Inspector and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count [LIWC]) on the linguistic cue “total details” across eight published datasets. Mixed model analyses revealed that LIWC showed larger veracity differences in total details than Text Inspector and manual coding. Follow-up classification analyses showed that both automated coding and manual coding could accurately classify honest and false accounts. In Experiment 2, we examined if LIWC’s sensitivity to veracity differences was the result of honest accounts including more redundant (repeated) words than false accounts as LIWC—but not Text Inspector or manual coding—accounts for redundancy. Our prediction was supported, and the most redundant words were function words. The results implicated that automated coding can detect veracity differences in total details and redundancy, but it is not necessarily better than manual coding at accurately classifying honest and false accounts.

This study used the visual world paradigm to investigate novel word learning in adults from different language backgrounds and the effects of phonology, homophony, and rest on the outcome. We created Mandarin novel words varied by types of phonological contrasts and homophone status. During the experiment, native (n = 34) and non-native speakers (English; n = 30) learned pairs of novel words and were tested twice with a 15-minute break in between, which was spent either resting or gaming. In the post-break test of novel word recognition, an interaction appeared between language backgrounds, phonology, and homophony: non-native speakers performed less accurately than native speakers only on non-homophones learned in pairs with tone contrasts. Eye movement data indicated that non-native speakers’ processing of tones may be more effortful than their processing of segments while learning homophones, as demonstrated by the time course. Interestingly, no significant effects of rest were observed across language groups; yet after gaming, native speakers achieved higher accuracy than non-native speakers. Overall, this study suggests that Mandarin novel word learning can be affected by participants’ language backgrounds and phonological and homophonous features of words. However, the role of short periods of rest in novel word learning requires further investigation.

The dual route cascaded (DRC) model proposes that the mapping from orthography to phonology occurs through two pathways: the sublexical and lexical routes. Cross-linguistic studies have found that Chinese character reading relies more on the lexical pathway, whereas English word reading relies more on the sublexical pathway. However, it remains unclear how these two pathways collaborate in the L2 word reading of Chinese–English bilinguals and whether their reading strategies are influenced by L2 proficiency. In the current study, 72 Chinese–English bilinguals with varying levels of L2 proficiency were tested. They were asked to name English words that varied in frequency and spelling-sound consistency. The results showed that participants with lower L2 proficiency were more sensitive to frequency, indicating a greater reliance on lexical processing in L2 word reading. In contrast, participants with higher L2 proficiency were more sensitive to consistency, suggesting a greater reliance on sublexical processing. These findings suggest that L2 word reading strategies vary as a function of L2 proficiency. As L2 proficiency increases, Chinese–English bilinguals’ reading strategies may shift from primarily relying on lexical to sublexical processing. This study provides evidence from L2 readers for the DRC model, helping to broaden the explanatory scope of the model.

A central question in the second language (L2) processing literature has been whether and under what conditions readers reactivate copies of syntactic movement operations at structurally defined gap sites. The present study contributes to the debate by examining the role of similarity-based interference in processing intermediate copies in long-distance dependencies with either three similar description noun phrases (NPs) (the nurse, the doctor, the patient) or two similar (the nurse, the doctor) and one dissimilar NP (John). Sixty-nine advanced L2 readers of English with either French (+ wh-movement) or Persian (− wh-movement) as their L1 and 33 native English readers (+ wh-movement) participated in a self-paced reading task involving long-distance dependencies. The results indicate that L2 readers process wh-dependencies in the same way as native readers, both in structures with similar and dissimilar NPs. This suggests that highly advanced L2 readers reactivate moved elements at inter-causal boundaries and process long-distance wh-dependencies in the same way as native readers, especially when the NPs involved in a dependency relation are sufficiently distinguishable.

By adopting a pre- and post-test design, the current study longitudinally examined the complex relationship between two different dimensions of phonological vocabulary knowledge (declarative vs. automatized) and their ultimate impacts on global L2 listening proficiency among 133 Japanese EFL students. The declarative group focused solely on what target words sound like and mean via meaning recognition tasks. The automatization group worked not only on such form-meaning mappings but also on prompt access to the target words in a semantically, collocationally, and grammatically appropriate manner via lexicosemantic judgment tasks. Compared to the declarative group, the automatization group showed relatively robust learning in both declarative and automatized dimensions of target words. Although neither training approach showed clear superiority, the results suggest that relative gains in automatized, rather than declarative, dimensions are associated with enhanced L2 listening proficiency. The distinction between declarative and automatized dimensions of phonological vocabulary knowledge, along with the absence of a direct link between training type and improved listening proficiency, offers valuable insights for future extension studies.

The comprehension of irony involves a sophisticated inferential process requiring language users to go beyond the literal meaning of an utterance. Because of its complex nature, we hypothesized that working memory (WM) and fluid intelligence, the two main components of executive attention, would be involved in the understanding of irony: the former by maintaining focus and relevant information active during processing, the latter by disengaging irrelevant information and offering better problem-solving skills. In this eye-tracking reading experiment, we investigated how adults (N = 57) process verbal irony, based on their executive attention skills. The results indicated a null (or indirect) effect for WM, while fluid intelligence directly modulated the comprehension and processing of irony during reading. As fluid intelligence is an important individual-difference variable, the findings pave the way for future research on developmental and clinical populations who tend to struggle with nonliteral language.