There is no subjunctive in English

The western classical tradition identifies three moods: indicative, subjunctive, imperative. Protagoras split the indicative into interrogative and declarative. Palmer 2001, 2003 argues for only two: indicative and subjunctive. Given any of these classifications of mood, English has no category of mood and so has no subjunctive. Instead it has certain clause-types which express hypotheticality and which can be subsumed to the irrealis branch of the apparently universal category realis~irrealis; to which subjunctives, optatives, jussives and the like can also be subsumed.

Mummy! Ball! Fish!: Why English-learning children produce nouns earlier than verbs

When English-learning children begin using words the majority of their early utterances (around 80%) are nouns. Compared to nouns, there is a paucity of verbs or non-verb relational words, such as 'up' meaning 'pick me up'. The primary explanations to account for these differences in use either argue in support of a 'cognitive account', which claims that verbs entail more cognitive complexity than nouns, or they provide evidence challenging this account. In this paper I propose an additional explanation for children's noun/verb asymmetry. Presenting a 'multi-modal account' of word-learning based on children's gesture and word combinations, I show that at the one-word stage English-learning children use gestures to express verb-like elements which leaves their words free to express noun-like elements.

Subject/Object Asymmetry in the Comprehension of English Relative Clauses by Japanese Learners of English

While a number of studies have shown that object-extracted relative clauses are more difficult to understand than subject-extracted counterparts for second language (L2) English learners (e.g., Izumi, 2003), less is known about why this is the case and how they process these complex sentences. This exploratory study examines the potential applicability of Gibson's (1998, 2000) Syntactic Prediction Locality Theory (SPLT), a theory proposed to predict first language (L1) processing difficulty, to L2 processing and considers whether the theory might also account for the processing difficulties of subject- and object-extracted relative clauses encountered by L2 learners. Results of a self-paced reading time experiment from 15 Japanese learners of English are mainly consistent with the reading time profile predicted by the SPLT and thus suggest that the L1 processing theory might also be able to account for L2 processing difficulty.

Demotivation: Understanding Resistance to English Language Learning - The Case of Vietnamese Students

Demotivation in English language learning was investigated, using Vietnam as a case study, with three main foci: (i) the reasons (i.e., the demotives) underlying demotivation; (ii) the degree of influence of different demotives; and (iii) students’ experiences in overcoming demotivation. Using stimulated recall essays from 100 university students of their foreign language learning experiences, the findings indicated that demotivation was a significant issue for EFL learning, and a framework for discussing the different sources of demotives was developed. While some categories of demotives occurred more frequent than others, no category appeared to be more or less difficult to overcome. Rather, students’ awareness of the role of English language and their determination to succeed were critical factors in overcoming demotivation.

Acquisition of the English article system in SLA and the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis

This paper examines the article system in interlanguage grammar focusing on Japanese learners of English, whose native language lacks articles. It will be demonstrated that for the acquisition of the English article system, count/mass distinctions and definiteness are the crucial factors. Although Japanese does not employ the article system to encode these aspects, it will be argued that they are nevertheless syntactically encoded through its classifier system. Hence, the problem for these learners must be to map these features onto the appropriate surface forms as the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis predicts (Prévost & White 2000). This suggestion will further be supported empirically by a fill-in-the article task. It will be concluded that these Japanese learners understand the English article system fairly well, possibly due to their native language, yet have problems with realizing the relevant features (i.e. count/mass distinctions and definiteness) in the target language.

The perceptual magnet effect in Australian English vowels

Recent research (Kuhl, 1991) has suggested that the internal structure of vowel categories is graded in terms of stimulus goodness. It has been proposed that a best instance stimulus reflects a central point or prototype, which effectively renders within-category members perceptually more similar. Discrimination experiments suggest a nonlinear relationship between acoustic and perceptual space near category centers (Iverson & Kuhl, 1995b). This phenomenon has been described as the perceptual magnet effect. The present study investigated the presence of the perceptual magnet effect in five Australian vowel categories. Australian English speakers identified, rated, and discriminated between a pool of 32 vowel stimuli that varied in F1 and F2 values. The results from Experiments 1 and 2 showed that subjects were able to judge the quality and identity of each stimulus and that a general grading of stimulus quality was reported. This was not symmetrical, and the subjects' responses varied considerably. In Experiment 3, closer control of the methodology in the discrimination task and of contextual factors influencing the test materials was exercised. Despite this, evidence of the warping of perceptual space in discrimination data was not found. In general, these results do not provide support for the existence of the perceptual magnet effect, and explanations for this finding are discussed.

Book Review of: Supervising postgraduates from non-English speaking backgrounds

No abstract

Boys performing English

This article explores the gender dynamics of boys' responses to one Particular aspect of English teaching. oral performance work. It focuses on the possibility that the requirement to perform publicly in dramatic and other oral tasks may be an important factor in the rejection of English by many boys, and may contribute to boys' relatively poor achievement in English. The article provides a study of boys' engagement in English oral activities in two classrooms, and identifies a number of factors influencing boys' English learning. In particular, it shows that there is no simple relation between the performance requirements of English learning activities and boys' disengagement with English.

Speech disorder in preschool children exposed to Cantonese and English

Speech disorder in monolingual Cantonese- or English-speaking children has been well described in the literature. There appear to be no reports, however, that describe speech-disordered children who have been exposed to both languages. Here we report on the error patterns of two preschool speech-disordered children who were learning two languages. Both children's first language was Cantonese, but they were also exposed to English through the media and child care. Their disorders were of unknown aetiology. The following questions were asked of the data: (a) Do bilingual children, suspected of having speech problems, make errors in Cantonese and English that reflect delay or disorder when compared with normative data on monolingual speech development in each language? (b) How does the children's speech differ from other bilingual children from the same language learning background? (c) Are the children's speech difficulties apparent in both languages? (d) Is the pattern of errors the same in both languages or do language-specific processes operate? The results bear on theories of acquisition, disorder and bilingualism; they also have clinical implications for speech-language pathologists whose caseloads include bilingual preschool children.