To have more information about the English words known by second language (L2) speakers, we ran a large-scale crowdsourcing vocabulary test, which yielded 17 million useful responses. It provided us with a list of 445 words known to nearly all participants. The list was compared to various existing lists of words advised to include in the first stages of English L2 teaching. The data also provided us with a ranking of 61,000 words in terms of degree and speed of word recognition in English L2 speakers, which correlated r = .85 with a similar ranking based on native English speakers. The L2 speakers in our study were relatively better at academic words (which are often cognates in their mother tongue) and words related to experiences English L2 students are likely to have. They were worse at words related to childhood and family life. Finally, a new list of 20 levels of 1,000 word families is presented, which will be of use to English L2 teachers, as the levels represent the order in which English vocabulary seems to be acquired by L2 learners across the world.

In this commentary to Westergaard (2021), we focus on two main questions. The first, and most important, is what type of L3 data may be construed as supporting evidence–as opposed to a compatible outcome–for the Linguistic Proximity Model. In this regard, we highlight a number of areas in which it remains difficult to derive testable predictions from the model that go beyond compatibility with multiple outcomes that should, in principle, be mutually exclusive. The second part of this commentary deals with Westergaard’s (2021) a priori questioning of wholesale transfer as a tenable hypothesis on the basis of it creating a context for massive unlearning, both in L2 and L3 acquisition, when humans seem to display conservative learning traits from L1 acquisition already. We argue here that decades of accumulated empirical data in L2 and L3 studies have shown enough evidence of L1 transfer and restructuring to render this argument a non sequitur. In connection to this, we discuss some of the issues related to adaptive accounts of linguistic transfer across instances of language acquisition.

Visual cues may help second language (L2) speakers perceive interactional feedback and reformulate their nontarget forms, particularly when paired with recasts, as recasts can be difficult to perceive as corrective. This study explores whether recasts have a visual signature and whether raters can perceive a recast’s corrective function. Transcripts of conversations between a bilingual French–English interlocutor and L2 English university students ( n = 24) were analysed for recasts and noncorrective repetitions with rising and declarative intonation. Videos of those excerpts ( k = 96) were then analysed for the interlocutor’s provision of visual cues during the recast and repetition turns, including eye gaze duration, nods, blinks, and other facial expressions (frowns, eyebrow raises). The videos were rated by 96 undergraduate university students who were randomly assigned to three viewing conditions: clear voice/clear face, clear voice/blurred face, or distorted voice/clear face. Using a 100-millimeter scale with two anchor points (0% = he’s making a comment, and 100% = he’s correcting an error), they rated the corrective function of the interlocutors’ responses while their eye gaze was tracked. Raters reliably distinguished recasts from repetitions through their ratings (although they were generally low), but not through their eye gaze behaviors.

This study investigated the role of cross-linguistic similarity in the acquisition of Russian initial stop contrasts by Chinese learners, addressing two specific research questions: (1) How similar are Russian voiced stops to Mandarin stops for Chinese learners? (2) How can the speech learning model (SLM) be applied to account for the acquisition of Russian initial stop contrasts by Chinese learners? Regarding the first question, a hypothesis was proposed that Russian voiced stops could be regarded as dissimilar ‘new’ sounds by Chinese learners, as judged by three commonly adopted methods: IPA comparison, acoustic difference, and feature redeployment. The results of the perceptual assimilation task, however, disconfirmed this hypothesis, as Russian voiced stops were perceived as being highly similar to the sounds of Mandarin voiceless unaspirated stops. According to SLM, perceptually similar second language (L2) sounds are difficult to acquire; hence, a corresponding hypothesis was advanced in relation to the second question; namely, that the acquisition of Russian initial stop contrasts could be challenging for Chinese learners. This hypothesis was supported by the results of the perceptual discrimination and the production tests. These findings corroborated SLM regarding the difficulty in acquiring L2 sounds that are perceptually similar to their first language (L1) counterparts, while posing challenges to the hypothesis that Russian voiced stops could be dissimilar ‘new’ sounds for Chinese learners, as predicted by the three methods. The results indicated that perceived cross-linguistic similarity plays a key role in L2 phonetic acquisition. However, the degree of perceived similarity cannot always be accurately deduced solely through the three methods, at least not in the case of stops.

Recent research that explored how input exposure and learner characteristics influence novel L2 morphosyntactic pattern learning has exposed participants to either text or static images rather than dynamic visual events. Furthermore, it is not known whether incorporating eye gaze cues into dynamic visual events enhances dual pattern learning. Therefore, this exploratory eye-tracking study examined whether eye gaze cues during dynamic visual events facilitate novel L2 pattern learning. University students ( n = 72) were exposed to 36 training videos with two dual novel morphosyntactic patterns in pseudo-Georgian: completed events ( bich-ma kocn-ul gogoit, ‘boy kissed girl’) and ongoing actions ( bich-su kocn-ar gogoit, ‘boy is kissing girl’). They then carried out an immediate test with 24 items using the same vocabulary words, followed by a generalization test with 24 items created from new vocabulary words. Results indicated that learners who received the eye gaze cues scored significantly higher on the immediate test and relied on the verb cues more than on the noun cues. A post-hoc analysis of eye-movement data indicated that the gaze cues elicited longer looks to the correct images. Findings are discussed in relation to visual cues and novel morphosyntactic pattern learning.

This article proposes a novel account for the overuse of free morphemes and underuse of bound morphemes in English as a second language (L2) based on the framework of Distributed Morphology. It will be argued that an Economy Principle ‘Do everything in Narrow Syntax (DENS)’ operates in the L2 learner’s computational system. Consequently, derivation in Morphology becomes as limited as possible except when applying Vocabulary Items to syntactic objects (Vocabulary Insertion). This results in non-target-like use/acceptance of certain morphemes: Bound morphemes are often omitted in early L2 grammar, and alternative free morphemes may apparently be used instead. Two types of data, namely the overuse of be reported in previous research, and the preference of to-infinitives over -ing gerunds in early L2 grammar, will be presented in support of the proposal, and the plausibility of the operation of DENS will be discussed.

Accepted manuscript. Final version published in in Second Language Research, is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/0267658319882061.

Listeners interpret cues in speech processing immediately rather than waiting until the end of a sentence. In particular, prosodic cues in auditory speech processing can aid listeners in building information structure and contrast sets. Native speakers even use this information in combination with syntactic and semantic information to build mental representations predictively. Research on second-language (L2) learners suggests that learners have difficulty integrating linguistic information across various domains, likely subject to L2 proficiency levels. The current study investigated eye-movement behavior of native speakers of English and Chinese learners of English in their use of contrastive intonational cues to restrict the set of upcoming referents in a visual world paradigm. Both native speakers and learners used contrastive pitch accent to restrict the set of referents. Whereas native speakers anticipated the upcoming set of referents, this was less clear in the L2 learners. This suggests that learners are able to integrate information across multiple domains to build information structure in the L2 but may not do so predictively. Prosodic processing was not affected by proficiency or working memory in the L2 speakers.