RESEARCH

Current Research Grants

• Title: Interfaces in second language acquisition: accounting for the difficulties of second language learners
  Principal investigator: Lydia White
  Duration of grant: 2008-2011
  Granting agency: SSHRC #410-2008-1001
  

  Project Description
  This project investigates possible causes of non-native performance in L2 acquisition. It has recently been suggested that L2 learners have problems in integrating different kinds of grammatical knowledge, for example, syntax with discourse or pragmatic requirements, syntax with morphology, or morphology with phonology. These are areas where different components of the grammar must 'interface' with each other. Projects conducted within the program will address different interfaces, in order to establish which interfaces (and which properties within particular interfaces) are problematic for second language learners and which are not.
  

• Title: Effects of maturation on the acquisition and processing of language
  Investigators: Lydia White (PI), Fred Genesee, Heather Goad,
  Yuriko Oshima-Takane, Karsten Steinhauer, Elin Thordardottir
  Duration of grant: 2009-2013
  Granting agency: FQRSC #2010-SE-103727
  

  Project Description
  This team research program addresses language acquisition by first language acquirers, simultaneous bilinguals, second language learners (child and adult), and children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). The overall objective is to investigate the nature and extent of age (or critical period) effects on acquisition and processing. We focus on how age differences affect linguistic representations, language development, processing and use. A number of inter-related projects will be conducted, involving comparisons between monolingual and bilingual language learners of different ages, impaired and unimpaired language learners, early and late acquirers of second languages, and learners experiencing language loss at different ages.
  

• Title: Second language acquisition at the phonology/syntax interface
  Investigators: Lydia White and Heather Goad
  Duration of grant: 2011-2014
  Granting agency: SSHRC #410-2011--0809
  

  Project Description
  This research program extends our work on the Prosodic Transfer Hypothesis (PTH). The PTH argues for a prosodic account of L2 learners' omission or mispronunciation of inflectional morphology and function words, such as tense, agreement, determiners, etc. In particular, L2 learners are claimed to have difficulties constructing prosodic representations which are disallowed in the L1. In this program, we investigate additional L1/L2 combinations and new morphological domains. A series of experiments will be conducted, investigating the performance of child and adult L2 learners, comparing spoken production of functional material with performance on a variety of other tasks, both online and offline.