Linguistic alignment that occurs during interaction has been found to be a useful language learning mechanism. Recent second language (L2) research on alignment has primarily focused on syntactic alignment in face-to-face oral interactions (Kim & Michel, 2023). This study expands the scope of L2 alignment research by examining pragmatic alignment in group mobile text-chat tasks conducted in Korean. Furthermore, it investigates how the source of alignment (i.e., prime, recast) and learner factors (i.e., L2 proficiency, prior knowledge of the target feature, mobile literacy, and Korean typing skills) influence the extent of L2 alignment and subsequent alignment-driven language learning. Over a period of six days, 87 Korean language learners were randomly distributed across either a prime, recast prime, or control condition and completed the following: a background survey, a pretest, four alignment tasks, two posttests, and a Korean proficiency test. During the alignment text-chat tasks, learners used the KakaoTalk mobile text-chat application to interact with two native Korean speakers who elicited Korean honorific request-making expressions in specified scenarios. The prime group received model examples prior to their production, while the recast prime group received recasts in response to non-target-like production. The learners’ use of honorific expressions was evaluated for both suppliance and accuracy across the pretests, alignment task performance, and posttests. The results revealed evidence of pragmatic alignment, with the recast prime condition demonstrating greater effects on honorific request head acts compared to the prime condition. Additionally, prior knowledge of request-making strategies facilitated L2 alignment. The implications of pragmalinguistic development through alignment-driven text-chat tasks are further discussed.

Previous studies suggest that bilinguals can quickly identify the language to which a word belongs in order to suppress a task-irrelevant language. The current study tested whether nontarget language suppression occurs at the lexical and/or semantic levels and whether the degree of processing differs across these representational levels. Spanish–Basque bilinguals classified words by language membership and animacy, and event-related potential (ERP) results demonstrated that task demands to attend to a single target language reduced frequency effects and eliminated concreteness effects for words in the nontarget language. Results support a partially selective mechanism of bilingual language control based on task demands such that words belonging to the nontarget language are only partially processed at the lexical level and are not processed at a deeper semantic level. These findings specify the locus of bilingual language control in comprehension and call for revisions to models of bilingual visual word recognition such as BIA+.

In this article, we investigate the semiotic practices of Filipino K-pop fans (KpopStans) who supported the 2022 presidential bid of former Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo. Through digital ethnography, we analyze the ways in which fans entextualized and resemiotized signifiers of K-pop (e.g., lyrics, imagery, fancams) to create hybrid political messages that translated familiar fandom aesthetics into forms of electoral participation. We argue these practices constitute “civic stanning”—enactments of fan-based citizenship that leverage the cultural resonance of K-pop to build solidarities around Robredo, exercise political agency, promote values of conviviality and progress, and navigate the restrictive political climate of the Philippines. The study highlights the role of popular culture in mediating transnational flows and shaping emergent modes of political activism.

This study examines sentence comprehension in two in-situ heritage Slovene communities in Italy’s border-shift context, comparing the Gorizia/Trieste (N = 66) and Natisone Valley (N = 43) adult populations with monolingual Slovene speakers. While both heritage groups operate in Italian-dominant bilingual environments near the Slovenian border, they differ in Slovene exposure due to varying institutional support. Using a sentence–picture verification task, this study examines comprehension of non-canonical word order, relative clauses and cataphoric dependencies. The Gorizia/Trieste group performed comparably to monolinguals, demonstrating strong sensitivity to case morphology and syntactic processing. Conversely, the Natisone group showed reduced accuracy and longer response times across all domains, reflecting case system vulnerability and processing limitations linked to reduced exposure. These findings highlight the important role of active maintenance and institutional support, independent of geographical proximity to the mainland, in shaping heritage language grammars and their use.

Simultaneous interpreting (SI), a challenging task enabled by bilingualism, is claimed to distinctly tax working memory (WM). However, causal designs are missing, limiting our understanding of the phenomenon. We recruited 50 Chinese-English bilinguals and assessed their WM performance (alongside inhibitory and fluency outcomes) before and after L1–L2 SI or a control task (text comprehension). WM scores (especially under high-demand, multimodal conditions) increased after text comprehension but not after SI, adjusting for age of L2 appropriation, years of L2 use, L2 proficiency and SI competence. Of note, WM was assessed immediately before and after SI, ruling out other cognitive influences. Conversely, no distinct patterns were observed on inhibitory or fluency tasks. Briefly, this activity seems to hinder practice-related WM gains – a finding that expands contemporary accounts of interpreting.

This paper examines subject expression in heritage Vietnamese, focusing on its variation in a diasporic, cross-generational context, using corpus data from 45 speakers in Canberra, Australia. While subject expression has been widely studied in other languages, little is known about its use in languages like Vietnamese, which has an “open-class” pronominal system. Results show that although the rates of unexpressed subjects remain stable, the linguistic conditions underlying this variable have undergone change: first-generation speakers are least likely to drop second-person subjects, while second-generation speakers are least likely to drop first-person subjects. Both patterns contradict expectations given the pragmatic constraints of pro-drop in Vietnamese. We further interpret this as potentially a form of community bricolage to re-establish a more equal cross-generational relationship in a diaspora setting. Ultimately, we present a case of pragmatic change driving grammatical choices, thereby also highlighting that contrary to the traditional description, Vietnamese subject expression is perhaps not so “radical” after all.

Proactive language control is thought to regulate the interference from the nontarget language in bilingual contexts in a sustained way. This study examined the persistence of proactive control in cued picture naming. Participants first named pictures in L1 (German) and L2 (English) in pure blocks, then in mixed language blocks and finally again in pure blocks. In mixed blocks, there were language switch costs, and L1 responses were generally slower than L2 responses (“L1 slowing”). Critically, L1 remained slower than L2 even in postmixing single-language blocks. This persisting L1 slowing suggests overshooting control that downregulates lexical access to L1 representations in a sustained manner. Yet, this persistence of L1 slowing was found only in the first single-language block after the mixed language blocks and no longer in the second postmixing block, suggesting that proactive control has inertia but dissipates over time.

I discuss two colloquial Italian idioms expressing respectively emphatic negation and objection, col cavolo (lit. ‘with the cabbage’) and un cavolo (lit. ‘a cabbage’). Despite superficial similarities, they represent two very different strategies at syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic level. Col cavolo belongs to a class of non-verbal polar predicates selecting a clausal complement and expressing the speaker’s degree of strength of sincerity towards the proposition (Repp 2013). Col cavolo expresses high commitment to ¬p: it is base-generated in the left periphery, as confirmed by its limited polarity-licensing abilities and impossibility of agreement with a TP-level negative PolP. Instead, un cavolo is a metalinguistic objector (Martins 2020), an echoic responsive move (Farkas & Bruce 2010); it originates as a vulgar minimiser and can function as an ‘utterance minimiser’, predicating minimal relevance of the associate and rejecting it globally rather than reversing its truth conditions. Finally, I compare col cavolo with similar cross-linguistic expressions, and offer a generalisation for left-peripheral negators: those participating in a movement or agreement chain with the TP-level PolP have full semantic and polarity-licensing capabilities, while base-generated ones, being non-local to the lower proposition, only license weak polarity items and yield double negation with a lower negative PolP.

The phenomenon of phrasal nominalization, as exemplified by the English gerund, raises a challenge for the assumption that a phrase XP is headed by a word of category X. Many proposals have been made to deal with phrasal nominalization, in both multistratal and monostratal frameworks. Some seek to fit it in the endocentric mold; others are plainly exocentric. Comparative evaluations tend to be made along partisan lines (multistratal vs. monostratal) or on the basis of methodological principles (discarding vs. allowing exocentricity). This article aims for a less aprioristic approach, taking generalizability as a criterion for evaluation. More specifically, it investigates three types of phrasal nominalization as they manifest themselves in Dutch, that is, the nominalization of infinitives, adjectives, and participles, providing first a theory-neutral description of the data and then an analysis I call ‘factorial’ in the sense that it captures both what the three types have in common and what differentiates them. It is cast in the framework of constructional head-driven phrase structure grammar, since the latter's hierarchy of phrase types provides a natural starting point for a factorial analysis. The resulting treatment is exocentric. In a final step I compare it to a number of endocentric alternatives, showing that it scores higher on the scale of generalizability.

Earlier research has found that phonological markedness constraints (for example, against stress clash or sibilant sequences) statistically influence speakers' choices between particular syntactic constructions and between synonymous words. In this study, we test phonological constraints not just in particular cases, but across the board. We employ a novel method that statistically models the distribution of word bigrams (consecutive two-word sequences) and how this distribution is influenced by phonological constraints. Our study of multiple corpora indicates that several phonological constraints do indeed play a statistically significant role in English sentence formation. We also show that by examining particular subsets of the corpora we can diagnose the mechanisms whereby phonologically marked sequences come to be underrepresented. We conclude by discussing modes of grammatical organization compatible with our findings.

The English past tense contains pockets of variation, where regular and irregular forms compete (e.g. learned/learnt, weaved/wove). Individuals vary considerably in the degree to which they prefer irregular forms. This article examines the degree to which individuals may converge on their regularization patterns and preferences. We report on a novel experimental methodology, using a cooperative game involving nonce verbs. Analysis of participants' postgame responses indicates that their behavior shifted in response to an automated co-player's preferences, on two dimensions. First, players regularize more after playing with peers with high regularization rates, and less after playing with peers with low regularization rates. Second, players' overall patterns of regularization are also affected by the particular distribution of (ir)regular forms produced by the peer.

We model the effects of the exposure on participants' morphological preferences, using both a rule-based model and an instance-based analogical model (Nosofsky 1988, Albright & Hayes 2003). Both models contribute separately and significantly to explaining participants' pre-exposure regularization processes. However, only the instance-based model captures the shift in preferences that arises after exposure to the peer. We argue that the results suggest an account of morphological convergence in which new word forms are stored in memory, and on-line generalizations are formed over these instances.