Incidental Exposure and L3 Learning of Morphosyntax

Abstract

Evidence of learning following incidental exposure has been found for aspects of nonnative syntax in adults (Rebuschat & Williams, 2006, 2012; Williams & Kuribara, 2008). However, little research has tested delayed effects of learning under an incidental condition or moved beyond word order. This study investigated learning of third language (L3) morphosyntax (word order and case marking) under an incidental exposure condition. Participants were second language Spanish learners exposed auditorily to a semiartificial language, Japlish, during a semantic plausibility judgment task. Performance following exposure to L3 Japlish was assessed with acceptability judgment and picture-matching tasks that were administered immediately after exposure and 2 weeks later. Results on immediate tests showed a significant learning effect on acceptability judgment but none for picture matching. At delayed testing, results showed maintenance of the learning effect on acceptability judgment and significantly improved performance on picture matching. Results additionally showed that many of the learners arrived at the correct Japlish word-order rule; fewer did so for case marking. Follow-up analyses indicated that this rule knowledge, as measured by debriefing information, was important for performance on both assessment tasks, particularly at delayed testing. The results suggest that learning of L3 structures can take place following incidental exposure, that such learning is durable and undergoes improvement, and that development of reportable rule knowledge may also play an important role.

The role of perceptual salience in the L2 acquisition sequence of the Arabic construct state

“…Still, one question naturally arises: if beginning English‐speaking learners of Arabic were not explicitly and directly taught the structure of Arabic construct state by the time of investigation, how were they able to reset head‐direction? One explanation is that very early in the learning process of Arabic some form of incidental/implicit head direction learning was at play (see Grey, Williams, & Rebuschat, ; Shintani, ). Importantly, this implicit learning was possible in spite of a poverty of Arabic construct state stimulus.…”

The Role of Individual Differences in the Study Abroad Context: Cognitive Capacity and Language Development During Short‐Term Intensive Language Exposure

“…The items for the L1 NWRT were prerecorded by a female native speaker of American English (Lado, ). The items for the L2 NWRT were prerecorded by a male native speaker of Spanish (Grey, Williams, & Rebuschat, ).…”

Case/agreement matching: Evidence for a cognitive bias

“…The experiment adopted the semi-artificial language learning paradigm first introduced by Williams & Kuribara (2008) to examine acquisition of Japanese scrambling, and then used by Rebuschat & Williams (2011) to examine German word order regularities (see also Grey et al 2014). In this technique, the "language" consists of elements of an unknown syntactic system combined with native language lexis.…”