The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect that rote memorization has on language attrition. More specifically, the loss of grammatical aspect markers is investigated. This study measures the general language attrition of a memorized narrative and an open-ended narrative between time one (T1) and time two (T2) measurements. Attrition of the memorized narrative at T2 is compared to how well the subject had it memorized it at T1. The attrition of aspect is then investigated in both the memorized narratives and open-ended narratives. Aspect marker attrition in the memorized narratives is also compared to how well the subject originally had the narrative memorized at T1. Aspect attrition is then compared between the memorized and open-ended narratives to see the effect of memorization on aspect attrition. Lastly, a qualitative investigation examines the effect of telicity on correct and incorrect aspect marking. This study reveals that learners of Chinese who spend time in a Chinese-speaking environment and gain a fairly high level of oral proficiency retain much of their oral production abilities over a 12-year period. Additionally, subjects are able to retain and use syntax and lexicon from narratives they had previously memorized as beginning-level learners. However, significant levels of content and length attrition occur for both types of narratives. Aspect marker -LE is used the most frequently, but it also has the highest percentage rate of error. Other aspect markers are used less frequently, and have lower percentage rates of error. Attrition in type, variety, and usage of aspect markers is significant between T1 and T2. There is not a significant relationship between how well the subjects produced the memorized narrative at T1 and either their performance at T2 or the attrition of aspect markers in either narrative. The subjects tend to mark telic verbs for perfective aspect more frequently and correctly than atelic verbs. Pedagogical implications of this study include suggestions for teaching perfective aspect as well as designing curriculum for students who are re-learning Chinese. Finally, the author invites further attrition research focusing on the effect of memorization on fluency variables.

As a result of migratory movements in recent decades, an increasing number of children are educated in a language which is not their mother tongue. For these children, learning to read takes place in their second language. This learning context is made unique by two challenges. First, the learning of the written code occurs simultaneously with the learning of the oral language. Second, no reference to the written code of the maternal language is made available to these children. / This particular learning context can lead to inequity between the second language learner and his or her unilingual peers in terms of phonetic encoding and decoding. Furthermore, the limited vocabulary of a beginning language learner can impede the direct lexical access used when learning to read. / Fourteen students were evaluated for their metalinguistical abilities, lexical and phonic knowledge. Following these tests, an analysis was conducted of student reading errors made in a real reading context. / This descriptive study explores the interaction between reading strategies used by second language learners: bottom-up (word comprehension derived from the context of the text) and top-down (text comprehension derived from word recognition). In addition, this study seeks to describe the linguistic and metalinguistic abilities of these second language students in the process of learning to read.

The focus of this dissertation is the development and testing of a CALL tool which assists learners of German with the extensive reading of German texts of their choice. The application provides functionality that enables learners to acquire new vocabulary, analyse the meaning of complex word forms and to study a word’s semantic and syntactic features with the help of corpora and online resources. It is also designed to enable instructors to create meaningful exercises to be used in classroom activities focusing on vocabulary acquisition and word formation rules. The detailed description of the software development and implementation is preceded by a review of the relevant literature in the areas of German morphology and word formation, second language acquisition and vocabulary acquisition in particular, studies on the benefits of extensive reading, the role of motivation in second language learning, CALL, and natural language processing technologies. The user study presented at the end of this dissertation shows how a first test group of learners was able to use the application for individual reading projects and presents the results of an evaluation of the software conducted by three German instructors assessing the affordances of the applications for students and potential applications for language instructors.

People often look to well-developed networks for insight into the venture capital acquisition process, but many of us live in different contextual environments, and we must be able to craft policies that are practical considering that the venture capital acquisition process may be occurring differently, within a dissimilar network environment. As demonstrated by this study, less developed networks can exhibit certain aspects that are well-developed. Some aspects are not relevant for policy: we cannot realistically establish a stock market in order to facilitate venture capital exits, but we can identify which factors are less-developed, more developed, and in transition, so that policies can be crafted from a strategic point of view. The question for policy makers now is whether to focus on promoting less-developed characteristics to push development of venture capital acquisition, or to further promote well-developed characteristics to pull the process, or to strive instead for balance.

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Within the framework of generative grammar, it is assumed that children are endowed with an innate language faculty called Universal Grammar (UG). Children learn their native language on the basis of the interaction of positive evidence in the input with the principles and parameters of UG. In terms of parameter setting, positive evidence consistent with just one value of a parameter causes the preemption of any incorrect settings hypothesized by the child, in accordance with the Uniqueness Principle (Pinker 1984, Wexler and Culicover 1980) which ensures that only one parameter setting can be held at a time in the child's grammar (Berwick 1985). / This thesis investigates the operation of preemption in parameter setting in second language (L2) acquisition in cases where the learner initially adopts the L1 value of a parameter. Focussing on a parametric difference between French and English, namely, the verb movement parameter (Pollock 1989) which relates to (among other things) the placement of adverbs, 58 grade 5 francophone students learning English as a second language in intensive programmes in Quebec schools were exposed over a two week period to a flood of positive evidence on adverb placement in English--input which was consistent with only the English value of the parameter. The results indicate that the subjects did not reset the verb movement parameter to the English value, suggesting that preemption does not function in L2 as in L1 acquisition. Possible explanations for these results and their implications for theories of L2 learnability are developed.

This study primarily examined the use of second language production as a measure of second language text comprehension in 18 first-year nursing students enrolled in French for Nursing courses (nine low-intermediates, nine high-intermediates). / Although few differences were found between the two levels of proficiency with respect to recall and inference, the high-intermediates were more proficient in reading highly variable material and difficult vocabulary in their second language than the low-intermediates as measured by sentence reading times. The within-subjects results indicate a greater amount of propositional recall of the second language text when it was interpreted in the first language than when it was interpreted in the second language.

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