The Cognitive Science of Language lecture series next talk is taking place on Tuesday January 23, 2:30-4:20pm, location TBD. The lecture will be delivered by Dr. Jeffrey Steele. Jeffrey Steele is Associate Professor, French Studies in the Department of Language Studies, University of Toronto Mississauga and a member of the University of Toronto graduate programs in French and second language education (OISE). He obtained his PhD in Linguistics from McGill University with a thesis investigating the phonological development of Mandarin-speaking learners of French. His research and teaching focus on second language acquisition of linguistic competence especially phonetics & phonology, second language assessment, and bilingual reading development in early French immersion.

Please email lingdept@mcmaster.ca if you are interested to attend.

Title: The effects of linguistic and cognitive individual differences on the L3 acquisition of grammatical agreement

Abstract: The acquisition of nominal and verbal inflectional morphology is a recurrent challenge for second language learners, even those whose first language has a rich agreement system. In this talk, I examine both inter- and intra-speaker variability in the production of grammatical gender and verbal inflection among L1 Arabic or Mandarin/L2 English learners of French. In particular, the effects of both linguistic and cognitive individual differences are explored.