Few studies have explored in depth the mechanisms that underlie the execution of the property generation task, in spite of its importance and wide usage. The main exception to this is Santos, Chaigneau, Simmons, and Barsalou’s (2011) research: they claim that the two mechanisms at issue are word association and situated simulation. On the basis of the Linguistic and Situated Simulation theory, these researchers assert that word association is executed by a linguistic system, whilst situated simulation is executed by a situated simulation system. From these claims, the authors derive a series of predictions concerning the types of features that would be produced in the property generation task, and the order in which those types of features would appear. Our aim was to test those predictions, using an existent property generation database in Spanish. Our results are partially in accordance with Santos et al.’s results. The main divergence is related to the behavior of taxonomic superordinate features. We examine alternative explanations to account for this discrepancy. Furthermore, we criticize Santos et al.’s conception about what counts as a linguistic feature, and analyze alternative models about this issue.

Meanings communicated with depictions constitute an integral part of how speakers and signers actually use language (Clark, 2016). Recent studies have argued that, in sign languages, depicting strategy like constructed action (CA), in which a signer enacts the referent, is used for referential purposes in narratives. Here, we tested the referential function of CA in a more controlled experimental setting and outside narrative context. Given the iconic properties of CA we hypothesized that this strategy could be used for efficient information transmission. Thus, we asked if use of CA increased with the increase in the information required to be communicated. Twenty-three deaf signers of LIS described unconnected images, which varied in the amount of information represented, to another player in a director–matcher game. Results revealed that participants used CA to communicate core information about the images and also increased the use of CA as images became informatively denser. The findings show that iconic features of CA can be used for referential function in addition to its depictive function outside narrative context and to achieve communicative efficiency.

We used a multi-method approach to investigate how children avoid (or retreat from) argument structure overgeneralisation errors (e.g., *You giggled me). Experiment 1 investigated how semantic and statistical constraints (preemption and entrenchment) influence children’s and adults’ judgments of the grammatical acceptability of 120 verbs in transitive and intransitive sentences. Experiment 2 used syntactic priming to elicit overgeneralisation errors from children (aged 5–6) to investigate whether the same constraints operate in production. For judgments, the data showed effects of preemption, entrenchment, and semantics for all ages. For production, only an effect of preemption was observed, and only for transitivisation errors with intransitive-only verbs (e.g., *The man laughed the girl). We conclude that preemption, entrenchment, and semantic effects are real, but are obscured by particular features of the present production task.

This paper addresses the development of epistemic verb–argument constructions in L2 Norwegian in four learners from a usage-based perspective. Usage-based theories hold that language learning is a gradual process of schematization. Recent research has pointed out that adult L2 learning may start out from both lexically specific and productive patterns, but also that formulaic language and semi-fixed patterns can persist for a long time in an L2. The aim of the present study is to trace how the schematization process unfolds in dense longitudinal data collected from learners in their second semester of intense Norwegian language studies, and to explore the interaction between formulaic and productive patterns in this period of language learning. The analyses show that the learners in general employ a limited repertoire of epistemic verbs, mainly tro ‘think’ and vite ‘know’. The level of productivity of tro and vite constructions varies across the learners: while one learner shows increasingly productive use of constructions with both verbs, other learners rely on semi-fixed construction patterns. A general conclusion is thus that formulaic and semi-fixed patterns are not restricted to initial phases of L2 learning and should be an object of attention at all levels of L2 competence.

Overshadowing refers to the reduced learning or expression of the association between a weaker cue and an outcome in the presence of another stronger cue. The present study broadens the scope of investigation in second language acquisition (SLA), which has mainly focused on inflectional morphology, by extending it to learning two Chinese syntactic constructions, namely the Ba-construction and its SVO counterpart. Thirty L2 Chinese learners were first exposed to the target constructions via watching videos, and were then tested for comprehension and production. The results were three-fold: first and foremost, they yielded evidence of syntactic overshadowing of the Ba-construction by its SVO counterpart, resulting in the reduction of the quantity and quality of the Ba production; second, since the form–meaning mapping was successful for both the Ba and SVO construction, the syntactic overshadowing is more likely to be an expression deficit; and third, the pre-knowledge of verbs further confined the use of the Ba-construction, suggesting a moderating role of word entrenchment in L2 syntactic learning. These findings not only deepen our understanding of overshadowing at the syntactic level, but also offer a fresh perspective for addressing the challenges of L2 learning of the Chinese Ba-construction.