Universals in the Acquisition of Adjectives in Second Language Acquisition

Second language acquisition has become one of the most important fields in applied linguistics. As the field of second language acquisition gained popularity, the majority of its research was on the acquisition of syntactic structures. Consequently, as research grew, more language elements received more attention which led to advances in the pedagogical aspect of language itself.
Vocabulary and lexical semantics play an important role in a language. The lexicon is one of the core elements which contributes to a learner's language development. As Zimmerman (1997, p5) states: " Vocabulary is central to a language and of crucial importance to the typical language learner". Hunt and Beglar (2005) assert that " the heart of language comprehension and use is the lexicon".  Semantics has increasingly received more attention in many areas such as syntax, second language acquisition, linguistic universals, the lexicon, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics. This study investigates the developmental acquisition of lexical semantics with a focus on the universality of acquisition.