Child Second Language Acquisition

As one of the first books in child second language acquisition (SLA), this book focuses on the core area of tense-aspect morphology, reporting on three L1-Italian children learning L2 English vs. three L1-English children learning L2 Italian. An innovative longitudinal/bidirectional research design, where two languages represent both source and target, show effects of language transfer in learners that, because of their age, still have potential to become native-speakers of the target. An unusual feature of this book is that relevant studies of acquisition of L2 Italian, some heretofore only in Italian, are reviewed, incorporated into the study and made available to a more general audience. Though the main focus is on child SLA, crucial comparisons to both first language acquisition vs. adult SLA are presented. This approach will thus be of interest more generally to readers in first and second language acquisition and child development.

Butler and Huang’s book is one of the first to focus on second language (L2) development research methods and techniques specifically targeted at children of primary and pre-primary years. The last decade has seen a growing number of L2 studies of children aged 4–12, a demographic with special developmental characteristics that confound research methods designed for studying adults. Written by experts from a variety of disciplines, this book covers major research methods and techniques in existing L2 development research, including observations, surveys, interviews, introspective methods, speech production methods, receptive methods, eye tracking, and brain imaging, as well as research methods specifically designed for L2 children with special educational needs. The book also discusses various age-related considerations and challenges if they are employed to young L2 learners. This will be essential reading for SLA, child development, and TESOL researchers, and students in these courses will benefit particularly from pedagogical material such as further readings and discussion questions.

This new volume of work highlights the distinctiveness of child SLA through a collection of different types of empirical research specific to younger learners. Characteristics of children’s cognitive, emotional, and social development distinguish their experiences from those of adult L2 learners, creating intriguing issues for SLA research, and also raising important practical questions regarding effective pedagogical techniques for learners of different ages. While child SLA is often typically thought of as simple (and often enjoyable and universally effortless), in other words, as “child’s play”, the complex portraits of young second language learners which emerge in the 16 papers collected in this book invite the reader to reconsider the reality for many younger learners. Chapters by internationally renowned authors together with reports by emerging researchers describe second and foreign language learning by children ranging from pre-schoolers to young adolescents, in home and school contexts, with caregivers, peers, and teachers as interlocutors.

This volume presents recent generative research on the nature of grammars of child second language (L2) acquirers -- a learner population whose exposure to an L2 occurs between the ages of 4 to 8. The main goal is to define child L2 acquisition in relation to other types of acquisition such as child monolingual and bilingual acquisition, adult L2 acquisition, and specific language impairment. This comparative perspective opens up new angles for the discussion of currently debated issues such as the role of Universal Grammar in constraining development, developmental sequences in L2, maturational influences on the 'growth' of grammar, critical period effects for different linguistic domains, initial state and ultimate attainment in relation to length of exposure, and L1-transfer in relation to age of onset. These issues are explored using longitudinal, cross-sectional, and experimental data from L2 children acquiring a range of languages, including Dutch, English, French, and Greek.

This book examines child second language acquisition within the Principles and Parameters theory of Universal Grammar (UG). Specifically, the book focuses on null-subjects in the developing grammars of children acquiring English as a second language. The book provides evidence from the longitudinal speech data of four child second language (L2) learners in order to test the predictions of a recent theory of null-subjects, namely, the Morphological Uniformity Principle (MUP). Lakshmanan argues that the child L2 acquisition data offer little or no evidence in support of the MUP s predictions regarding a developmental relation between verb inflections and null-subjects. The evidence from these child L2 data indicates that regardless of the status of null subjects in their first language, child L2 learners of English hypothesize correctly from the very beginning that English requires subjects of tensed clauses to be obligatorily overt. The failure on the part of these learners to obey this knowledge in certain structural contexts is the result of perceptual factors that are unrelated to parameter setting. The book demonstrates the value of child second language acquisition data in evaluating specific proposals within linguistic theory for a Universal principle.

This volume presents recent generative research on the nature of grammars of child second language (L2) acquirers -- a learner population whose exposure to an L2 occurs between the ages of 4 to 8. The main goal is to define child L2 acquisition in relation to other types of acquisition such as child monolingual and bilingual acquisition, adult L2 acquisition, and specific language impairment. This comparative perspective opens up new angles for the discussion of currently debated issues such as the role of Universal Grammar in constraining development, developmental sequences in L2, maturational influences on the 'growth' of grammar, critical period effects for different linguistic domains, initial state and ultimate attainment in relation to length of exposure, and L1-transfer in relation to age of onset. These issues are explored using longitudinal, cross-sectional, and experimental data from L2 children acquiring a range of languages, including Dutch, English, French, and Greek.