Interfaces And Features In Second Language Acquisition

This book presents comprehensive and rigorous research on the acquisition of Chinese negation by L1-English and L1-Korean learners within the theoretical framework of the Interface Hypothesis and the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis. The results from grammaticality judgment data (N=182) and learner corpus data (overall scale: 15.19 million characters) reveal multiple factors contributing to the variability in L2 acquisition at the interfaces involved with Chinese negative structures, including L1 influence, the quantity (input frequency) and the quality of the target input (input consistency and regularity), as well as L2 proficiency. These factors also underlie the detectability and reassembly of the [±realis] features encoded with bu and mei, the two primary negation markers in Mandarin Chinese, in different licensing contexts. Task modality (written vs. aural) seems to play a role in L2 learners’ access to explicit and implicit knowledge about Chinese negation, but the effect of task modality is constrained by other factors such as structural/feature complexity, L2 proficiency, and L1-L2 similarity. The approach of employing both elicited experimental data and authentic learner corpus data furnishes new evidence for the acquisition Chinese negation by L2 learners. The findings of this study are of significance to the examination of the Interface Hypothesis and the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis in generative-oriented SLA research.

Using Chomsky's minimalist program as a framework, this volume explores the role of formal (or functional) features in current descriptions and accounts of language acquistion. In engaging, up-to-date articles, distinguished experts examine the role of features in current versions of generative grammar and in learnibility theory as it relates to native, non-native, and impaired acquisition.

Second language acquisition (SLA) and language testing (LT) research have largely been viewed as distinct areas of inquiry in applied linguistics. This book provides a fresh look at areas of common interest to both SLA and LT research, and ways in which research in these two areas of applied linguistics can be fruitfully integrated.

This volume brings together empirical studies and keynote addresses presented at the 15th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition conference hosted by the University of Nevada, Reno in 2019. The studies selected for the volume reflect how the latest developments in generative syntactic theory and psycholinguistic methodologies have impacted second language acquisition research in the last decade, from the linguistic properties under investigation and L1-L2/Ln language pairings down to the specific research questions in each study. The minimalist view of language architecture is at the center of studies investigating L2 acquisition of raising, scope, definiteness, phonological representations, and interlanguage transfer. The volume also showcases the latest research on interface phenomena, language processing, and working memory. Studies analyze data collected with a variety of L2 populations from adult foreign language learners to adolescent L3 learners and heritage speakers.

The interface between syntax and morphology forms one of the more challenging aspects of linguistic theory and language acquisition. The papers collected here respond to that challenge from the perspective of adult second language (L2) acquisition.

Second language acquisition (SLA) and language testing (LT) research have largely been viewed as distinct areas of inquiry in applied linguistics. This book provides a fresh look at areas of common interest to both SLA and LT research, and ways in which research in these two areas of applied linguistics can be fruitfully integrated.

International scholars and researchers present cutting edge contributions on the significance of vocabulary in current thinking on first and second language acquisition in the school and at home. By pursuing common themes across first and second language and bilingual contexts, the editors offer a collection that tackles the most important issues.

Modeling of linguistic knowledge generally involves the compartmentalization of grammar into phonological, morphological, lexical, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic components. These components are not isolated but interacting components. It is the resulting interfaces between grammatical components that forms the main topic of this volume, discussed from the perspective of bilingual L1 acquisition in early childhood and L2 in adulthood, as well as L1/L2 in late childhood. The book contains ten contributions by members of the Research Center on Multilingualism at the University of Hamburg and by other international scholars, all of them experts on multilingualism. Several pairs of languages are dealt with, among them Spanish and German, Mandarin and English, French and German, Italian and German, Turkish and English, Turkish and German, Dutch and Turkish, as well as Spoken German and German Sign language. Throughout the volume the central issue is that of representation at the interface of grammatical components.