Language Production Development Writing And Other Language Processes

Listening to the voices of learners as they write an essay or try to cope with unfamiliar words in a text is a luxury often reserved for researchers. This book observes individuals performing similar tasks in their first and their foreign language and invites readers with an interest in foreign language acquisition to follow the same learners in their efforts to cope in both languages.

This volume is the translated and updated version of the second edition of Manuale di Neuropsicologia (Zanichelli, 1996), by the same authors, and it reflects the current status of the art.

The book presents the state-of-the-art in major aspects of text analysis and cognitive text processing by some of the most well-known European and American researchers in the field of text-linguistics and cognitive psychology. Comprehensive views and new perspectives are proposed in the following topics: cognitive and metacognitive aspects of text processing, structures and processes involved in the construction of multi-level semantic representations in relation with text and reader characteristics, achievement of local and global coherence of meaning during reading and comprehension, assessment of knowledge, knowledge acquisition of concepts and complex systems by text, and cognitive and metacognitive aspects of text production.

Processability Theory (PT) as developed by Manfred Pienemann is a prominent theory of second language acquisition. PT serves as a framework for a wide range of research covering issues, including L2 processing, interlanguage variation, typological effects on SLA, L1 transfer, pidgins and creoles, linguistic profiling, stabilisation/fossilisation and teachability. This textbook provides a reader-friendly introduction to PT. It is designed for students with a basic knowledge of (applied) linguistics. The components of PT are set out in four parts. The first part focuses on observed facts, in particular on paths of L2 development and learner variation. The second part gives an overview of the theoretical basis of PT. Part three details the application of PT to contexts other than ESL (i.e. Japanese, creoles and bilingual acquisition), and the forth part focuses on practical applications. Each chapter contains exercises (including data analysis and interpretation) which may be used for individual study or in class. The textbook can be used as a concise introduction to PT. However, it may also serve as a point of reference for particular PT-related topics. The individual chapters were written by specialists in each of the research areas

It is now well established that phonological -- and orthographic -- codes play a crucial role in the recognition of isolated words and in understanding the sequences of words that comprise a sentence. However, words and sentences are organized with respect to morphological as well as phonological components. It is thus unfortunate that the morpheme has received relatively little attention in the experimental literature, either from psychologists or linguists. Due to recent methodological developments, however, now is an opportune time to address morphological issues. In the experimental literature, there is a tendency to examine various psycholinguistic processes in English and then to assume that the account given applies with equal significance to English and to other languages. Written languages differ, however, in the extent to which they capture phonological as contrasted with morphological units. Moreover, with respect to the morpheme, languages differ in the principle by which morphemes are connected to form new words. This volume focuses on morphological processes in word recognition and reading with an eye toward comparing morphological processes with orthographic and phonological processes. Cross-language comparisons are examined as a tool with which to probe universal linguistic processes, and a variety of research methodologies are described. Because it makes the experimental literature in languages other than English more accessible, this book is expected to be of interest to many readers. It also directs attention to the subject of language processing in general -- an issue which is of central interest to cognitive psychologists and linguists as well as educators and clinicians.

The 18 contributions in Lexical Representation and Process provide a coherent and well-documented frame of reference for a field of study that is becoming central to both linguistics and psycholinguistics.

Introduces the key concepts of linguistics and applies these concepts to real-world settings. Numerous learning features provide extensive student support.