Language Topics

This volume in honour of Michael Halliday begins with a section on the background to the development of MAK’s ideas. The second section groups papers on language development in early childhood, which has always been one of Halliday’s main interests. The focus of the third section is on aspects of synchronic and diachronic change in language. Halliday has always emphasised the dynamic interaction between these two perspectives in relation to language use in social contexts. The final section caters to Halliday’s interest in ethnographic, anthropological and educational issues and explore language use in a diversity of world contexts.

This second volume in honour of Michael Halliday contains three sections: The Design of Language, Text and Discourse and Exploring Language as Social Semiotic, and concludes with a recent interview conducted by Paul Thibault in which Halliday provides further insights in his theory of language. The essential design features of language are semantic, lexico-grammatical and phonological. Text for Halliday is a semantic unit expressed by the lexico-grammatical and phonological patterns in language. The papers in the first section study aspects of these three strata of language and the relation between them. The second section deals with units higher than the clause complex and the papers there attempt to integrate the analysis of the lexico-grammatical and phonological systems into higher level discourse units. The papers in the third section develop the notion of language as social semiotic which is central to Haliday’s model of language.

Topics in Language and Culture for Teachers is an introductory language and culture text designed for today's future teachers, anthropologists, and applied linguists. The book explores, from a variety of perspectives, the interrelationships between language and culture that have the most significant implications for the classroom and for the global community. Among the topics introduced are first language acquisition, dialects, sign language, non-verbal communication, and pragmatics. Each chapter is structured so that students will read about a topic, answer comprehension questions, consider relevant teaching scenarios, gather and analyze data in further reading, and pursue projects that require out-of-class research. The book also encourages the use of films to provide deeper cultural understanding and context for various issues. Three appendixes-the family tree of languages, language structure, resources for further research and professional development-and a glossary are included.

This textbook offers an introductory overview of eight hotly-debated topics in second language acquisition research. It offers a glimpse of how SLA researchers have tried to answer common questions about second language acquisition rather than being a comprehensive introduction to SLA research. Each chapter comprises an introductory discussion of the issues involved and suggestions for further reading and study. The reader is asked to consider the issues based on their own experiences, thus allowing them to compare their own intuitions and experiences with established research findings and gain an understanding of methodology. The topics are treated independently so that they can be read in any order that interests the reader. The topics in question are: • how different languages connect in the mind; • whether there is a best age for learning a second language; • the importance of grammar in acquiring and using a second language; • how the words of a second language are acquired; • how people learn to write in a second language; • how attitude and motivation help in learning a second language; • the usefulness of second language acquisition research for language teaching; • the goals of language teaching.

Interpreters who work with signed languages and those who work strictly with spoken languages share many of the same issues regarding their training, skill sets, and fundamentals of practice. Yet interpreting into and from signed languages presents unique challenges for the interpreter, who works with language that must be seen rather than heard. The contributions in this volume focus on topics of interest to both students of signed language interpreting and practitioners working in community, conference, and education settings. Signed languages dealt with include American Sign Language, Langue des Signes Québécoise and Irish Sign Language, although interpreters internationally will find the discussion in each chapter relevant to their own language context. Topics concern theoretical and practical components of the interpreter’s work, including interpreters’ approaches to language and meaning, their role on the job and in the communities within which they work, dealing with language variation and consumer preferences, and Deaf interpreters as professionals in the field.

Language, Volume 68, the latest release in the Psychology of Learning and Motivation, features empirical and theoretical contributions in cognitive and experimental psychology, ranging from classical and instrumental conditioning, to complex learning and problem-solving. Each chapter thoughtfully integrates the writings of leading contributors, with this volume presenting the latest on Perceptual Learning for Native and Non-Native Speech, Common representations of serial order in language and memory, Neurocomputational Emergentism as a framework for language development, Syntactic adaptation, Neural indices of structured sentence representation: state-of-the-art, A review of familial sinistrality and language, Monitoring and control in language production, and more. Presents the latest information in the highly regarded Psychology of Learning and Motivation series Provides an essential reference for researchers and academics in cognitive science Contains information relevant to both applied concerns and basic research

Student and novice researchers may have a general idea for a topic they would like to research, but have a difficult time settling on a more specific topic and its associated research questions. Addressing this problem, this book features contributions from over thirty diverse and experienced research supervisors, mentors, and principal investigators in the field of language teacher education. The chapters are autobiographic in nature, with each contributing author reflecting on relevant, current and innovative research topics through the lens of their own professional life and research work. Offering explicit research topics and strategies for each area of expertise, this book will serve as a useful reference for the seasoned qualitative or narrative researcher, and a helpful guide for new researchers and teacher researchers narrowing down their own research topics.

Language Resources (LRs) are sets of language data and descriptions in machine readable form, such as written and spoken language corpora, terminological databases, computational lexica and dictionaries, and linguistic software tools. Over the past few decades, mainly within research environments, LRs have been specifically used to create, optimise or evaluate natural language processing (NLP) and human language technologies (HLT) applications, including translation-related technologies. Gradually the infrastructures and exploitation tools of LRs are being perceived as core resources in the language services industries and in localisation production settings. However, some efforts ought yet to be made to raise further awareness about LRs in general, and LRs for translation and localisation in particular to a wider audience in all corners of the world. Topics in Language Resources for Translation and Localisation sets out to establish the state of the art of this ever expanding field and underscores the usefulness that LRs can potentially have in the process of creating, adapting, managing, standardising and leveraging content for more than one language and culture from various perspectives.