Morphosyntactic Issues In Second Language Acquisition

The volume consists of articles on issues relating to the morphosyntactic development of foreign language learners from different L1 backgrounds, in many cases involving languages which are typologically distant from English, such has Polish, Greek and Turkish. It highlights areas which may be expected to be especially transfer-prone at both the interlingual and intralingual levels. The articles in the first part report empirical studies on word morphology and sentence patterns and also look at the interface of lexis and grammar in the discourse and syntactic processing of foreign language learners. The second part elaborates on pedagogical issues concerning the acquisition of difficult grammatical features such as the English article system or the ‘s’ ending in the third person singular. It also comments more generally on the way pedagogic grammar functions in the learning of the L2.

This volume presents a selection of second language acquisition studies at the level of morphosyntax. It looks at different aspects of morphosyntactic development of bilingual language learners/users such as language transfer, syntactic processing, morphology and the pragmatics of language among others. The studies report on projects carried out in different language contact contexts, ranging from: English, German, Polish, Greek and Turkish. The volume also includes those studies which show the interface between research findings and pedagogy of foreign language teaching.

Under which circumstances does grammatical change come about? Is the child the principle agent of change as suggested by historical linguistics?This book discusses diachronic change of languages in terms of restructuring of speakers' internal grammatical knowledge. Efforts to construct a theory of diachronic change consistent with findings from psycholinguistics are scarce. Here, these questions are therefore addressed against the background of insights from research on monolingual and bilingual acquisition. Given that children are remarkably successful in reconstructing the grammars of their ambient languages, commonly held views need to be reconsidered according to which language change is primarily triggered by structural ambiguity in the input and in settings of language contact. In an innovative take on this matter, the authors argue that morphosyntactic change in core areas of grammar, especially where parameters of Universal Grammar are concerned, typically happens in settings involving second language acquisition. The children acting as agents of restructuring are either L2 learners themselves or are continuously exposed to the speech of L2 speakers of their target languages. Based on a variety of case studies, this discussion sheds new light on phenomena of change which have occupied historical linguists since the 19th century and will be welcomed by advanced undergraduate and graduate students as well as researchers in the fields of historical linguistics and language acquisition.

Examines five central issues of second-language acquisition: transfer, staged development, cross-learner systematicity, incompleteness and variability.

This Handbook, with 45 chapters written by the world’s leading scholars in second language acquisition (SLA) and language testing, dives into the important interface between SLA and language testing: shared ground where researchers seek to measure second language performance to better understand how people learn their second languages. The Handbook also reviews how to best measure and evaluate the second language (L2) learners’ personal characteristics, backgrounds, and learning contexts to better understand their L2 learning trajectories. Taking a transdisciplinary approach to research, the book builds upon recent theorizing and measurement principles from the fields of applied linguistics, cognitive science, psychology, psycholinguistics, psychometrics, educational measurement, and social psychology. The Handbook is divided into six key sections: (1) Assessment concepts for SLA researchers, (2) Building instruments for SLA research, (3) Measuring individual differences, (4) Measuring language development, (5) Testing specific populations, and (6) Measurement principles for SLA researchers.

A comprehensive, current review of the research and approaches to advanced proficiency in second language acquisition The Handbook of Advanced Proficiency in Second Language Acquisition offers an overview of the most recent and scientific-based research concerning higher proficiency in second language acquisition (SLA). With contributions from an international team of experts in the field, the Handbook presents several theoretical approaches to SLA and offers an examination of advanced proficiency from the viewpoint of various contexts and dimensions of second language performance. The authors also review linguistic phenomena among advanced learners through the lens of phonology and grammar development. Comprehensive in scope, this book provides an overview of advanced proficiency grounded in socially-relevant domains of second language acquisition including discourse, reading, genre-based writing, and pragmatic competence. The authoritative volume brings together the theoretical accounts of advanced language use combined with solid empirical research. Includes contributions from an international collection of noted scholars in the field of second language acquisition Offers a variety of theoretical approaches to SLA Contains information on the most recent empirical research that contributes to an understanding of SLA Describes performance phenomena according to multiple approaches to SLA Written for scholars, students and linguists, The Handbook of Advanced Proficiency in Second Language Acquisition is a comprehensive text that offers the most recent developments in the study of advanced proficiency in the acquisition of a second language.

The Bloomsbury Companion to Second Language Acquisition is designed to be the essential one-volume resource for advanced students and academics. It offers a comprehensive reference resource: it features an overview of key topics in SLA as well the key research methods. It then goes on to look at current research areas and new directions in the field by examining key relationships in the field, including the relationship between first and second language acquisition and the relationship between L2 input and L2 output. It is a complete resource for postgraduate students and researchers working within second language acquisition and applied linguistics.