Proceedings Of The 10th Generative Approaches To Second Language Acquisition Conference Gasla 2009

This volume contains 27 papers presented at the 10th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (GASLA 2009), which was held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from March 13-15, 2009. The papers are organized into sections on articles, clitics, interfaces, phonology, processing, semantics/pragmatics, and syntax.

Second language acquisition (SLA) is a field of inquiry that has increased in importance since the 1960s. Currently, researchers adopt multiple perspectives in the analysis of learner language, all of them providing different but complementary answers to the understanding of oral and written data produced by young and older learners in different settings. The main goal of this volume is to provide the reader with updated reviews of the major contemporary approaches to SLA, the research carried out within them and, wherever appropriate, the implications and/or applications for theory, research and pedagogy that might derive from the available empirical evidence. The book is intended for SLA researchers as well as for graduate (MA, Ph.D.) students in SLA research, applied linguistics and linguistics, as the different chapters will be a guide in their research within the approaches presented. The volume will also be of interest to professionals from other fields interested in the SLA process and the different explanations that have been put forward to account for it.

This volume contains 25 papers selected from the 9th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (GASLA 2007), which was held at the University of Iowa on May 18-20, 2007. Subjects covered include telicity, wh-constructions, specificity, the structure of new grammars acquired by adults, and other topics related to L2 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.

By examining the acquisition of Spanish in combination with languages other than English (Arabic, Basque, Catalan, Chinese, Dutch, Farsi, French, German, Nahuatl, Quechua, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish), this volume advances novel data pertinent to the field’s understanding of acquisition of Spanish in the XXI century. Its crosslinguistic nature invites us to reconsider major theoretical questions such as the role of L1 transfer, linguistic typology, and onset of acquisition from a fresh perspective, and to question the validity of the traditional parameter (re)setting perspective taken in SLA. Additionally, this volume underscores the necessity of providing accurate descriptions of the language pairings investigated, emphasizing the interconnection between linguistic and SLA theory, and pushing us to a more atomic view of the system in which features and feature bundles mapped onto lexical items comprise the skeleton of language. This volume is of great relevance for researchers and students of SLA alike.

Exploring the canonical topics in second language acquisition, this book introduces different theoretical perspectives and explores the types of research carried out in the field. Individual chapters have been written so that they can stand alone, giving instructors and students total control over the pace and order of study, and the book is written in an accessible conversational style, inviting engagement with this dynamic topic. Second Language Acquisition: - Surveys key studies in the acquisition of morphology, syntax and phonology - Features a whole chapter dedicated to bilingualism, tying together two closely-linked fields - Examines the role and implications of pedagogy in language teaching contexts - Employs end-of-chapter questions, concept practice and suggestions for further reading to encourage deeper engagement with topic

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.

This proceedings contains 46 papers and posters presented at the 2nd Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA), which was held August 17-19, 2006, in Montreal. The authors examine first and second language acquisition issues in a large number of languages. The papers focus on the acquisition of syntax, semantics, phonology, and morphology.