Selected Proceedings Of The 4th Conference On Generative Approaches To Language Acquisition North America Galana 2010

This handbook provides innovative and comprehensive coverage of research on the second language acquisition (SLA) of morphosyntax, semantics, and the interface between the two. Organized by grammatical topic, the chapters are written by experts from formal and functional perspectives in the SLA of morphosyntax and semantics, providing in-depth yet accessible coverage of these areas. All chapters highlight the theoretical underpinnings of much work in SLA and their links to theoretical syntax and semantics; making comparisons to other populations, including child language acquirers, bilinguals, and heritage speakers (links to first language acquisition and bilingualism); dedicating a portion of each chapter to the research methods used to investigate the linguistic phenomenon in question (links to psycholinguistics and experimental linguistics); and, where relevant, including intervention studies on the phenomenon in question (links to applied linguistics). The volume will be indispensable to SLA researchers and students who work on any aspect of the SLA of morphosyntax or semantics. With its coverage of a variety of methodologies and comparisons to other populations (such as child language acquirers, early bilinguals, heritage speakers, and monolingual adults), the handbook is expected to also be of much interest to linguists who work in psycholinguistics, first language acquisition, and bilingualism.

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.

The studies of the Japanese language and psycholinguistics have advanced quite significantly in the last half century thanks to the progress in the study of cognition and brain mechanisms, and because of technological developments in experimental techniques. This volume contains 18 chapters that discuss the process of Japanese language acquisition as a first/second language and the mechanism of Japanese language perception and production.

This book explores a much-debated area of language acquisition: the omission by young children of direct objects in a sentence.

In this handbook, renowned scholars from a range of backgrounds provide a state of the art review of key developmental findings in language acquisition. The book places language acquisition phenomena in a richly linguistic and comparative context, highlighting the link between linguistic theory, language development, and theories of learning. The book is divided into six parts. Parts I and II examine the acquisition of phonology and morphology respectively, with chapters covering topics such as phonotactics and syllable structure, prosodic phenomena, compound word formation, and processing continuous speech. Part III moves on to the acquisition of syntax, including argument structure, questions, mood alternations, and possessives. In Part IV, chapters consider semantic aspects of language acquisition, including the expression of genericity, quantification, and scalar implicature. Finally, Parts V and VI look at theories of learning and aspects of atypical language development respectively.

This collection brings together scholarship in theoretical and applied linguistics, literary and cultural studies, and second language studies. The contributors here investigate the nature of linguistic, cultural, and cognitive diversity, offering rich insights for theoretical advancement in multiple disciplines. Their theoretical and practical explications on discourse, literature, and linguistic structure contribute to a multifaceted conversation about diversity in language structure and use. From the relationships between eye contact and mindfulness, to the question of the universality of critical thinking, the topics in this volume represent a wide variety of approaches to the study of language. Specific areas in which advances are made here include sociolinguistics, second language pedagogy, and literature studies.

With a particular focus on the morphosyntactic features of second language, this book discusses the idea that language acquisition is a discontinuous and 'quantized' process and thus that some items might be learned twice, statistically and grammatically. It argues that the switch from one way of learning to another is statistically-driven and grammatically motivated. The volume brings together and discusses insights and evidence from learner corpora analysis and electrophysiological data in an attempt to provide the reader with a unified outlook and it suggests a new, developmentally-oriented interpretation of findings. The topics discussed will be of interest to researchers working in the field of psycho- and neurolinguistics and SLA.