The Acquisition Of Spatial Relations In A Second Language

This book is the third to appear in the SIBIL series based on results from the European Science Foundation's Additional Activity on the second language acquisition of adult immigrants. It analyses from a longitudinal and cross-linguistic perspective the acquisition of the linguistic means to express spatial relations in the target languages English, French and German. Learners' progress in the expression of spatial relations is closely followed over a period of 30 months using a wide range of oral data, and the factors determining both the specifics of individual source/target language pairings, and the general characteristics of all cases of acquisition studied, are carefully described. In particular, a basic system for the expression of spatial relations common to all learners from all language backgrounds is identified. The book is of particular significance for the field of second language acquisition in that this is the first time that results are presented in English on the acquisition of L2 means to express the basic cognitive — and communicational — category of space from a comparative linguistic point of view.

This book is the third to appear in the SIBIL series based on results from the European Science Foundation's Additional Activity on the second language acquisition of adult immigrants. It analyses from a longitudinal and cross-linguistic perspective the acquisition of the linguistic means to express spatial relations in the target languages English, French and German. Learners' progress in the expression of spatial relations is closely followed over a period of 30 months using a wide range of oral data, and the factors determining both the specifics of individual source/target language pairings, and the general characteristics of all cases of acquisition studied, are carefully described. In particular, a basic system for the expression of spatial relations common to all learners from all language backgrounds is identified. The book is of particular significance for the field of second language acquisition in that this is the first time that results are presented in English on the acquisition of L2 means to express the basic cognitive and communicational category of space from a comparative linguistic point of view.

This cutting-edge volume describes the implications of Cognitive Linguistics for the study of second language acquisition (SLA). The first two sections identify theoretical and empirical strands of Cognitive Linguistics, presenting them as a coherent whole. The third section discusses the relevance of Cognitive Linguistics to SLA and defines a research agenda linking these fields with implications for language instruction. Its comprehensive range and tutorial-style chapters make this handbook a valuable resource for students and researchers alike.

This innovative volume provides a state-of-the-art overview of the relationship between language and cognition with a focus on bilinguals. It brings together contributions from international leading figures in various disciplines and showcases contemporary research on the emerging area of bilingual cognition. The first part of the volume discusses the relationship between language and cognition as studied in various disciplines, from psychology to philosophy to anthropology to linguistics, with chapters written by some of the major thinkers in each discipline. The second part concerns language and cognition in bilinguals. Following an introductory overview and contributions from established figures in the field, bilingual cognition researchers provide examples of their latest research on topics including time, space, motion, colors, and emotion. The third part discusses practical applications of the idea of bilingual cognition, such as marketing and translation. The volume is essential reading for researchers and postgraduate students with an interest in language and cognition, or in bilingualism and second languages.

This volume provides an unprecedented insight into current approaches to crosslinguistic influence (CLI). The collection investigates a range of themes including linguistic relativity, the possible contributions of neurolinguistics, the problem of cognitive development and the role of the frequency of structures in acquisition from distinct, overlapping and complementary perspectives. Chapters focusing on vocabulary, morphosyntactic categories, semantic structures, and phonetic and phonological structures feature in the volume, as do over 20 languages, in order to offer new insights into both theoretical and empirical issues in CLI, including the consequences of great or little similarity in structures between languages. The relevance of CLI research for teaching is discussed in a number of chapters, as is the phenomenon of multilingualism. The collection will appeal to researchers, graduate and postgraduate students, teachers and professionals interested in the field of CLI in SLA.

The second edition of Theories in Second Language Acquisition seeks to build on the strengths of the first edition by surveying the major theories currently used in second language acquisition research. This volume is an ideal introductory text for undergraduate and graduate students in SLA and language teaching. Each chapter focuses on a single theory, written by a leading scholar in the field in an easy-to-follow style – a basic foundational description of the theory, relevant data or research models used with this theory, common misunderstandings, and a sample study from the field to show the theory in practice. This text is designed to provide a consistent and coherent presentation for those new to the field who seek basic understanding of theories that underlie contemporary SLA research. Researchers will also find the book useful as a "quick guide" to theoretical work outside their respective domains.

This volume offers novel insights into linguistic diversity in the domains of spatial and temporal reference, searching for uniformity amongst diversity. A number of authors discuss expression of dynamic spatial relations cross-linguistically in a vast range of typologically different languages such as Bezhta, French, Hinuq, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Serbian, and Spanish, among others. The contributions on linguistic expression of time all shed new light on pertinent questions regarding this cognitive domain, such as the hotly debated relationship between cross-linguistic differences in talking about time and universal principles of utterance interpretation, modelling temporal inference through aspectual interactions, as well as the complexity of the acquisition of tense-aspect relations in a second language. The topic of space and time in language and culture is also represented, from a different point of view, in the sister volume Space and Time in Languages and Cultures: Language, Culture, and Cognition (HCP 37) which discusses spatial and temporal constructs in human language, cognition, and culture in order to come closer to a better understanding of the interaction between shared and individual characteristics of language and culture that shape the way people interact with each other and exchange information about the spatio-temporal constructs that underlie their cognitive, social, and linguistic foundations.