Recent developments in linguistic theory, as well as the growing body of evidence from languages other than English, provide new opportunities for deeper explorations into how language is represented in the mind of learners. This collection of new empirical studies on the acquisition of Spanish morphosyntax by leading researchers in the field of language acquisition, specifically contributes to the characterization of the L1 / L2 connection in acquisition. Using L1 and L2 Spanish data from children and adults, the authors seek to address the central questions that have occupied developmental psycholinguists in the final decades of the previous century and that will no doubt continue engaging them into the present one.

This book closes the gap between theory and classroom application by capitalizing on learners' individuality in second or foreign language learning. The book examines the existing literature and theoretical underpinnings of each of the most prominent learner characteristics including anxiety, beliefs, cognitive abilities, motivation, strategies, styles and willingness to communicate. This strong foundation, coupled with the wide variety of activities that are suggested at the end of each chapter, arms the reader with ideas to conquer the problems created by negative affect and to capitalize on positive, facilitative emotions. The tasks are unrestricted by language and can be modified for use with technology, emergent learners and large classes, making this book a useful resource for both in-service teachers and pre-service teachers in university language teacher education programs.

This book synthesises current theory and research on L2 motivation in the EFL Japanese context carried out by internationally recognized researchers and upcoming researcher-educators working in various educational contexts in Japan. Topics covered include the issues of cultural identity, demotivation, language communities, positive psychology, possible L2 selves and internationalisation within a key EFL context. The studies in the book utilise a wide variety of research methodologies aiming to narrow the gap between theory and practice and examine L2 motivation in primary, secondary and tertiary education. This volume will be of interest to research/teacher professionals who are currently engaged in active ESL/EFL practice, EFL educators, researchers, and teacher-trainers both inside and outside Japan, who are interested in research on L2 motivation in general and within the Japanese context in particular, as well as graduate and postgraduate researchers.

To Advanced Proficiency and Beyond: Theory and Methods for Developing Superior Second Language Ability addresses an important issue in Second Language Acquisition - how to help learners progress from Intermediate and Advanced proficiency to Superior and beyond. Due to the pressures of globalization, American society encounters an ever-increasing demand for speakers with advanced language abilities. This volume makes available cutting edge research on working memory and cognition and empirical studies of effective teaching. In addition it can serve as a practical handbook for seasoned and pre-professional instructors alike. The bringing together of the latest in second language acquisition theory, decades of empirical research, and practical classroom application makes for an unprecedented volume examining the achievement of Superior-level foreign language proficiency.

Affectivity is at the core of everything we do in life. Thus, its development is also central to learning/acquisition and is important for educational contexts. The studies presented in this volume consider the different contexts of language learning and examine different types of participants in this process. Most of them look at a formal instruction context, while others look beyond the classroom and even report on the author's own affectivity and its involvement in learning experiences. Affectivity is discussed here in relation to learners but also to teachers in their own professional contexts of teaching foreign languages. In the majority of cases, affectivity is explored in the case of bilinguals, but there are also articles which focus on multilingual language users and their affectivity as an evolving factor.

The book indentifies and assesses the importance of a range of influences on child language acquisition and development, paying particular attention to situational influences. Key issues are highlighted and recent research is presented. There are five sections: the deployment of speech during early development; linguistic interaction and family background - encoding the situation; multidimentional aspects of language development; and constraints on language development. There are twelve chapters on these themes.

This volume is based on one of the first interdisciplinary meetings to focus on early developmental neurocognition. It has now been clearly established that human infants process complex events such as faces and speech sounds quite early in their life. The crucial problem nowadays is to elucidate how these competences emerge and develop: what kinds of mechanisms are involved that make information processing systems both so specific and so adaptive to the relevant biological signals, how the interactions with the environmental inputs contribute to the neuronal functional organization, to the onset and changes in competences, and how the various successive changes in infants' abilities and competences relate to each other. These are some of the questions addressed in the present volume: they constitute major challenges to neurobiologists, neuropsychologists, psychologists and linguists. Not only is human cognitive development a fascinating and important issue per se, it is also crucial to understanding the neurobiological mechanisms involved in adult competences. The meeting on which this volume was based was held in July 1992. It brought together some outstanding international specialists in the relevant scientific fields in a spirit of interdisciplinary exchange. Their contributions cover the latest research on these topics and include some exciting new conceptual advances.

This book offers an examination of the verbal participation of learners in Japanese as a Foreign Language classrooms. The verbal participation of learners in language classrooms offers a rich seam of data to the applied linguist. Overt and covert participation, when examined, can reveal both the structures of a classroom and elicit privileged information on participant's self-perceptions. This book examines the verbal participation of learners in Japanese as a Foreign Language classrooms. Verbal interactions with teachers and classmates and 'private' speech acts are examined in relation to the classroom context and also sociocultural factors such as the learner's motivation and the teacher's belief in their own methods. The examination of corrective feedback episodes and learners' private speech uses recorded speech and stimulated recall interviews recorded over the period of a year. The book's main focus is on Corrective Feedback episodes, and it explains not only the language used in class but also teacher's and learner's own perceptions. This book will be of interest to researchers in applied linguistics and second language acquisition, especially those involved with Japanese as a second or other language. It will also appeal to teachers of second and foreign languages.

Hans-Christian Schmitz argues that a speaker has to utter a sentence in a way that makes the hearer perceive at least those words that are sufficient for understanding the entire sentence. In spoken language the speaker has to accentuate these words. Semantics effects of accentuation appear as epi-phenomena of their pragmatic function. The author defines a formal model for the interpretation of incompletely recognized sentences and derives a context-sensitive rule of accentuation. The rule of accentuation is experimentally evaluated.

This book details innovative developments in the pragmatics and lexicogrammar of speakers using English as a lingua franca. There have been considerable recent demographic shifts in the use of English worldwide. English is now undoubtedly(and particularly) an international lingua franca, a lingua mundi. The sociolinguistic reality of English language use worldwide, and its implications, continue to be hotly contested. Plenty of research has questioned, for example, the ownership of English, but less attention has been paid to the linguistic consequences of the escalating role English plays. This is one of the first books to provide a detailed and comprehensive account of recent empirical findings in the field of English as a lingua franca (ELF). Dewey and Cogo analyze and interpret their own large corpus of naturally occurring spoken interactions and focus on identifying innovative developments in the pragmatics and lexicogrammar of speakers engaged in ELF talk. Dewey and Cogo's work makes a substantial contribution to the emerging field of empirical ELF studies. As well as this practical focus, this book looks at both pragmatic and lexicogrammatical issues and highlights their interrelationship. In showcasing the underlying processes involved in the emergence of innovative patterns of language use, this book will be of great interest to advanced students and academics working in applied linguistics, ELF, sociolinguistics, and corpus linguistics.

This book brings together many of Peter Culicover's most significant observations on the nature of syntax and its place within the architecture of human language. Over four decades he has sought to understand the cognitive foundations of linguistic theory and the place of syntactic theory in explaining how language works. This has led him to specific proposals regarding the proper scope of syntactic theory and to a re-examination of the empirical basis of syntactic analyses, which reflect judgements reflecting not only linguistic competence but the complexity of the computations involved in acquiring and using language. After a brief a retrospective the author opens the book with the Simpler Syntax Hypothesis, an article written with Ray Jackendoff, that proposes significant restrictions on the scope of the syntactic component of the grammar. The work is then divided into parts concerned broadly with representations, structures, and computation. The chapters are provided with contextual headnotes and footnote references to subsequent work, but are otherwise printed essentially as they first appeared. Peter Culicover's lively and original perspectives on syntax and grammar will appeal to all theoretical linguists and their advanced students.

This beautifully illustrated guide delves deep into the meaning and significance of different tattoo symbols, exploring the rich cultural history around the world of this widespread form of body art. Tattoos are everywhere: one in three of us has at least one. Body art is one of the most popular ways of expressing our identity and beliefs. But whether we're aware of it or not when we choose a design to be permanently inked on our skin, a complex language of meanings lies behind the visuals we choose. A lotus flower, koi carp swimming upstream or a dragon rising towards the sun: in the language of tattoos these are all symbols of strength and overcoming adversity. This book uncovers the meanings behind tattoo symbols, delving into the history of the most popular motifs that recur in many different tattoo styles, including tribal, traditional, Japanese and realistic. Over 130 symbols are grouped according to their meanings, whether it's good luck, freedom, wisdom, power, spirituality or love. Each symbol is illustrated with stunning, specially drawn visuals by acclaimed artist and tattooist Oliver Munden, and accompanied by an explanation by tattoo expert Nick Schonberger which delves into its history, significance and application in tattooing. Both a visual delight and a fascinating insight into the rich cultural heritage of tattooing, this is the perfect book for anyone wanting to learn more about tattoo symbolism, in need of inspiration for their next tattoo, or who just loves tattoo art.

Lexical errors are a determinant in gaining insight into vocabulary acquisition, vocabulary use and writing quality assessment. Lexical errors are very frequent in the written production of young EFL learners, but they decrease as learners gain proficiency. Misspellings are the most common category, but formal errors give way to semantic-based lexical errors as proficiency increases, likewise, the direct influence of the L1 also reduces in favour of more elaborated transfer mechanisms and L2 influence. The different categories of lexical errors indicate the stage of learning. This book uses a study of young EFL learners to suggest that lexical accuracy is a crucial component of writing assessment, and that lexical errors are useful in predicting writing quality.

This book presents, for the first time, an overarching, trans-Scandinavian, comprehensive and comparable account of linguistic developments and practices in late modern urban contact zones. The book aims to capture the multilingual realities of all young people in urban contexts, whether they are of migrant descent or not. Taking a multi-layered approach to linguistic practices, chapters in the book include structural and phonological analyses of new linguistic practices, examine how these practices and their practitioners are perceived, and discuss the sociolinguistic potentials of speakers when constructing, challenging and negotiating identities. The book also contains three short overview articles describing studies of multilingual practices in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The editors have aimed to make Scandinavian research on urban multilingualism accessible to scholars and students who don't speak Scandinavian languages, and also to make a valuable contribution to the global study of multilingualism.

The book contains a selection of papers reflecting cutting-edge developments in the field of learning and teaching second and foreign languages. The contributions are devoted to such issues as classroom-oriented research, sociocultural aspects of language acquisition, individual differences in language learning, teacher development, new strands in second language acquisition research as well as methodological considerations. Because of its scope, the diversity of topics covered and the adoption of various theoretical perspectives, the volume is of interest not only to theorists and researchers but also to methodologists and practitioners, and can be used in courses for graduate students.

In this book we take a fresh look at imitation. With the knowledge of some 20 years of research after Chomsky's initial critique of the behavioristic approach to language learning, it is time to explore imitation once again. How imitation is viewed in this book has changed greatly since the 1950s and can only be under stood by reading the various contributions. This reading reveals many faces, many forms, many causes, and many functions of imitation-cognitive, social, information processing, learning, and biological. Some views are far removed from the notion that an imitation must occur immediately or that it must be a per fect copy of an adult sentence. But the essence of the concept of imitation is retained: Some of the child's language behavior originates as an imitation of a prior model. The range of phenomena covered is broad and stimulating. Imitation's role is discussed from infancy on through all stages of language learning. Individual differences among children are examined in how much they use imitation, and in what forms and to what purposes they use it. The forms and functions of parent imitation of their child are considered. Second-language learning is studied alongside first-language learning. The juxtaposition of so many views and facets of imitation in this book will help us to study the commonalities as well as differences of various forms and functions of imitative language and will help us to discern the further dimensions along which we must begin to differentiate imitation."

This comprehensive guide to research and debate centres around language learning in childhood, the age factor and the different contexts where language learning happens, including home and school contexts. The scope is wide, capturing examples of studies with different age groups, different methodological approaches and different languages.

This book represents the most comprehensive account to date of foreign language (FL) writing. Its basic aim is to reflect critically on where the field is now and where it needs need to go next in the exploration of FL writing at the levels of theory, research, and pedagogy, hence the two parts of the book: 'Looking back' and 'Looking ahead'. The chapters in Part I offer accounts of both the inquiry process followed and the main insights gained in various long-term research programs. The chapters in Part 2 contribute a retrospective analysis of the available empirical research and of professional experiences in an attempt to move forward. The book invites the reader to step back and rethink seemingly well established knowledge about L2 writing in light of what is known about writing in FL contexts.

Modern languages are offered to young learners at an increasingly early age in many countries; yet few publications have focused on what is available to children in different contexts. This volume fills this gap by documenting the state-of-the-art in researching young language learners using a variety of research methods. It demonstrates how young children progress and benefit from an early exposure to modern languages in different educational contexts, and how affective, cognitive, social, linguistic and classroom-related factors interact in the processes. A special strength is the range of languages: although English is the most widely learnt language, chapters focus on various target languages: Croatian, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish and Ukrainian and the contexts include China, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Norway, Poland, the Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.

Research on Processing Instruction has so far investigated the primary effects of Processing Instruction. In this book the results of a series of experimental studies investigating possible secondary and cumulative effects of Processing Instruction on the acquisition of French, Italian and English as a second language will be presented. The results of the three experiments have demonstrated that Processing Instruction not only provides learners the direct or primary benefit of learning to process and produce the morphological form on which they received instruction, but also a secondary benefit in that they transferred that training to processing and producing another morphological form on which they had received no instruction.

Research on Processing Instruction has so far investigated the primary effects of Processing Instruction. In this book the results of a series of experimental studies investigating possible secondary and cumulative effects of Processing Instruction on the acquisition of French, Italian and English as a second language will be presented. The results of the three experiments have demonstrated that Processing Instruction not only provides learners the direct or primary benefit of learning to process and produce the morphological form on which they received instruction, but also a secondary benefit in that they transferred that training to processing and producing another morphological form on which they had received no instruction.

The book focuses on investigating pragmatic learning, teaching and testing in foreign language contexts. The volume brings together research that investigates these three areas in different formal language learning settings. The number and variety of languages involved both as the first language (e.g. English, Finnish, Iranian, Spanish, Japanese) as well as the target foreign language (e.g. English, French, German, Indonesian, Korean, Spanish) makes the volume specially attractive for language educators in different sociocultural foreign language contexts. Additionally, the different approaches adopted by the researchers participating in this volume, such as information processing, sociocultural, language socialization, computer-mediated or conversation analysis should be of interest to graduate students and researchers working in the area of second language acquisition.

George Orwell coined the term 'Newspeak' for his novel 1984, the purpose of which was designed to shrink vocabularies and eliminate subtlety and nuance. For this dictionary, first published to herald the year 1984, Jonathon Green compiled nearly 8, 000 entries - selected from the slangs and specific vocabularies of trades, professions and interests - covering such areas as the world of entertainment, the media, the military economics, and finance. This dictionary provides an accurate and useful linguistic guide for students of lexicography and an interesting compendium for the general inquisitive reader.