Child psychology as a scientific enterprise is about 100 years old, but while numerous textbooks and practical guides are available, the more meditative questions about the nature of a child's mind are rarely asked. This book explores some of the enduring questions in developmental psychology: How do children form an attachment to their caregivers? How do they learn words? In their imagination, are they confused - or clear-sighted - about the difference between fantasy and reality? How do they decide who to trust? In each case, Paul Harris shows why these questions are important, proposes likely answers, and explains the uncertainties that persist. He outlines important landmarks, both well-known and neglected, and explores broader questions about theories of mind, morality, and cross-cultural differences.

First Language versus Foreign Language deals with the "battle" that takes place in writers' heads when writing in a foreign language. Most academics today need to write in another language than in their first language (L1) in order to publish in internationally recognized journals. However, as writing research has shown, writing in a foreign language (FL) presents difficulties. The study compares L1 and FL writing, analysing written texts and the writing processes in terms of fluency, errors and revision. It takes a closer look at the "battle" between the L1 and the FL and offers useful insight. The findings allow a glimpse at the processes that take place in the brain, calling for new didactic approaches to FL writing.

This book examines how autonomy in language learning is fostered and constrained in social settings through interaction with others and various contextual features. With theoretical grounding, the authors discuss the implications for practice in classrooms, distance education, self-access centres, as well as virtual and social learning spaces.

This volume offers new insights into the assessment of the language of Young Learners (YLs). YLs are defined here as being from 5 to 17 years, and are treated as three distinct subgroups: younger children (5/6 to 8/9 years), older children (8/9 to 12/13 years) and teenagers (12/13 to 17 years).The first half addresses fundamental issues, beginning with the characteristics of YLs and how these are manifested in first language development. The authors consider the potential ability of each age group to perform in a second or foreign language, proposing a rough age-related correspondence with CEFR levels. Finally, principles of assessment, specifically formative assessment and testing, are presented in the light of linguistic, cognitive and social development.The second half focusses on testing a range of 'skills'. Theoretical models of performance are introduced, followed by a practical analysis of approaches to the testing of each skill for the three age groups, illustrated with examples. The authors conclude by summing up developmental characteristics of each age group, and their implications for language testing.The book is intended for a wide readership within the field of teaching and assessing the language of young learners. Researchers are offered scope for further investigation of what emerges from the discussion, while practitioners will hopefully find support in their day-to-day work with YLs.

Die Beitrage dieses Buches untersuchen verschiedene Fragestellungen zu religioesen Bezugen in nicht-religioeser Sprache, etwa in Redewendungen, Ortsnamen, OEkonomie-Diskursen oder politischer Rhetorik, und zu nicht-(nur-)religioesen Konstruktionen in religioeser Sprache, etwa in Gebeten und anderen sakralen Texten, Ritualen oder religioesen Traktaten. Dabei werden unterschiedliche linguistische Methoden angewandt, von der Diskursanalyse bis zur Onomastik, von der Soziolinguistik bis zur Metaphernanalyse. In vielen Aufsatzen wird interdisziplinar gearbeitet, etwa mit Input aus Bereichen wie der Literaturwissenschaft oder der Geschichtsforschung. Die untersuchten Daten stammen aus verschiedenen Sprachen, darunter Aramaisch, Bosnisch, Deutsch, Englisch, Franzoesisch, Hebraisch, Italienisch, Katalanisch, Kroatisch, Latein, Portugiesisch, Sefardisch und Spanisch. The contributions to this book explore various questions concerning religious aspects and references in non-religious language, whether in idioms, place names, economic discourses or political rhetoric, and non-religious (among other) aspects and references in religious language, whether in prayers, sacred texts, rituals and religious treatises. The research presented applies a variety of methods, ranging from discourse analysis to onomastics, from sociolinguistics to metaphor analysis. The data come from languages such as Aramaic, Bosnian, German, English, French, Hebrew, Italian, Catalan, Croatian, Latin, Portuguese, Ladino and Spanish.

This empirical study investigates the acquisition and development of nominal morphology in L1-English-speaking children acquiring German as a second language in an immersion school context. The focus is on accuracy development in the emerging German article system. Embracing theoretical and applied aspects of second language acquisition research, the study brings together educational, cognitive and psycholinguistic dimensions of second language learning and teaching. Results have implications for curriculum design and quality development in language immersion and content and language integrated learning.

Bilingualism provides a concise and lively introduction to bilingualism as a social and linguistic phenomenon and explains its impact on individuals and on society. Addressing questions such as what it means to be bilingual, how one becomes bilingual, and how exposure to more than one language affects a child's cognitive development, this book features: an introduction to the linguistic, sociolinguistic, and cognitive outcomes of bilingualism, including bilingual language acquisition, the grammar of language-mixing, the link between language choice and identity, and the value of maintaining and promoting bilingualism; up-to-date overviews of the prominent concerns and facts about bilingualism; activities and discussion questions which invite readers to consider their own perspectives on bilingualism and how it manifests in their own lives and communities; links to relevant videos and suggested further reading, including topical novels, short stories, and essays. Aimed at students with no background in linguistics, this book is essential reading for anyone studying bilingualism for the first time.

Translation scholars have for a long time been arguing in favor of a shift in paradigms to redefine the relationship between translation and the spreading of knowledge. Although a substantial share of worldwide knowledge is conveyed thanks to translation, the effects of this state of affairs upon the ways in which knowledge is actually built are all too rarely taken into account. This is particularly the case in the humanities. The papers presented in this volume fall into three thematic categories - cultural transfer, terminology and literature. The authors are all scholars in the humanities, and some of them are also translators. They analyze the effects of translation in diverse domains such as the intercultural exchanges among Far Eastern countries, and between Asia and the West; the constitution of terminologies; clinical practices in psychoanalysis; and the impact on the definition of literary genres. Each contribution shows how the act of translation is an integral part of the humanities, producing effects which may often be unforeseen and surprising but are always occasions for innovation. This volume contains contributions in English and French.

Is children's language acquisition based on innate linguistic structures or built from cognitive and communicative skills? This book summarises the major theoretical debates in all of the core domains of child language acquisition research (phonology, word-learning, inflectional morphology, syntax and binding) and includes a complete introduction to the two major contrasting theoretical approaches: generativist and constructivist. For each debate, the predictions of the competing accounts are closely and even-handedly evaluated against the empirical data. The result is an evidence-based review of the central issues in language acquisition research that will constitute a valuable resource for students, teachers, course-builders and researchers alike.

Is children's language acquisition based on innate linguistic structures or built from cognitive and communicative skills? This book summarises the major theoretical debates in all of the core domains of child language acquisition research (phonology, word-learning, inflectional morphology, syntax and binding) and includes a complete introduction to the two major contrasting theoretical approaches: generativist and constructivist. For each debate, the predictions of the competing accounts are closely and even-handedly evaluated against the empirical data. The result is an evidence-based review of the central issues in language acquisition research that will constitute a valuable resource for students, teachers, course-builders and researchers alike.

This is a book about the meanings of words and how they can combine to form larger meaningful units, as well as how they can fail to combine when the amalgamation of a predicate and argument would produce what the philosopher Gilbert Ryle called a 'category mistake'. It argues for a theory in which words get assigned both an intension and a type. The book develops a rich system of types and investigates its philosophical and formal implications, for example the abandonment of the classic Church analysis of types that has been used by linguists since Montague. The author integrates fascinating and puzzling observations about lexical meaning into a compositional semantic framework. Adjustments in types are a feature of the compositional process and account for various phenomena including coercion and copredication. This book will be of interest to semanticists, philosophers, logicians and computer scientists alike.

Dictionaries tell stories of many kinds. The history of dictionaries, of how they were produced, published and used, has much to tell us about the language and the culture of the past. This monumental work of scholarship draws on published and archival material to survey a wide range of dictionaries of western European languages (including English, German, Latin and Greek) published between the early sixteenth and mid -seventeenth centuries. John Considine establishes a powerful model for the social and intellectual history of lexicography by examining dictionaries both as imaginative texts and as scholarly instruments. He tells the stories of national and individual heritage and identity that were created through the making of dictionaries in the early modern period. Far from dry, factual collections of words, dictionaries are creative works, shaping as well as recording early modern culture and intellectual history.

The book investigates the European debate on culture and identity by pointing to those uses of language that shape the image and perception of migrants in host societies. The term 'foreigner' is highly sensitive to changes experienced by communities. Its meanings transcend its traditional semantic scope and lead to the discussion of notions such as nation, nationality, immigration, integration, citizenship, nationalism and multiculturalism. The words 'foreigner', 'Auslander', 'extranjero' and the network of related terms are discussed from a multidisciplinary approach with the aim of identifying the core features of the concept of 'foreignness' in German, Spanish and English. Dieses Buch untersucht die europaische Diskussion uber Kultur und Identitat. Im Zentrum steht dabei derjenige Sprachgebrauch, der das Bild und die Wahrnehmung hinsichtlich der Migranten in den Gastgeberlandern pragt. Bei gesellschaftlichen Veranderungen wandelt sich auch der Gehalt des Begriffs "Auslander". Seine Bedeutung geht uber den traditionellen semantischen Rahmen hinaus und fuhrt zur Diskussion uber Konzepte wie Nation, Nationalitat, Migration, Integration, Burgerschaft, Nationalismus und Multikulturalitat. Die Woerter 'foreigner', 'Auslander', 'extranjero' und deren semantisches Umfeld werden fachubergreifend behandelt, um die Grundmerkmale des Begriffs 'Fremdartigkeit' auf Deutsch, Englisch und Spanisch zu identifizieren.

In recent years language learning has been increasingly viewed by some SLA researchers as an essentially social-psychological process in which the role of a wider sociocultural context should not be marginalized. This volume offers a valuable contribution to this growing body of research by providing theoretical considerations and empirical research data on themes such as the development of intercultural communicative competence, the role of English as a lingua franca in intercultural communication, and the place of cultural factors in SLA theorizing, research, second/foreign language teaching and teacher training. The volume also contains contributions which share the linguistic interest in the culture-related concepts and constructs such as time, modesty, politeness, and respect, discussing the culture-dependent differences in conceptualization and their reflection in particular language forms and linguistic devices.

This book focuses on the early acquisition of signed languages and the later development of reading by children who use signed languages. It represents the first collection of research papers focused solely on the acquisition of various signed languages by very young children--all of whom are acquiring signed languages natively, from deaf parents. It is also the first collection to investigate the possible relationships between the acquisition of signed language and reading development in school-aged children. The underlying questions addressed by the chapters are how visual-gestural languages develop and whether and how visual languages can serve the foundation for learning a second visual representation of language, namely, reading. Language Acquisition by Eye is divided into two parts, anchored in the toddler phase and the school-pupil phase. The central focus of Part I is on the earliest stages of signed language acquisition. The chapters in this part address important questions as to what "babytalk" looks like in signed language and the effect it has on babies' attention, what early babbling looks like in signed language, what babies' earliest signs look like, how parents talk to their babies in signed language to ensure that their babies "see" what's being said, and what the earliest sentences in signed languages tell us about the acquisition of grammar. With contrasting research paradigms, these chapters all show the degree to which parents and babies are highly sensitive to one another's communicative interactions in subtle and complex ways. Such observations cannot be made for spoken language acquisition because speech does not require that the parent and child look at each other during communication whereas signed language does. Part II focuses on the relationship between signed language acquisition and reading development in children who are deaf. All of these chapters report original research that investigates and uncovers a positive relationship between the acquisition and knowledge of signed language and the development of reading skills and as a result, represents a historical first in reading research. This section discusses how current theory applies to the case of deaf children's reading and presents new data that illuminates reading theory. Using a variety of research paradigms, each chapter finds a positive rather than a negative correlation between signed language knowledge and usage, and the development of reading skill. These chapters are sure to provide the foundation for new directions in reading research.

Aiming at exemplifying the methodology of learner corpus profiling, this book describes salient features of Romanian Learner English. As a starting point, the volume offers a comprehensive presentation of the Romanian-English contrastive studies. Another innovative aspect of the book refers to the use of the first Romanian Corpus of Learner English, whose compilation is the object of a methodological discussion. In one of the main chapters, the book introduces the methodology of learner corpus profiling and compares it with existing approaches. The profiling approach is emphasised by corpus-based quantitative and qualitative investigations of Romanian Learner English. Part of the investigation is dedicated to the lexico-grammatical profiles of articles, prepositions and genitives. The frequency-based collocation analyses are integrated with error analyses and extended into error pattern samples. Furthermore, contrasting typical Romanian Learner English constructions with examples from the German and the Italian learner corpora opens the path to new contrastive interlanguage analyses.

Modern linguistic theory has been based on the promise of explaining how language acquisition can occur so rapidly with such subtlety, and with both surprising uniformity and diversity across languages. This handbook provides a summary and assessment of how far that promise has been fulfilled, exploring core concepts in acquisition theory, including notions of the initial state, parameters, triggering theory, the role of competition and frequency, and many others, across a variety of syntactic topics that have formed the central domains of investigation and debate. These topics are treated from the unique perspective of central actors in each domain who have helped shape the research agenda. The authors have presented a summary of the data, the theories under discussion, and their own best assessments of where each domain stands. Providing as well the agenda for future work in the field showing both particular needs and general directions that should be pursued in the coming decades.

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.

This book develops the concept of 'writtenness' (historically-formed stylistic and aesthetic values within writing) to highlight the demands, taken-for-granted ideals, institutional frictions, and changing circumstances of academic writing in English in the contemporary international university. Recognising the political importance of the role that English plays in an increasingly internationalized higher education network, Joan Turner pits writtenness against the contingency and instability of international English in real-life institutional contexts. In doing so, she brings out the theoretical significance of this, as writing becomes a motor of linguistic change and can no longer be seen simply as the repository of academic standards. Of particular interest to academics and postgraduates in TESOL, applied linguistics, rhetoric and composition, English as a Lingua Franca studies, and the sociolinguistics of writing, as well as to EAP practitioners, this book is among the first to theoretically consider the implications for the cultural homogeneity of the written word. It also offers a unique perspective on the role of writtenness within the broader historical context of leaving the era of print culture. As such, this book is highly recommended for students, researchers, and policy makers alike.

The fifth volume in the series Language Competence and Language Awareness in Europe unites a collection of peer-reviewed papers delivered at the Third Conference on Language Contact in Times of Globalization (LCTG3) at the University of Greifswald in 2011. The papers are arranged in five thematic sections: Part I studies lexical and grammatical borrowing and pseudo-loans. Part II looks at code-switching and language intertwining in different contexts, while Part III is concerned with the power, political backup and use of different languages in multilingual settings. This is followed by Part IV which comprises three articles on the Linguistic Landscapes of different urban areas. Finally, Part V focuses on language choices in literature and institutional settings.

The volume brings together a selection of invited articles and papers presented at the 4th International CILC Conference held in Jaen, Spain, in March 2012. The chapters describe English using a range of corpora and other resources. There are two parts, one dealing with diachronic research and the other with synchronic research. Both parts investigate several aspects of the English language from various perspectives and illustrate the use of corpora in current research. The structure of the volume allows for the same linguistic aspect to be discussed both from the diachronic and the synchronic point of view. The chapters are also useful examples of corpus use as well as of use of other resources as corpus, specifically dictionaries. They investigate a broad array of issues, mainly using corpora of English as a native language, with a focus on corpus tools and corpus description.

What is involved in acquiring a new dialect - for example, when Canadian English speakers move to Australia or African American English-speaking children go to school? How is such learning different from second language acquisition (SLA), and why is it in some ways more difficult? These are some of the questions Jeff Siegel examines in this book, which focuses specifically on second dialect acquisition (SDA). Siegel surveys a wide range of studies that throw light on SDA. These concern dialects of English as well as those of other languages, including Dutch, German, Greek, Norwegian, Portuguese and Spanish. He also describes the individual and linguistic factors that affect SDA, such as age, social identity and language complexity. The book discusses problems faced by students who have to acquire the standard dialect without any special teaching, and presents some educational approaches that have been successful in promoting SDA in the classroom.

How can an infinite number of sentences be generated from one human mind? How did language evolve in apes? In this book Donald Loritz addresses these and other fundamental and vexing questions about language, cognition, and the human brain. He starts by tracing how evolution and natural adaptation selected certain features of the brain to perform communication functions, then shows how those features developed into designs for human language. The result -- what Loritz calls an adaptive grammar -- gives a unified explanation of language in the brain and contradicts directly (and controversially) the theory of innateness proposed by, among others, Chomsky and Pinker.

Egocentric spatial language uses coordinates in relation to our body to talk about small-scale space ('put the knife on the right of the plate and the fork on the left'), while geocentric spatial language uses geographic coordinates ('put the knife to the east, and the fork to the west'). How do children learn to use geocentric language? And why do geocentric spatial references sound strange in English when they are standard practice in other languages? This book studies child development in Bali, India, Nepal, and Switzerland and explores how children learn to use a geocentric frame both when speaking and performing non-verbal cognitive tasks (such as remembering locations and directions). The authors examine how these skills develop with age, look at the socio-cultural contexts in which the learning takes place, and explore the ecological, cultural, social, and linguistic conditions that favor the use of a geocentric frame of reference.