Empirically validated techniques to accelerate learners' uptake of 'chunks' demonstrate that pathways for insightful chunk-learning become available if one is willing to question the assumption that lexis is arbitrary. Care is taken to ensure that the pedagogical proposals are in accordance with insights from vocabulary research generally.

Bilingual Selection of Syntactic Knowledge motivates a more formal approach in theoretical linguistics by investigating the parameters of syntactic variation and simultaneous acquisition of multiple languages. Taking the behavior of the Null Subject Parameter (NSP) across languages as an illustration, the book raises important questions concerning the adequacy of standard parameter-setting models in the face of compelling evidence from both mono- and bilingual child speech data. Teresa Satterfield argues convincingly that so-called universal' premises guiding well-known parametric approaches greatly complicate attempts to construct an economical bilingual analysis. Further, she demonstrates the compatibility of more recent formulations in linguistic theory (i.e. the Minimalist Program) and studies on language learnability (Clark, 1992, 1993; Kapur, 1994) which present the view that while initially convincing, standard parameter models are potentially costly and less than effective in terms of monolinguals as well. Using Clark's application of the Genetic Algorithm as a point of departure, Bilingual Selection of Syntactic Knowledge describes a number of computational simulations. These simulations not only demonstrate the robustness of the GA-as-language-learner, they offer a more detailed account of the parameter-setting task confronting the bilingual child while also making more precise predictions regarding the process of syntactic knowledge.

This book looks at changes in the first language of people who know a second language, thus seeing L2 users as people in their own right differing from the monolingual in both first and second languages. It presents theories and research that investigate the first language of second language users from a variety of perspectives including vocabulary, pragmatics, cognition, and syntax and using a variety of linguistic and psychological models.

Portraits of the L2 User treats second language users in their own right rather than as failed native speakers. It describes a range of psychological and linguistic approaches to diverse topics about L2 users. It thus provides an innovative overview of current second language acquisition theories, results and methods, seen from a common perspective.

Studies of language acqUiSItion have largely ignored processing prin ciples and mechanisms. Not surprisingly, questions concerning the analysis of an informative linguistic input - the potential evidence for grammatical parameter setting - have also been ignored. Especially in linguistic approaches to language acquisition, the role of language processing has not been prominent. With few exceptions (e. g. Goodluck and Tavakolian, 1982; Pinker, 1984) discussions of language perform ance tend to arise only when experimental debris, the artifact of some experiment, needs to be cleared away. Consequently, language pro cessing has been viewed as a collection of rather uninteresting perform ance factors obscuring the true object of interest, namely, grammar acquisition. On those occasions when parsing "strategies" have been incorporated into accounts of language development, they have often been discussed as vague preferences, not open to rigorous analysis. In principle, however, theories of language comprehension can and should be subjected to the same criteria of explicitness and explanatoriness as other theories, e. g., theories of grammar. Thus their peripheral role in accounts of language development may reflect accidental factors, rather than any inherent fuzziness or irrelevance to the language acquisition problem. It seems probable that an explicit model of the way(s) processing routines are applied in acquisition would help solve some central problems of grammar acquisition, since these routines regulate the application of grammatical knowledge to novel inputs."

The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition brings together thirty-six leading international figures in the field to produce a state-of-the-art overview of second language acquisition. The Handbook covers a wide range of topics related to second language acquisition: language in context, linguistic, psycholinguistic, and neurolinguistic theories and perspectives, skill learning, individual differences, L2 learning settings, and language assessment. All chapters introduce the reader to the topic, outline the core issues, then explore the pedagogical application of research in the area and possible future development. The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition is an essential resource for all those studying and researching second language acquisition.

This book presents and discusses theoretical and practical perspectives on English pronunciation theory, research and practice in order to establish evidence-based pronunciation teaching models, teaching and research priorities, and recommendations for best practices in teaching English pronunciation. The chapters provide a balanced view of theory and practice based on the authors' empirical findings and their extensive professional experiences in English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL) and lingua franca contexts. The book identifies pronunciation teaching priorities that take into account individual learner variables, disseminates knowledge about theoretical frameworks, explores teachers' and learners' beliefs and practices regarding pronunciation instruction, and shares empirical findings regarding teacher education and teaching interventions in diverse contexts with English learners of different ages and language backgrounds. Overall, the chapters highlight the need to focus on intelligibility models that consider individual learner differences, and teacher and contextual variables.

The model presented in this volume draws together various strands of research - second language acquisition theory, bilingualism research, dynamic systems theory - to develop a novel approach to this challenging subject. Its main focus lies on the psycholinguistic dynamics of multilingualism, the processes of change in time affecting two or more language systems.

Third language acquisition is a common phenomenon, which presents some specific characteristics as compared to second language acquisition. This volume adopts a psycholinguistic approach in the study of cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition and focuses on the role of previously acquired languages and the conditions that determine their influence.

* Features/Benefits o Provides a hands-on methodological guide and overview for understanding the data/results of longitudinal research in SLA/applied linguistics and for conducting one's own such studies, illustrating these methods with exemplary studies of language learning outcomes over a long term. o Original reportings of unique large-scale research studies offer the best one-stop shop for reading and understanding current quantitative longitudinal studies in language learning. o Appendices with data and pedagogical features make it useful for course use by instructors and students. * Demand/Audience o Meets the need for methodological clarity in collecting, managing/organizing, and analyzing quantitative longitudinal data on language learning by offering students and researchers of applied linguistics, testing, and education a practical guide to conducting this research along with unique exemplar studies. * Competition o The only book to focus on quantitative longitudinal data analysis specifically for an SLA/applied linguistics readership. One older book focuses on qualitative and other methods with a narrower focus, and no other book comes very close to doing what this book does.

Published research and conference presentations on the Chinese language in the last decade have tended to focus on adult language processing. This book provides a comprehensive resource for the critical discussion of major issues in learning to read Chinese from a child acquisition perspective. The combined contributions from researchers in Asian studies, linguistics, psycholinguistics, psychology, cognitive psychology, reading, and education inform international comparative studies of literacy by making apparent the features of the Chinese culture, language, writing system, and pedagogy that may facilitate or impede the acquisition of literacy.

This volume presents a comprehensive look at the phenomenon of formulaic language (multi-word units believed to be mentally stored and retrieved as single units) and its role;in fluent speech production. Focusing on second language speech, the book provides an overview of research into the role of formulaic language in fluency, details a study which provides evidence of that role, and outlines teaching plans and strategies to foster it. This important area has not been examined in such depth and scope before, and this work has many implications for future research and language pedagogy. It will appeal to researchers in discourse analysis and second language acquisition.

This book emerges as a response to the increasing use of English as a lingua franca in the multilingual European context. It provides an up-to-date overview of the sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic and educational aspects of research on third language acquisition by focusing on English as a third language.

This new addition to Routledge 's Major Works series, Critical Concepts in Linguistics, brings together the very best and most influential scholarly research in over half a century of language-acquisition research. The collection represents and reflects the interdisciplinary nature of the field, by highlighting models and methodologies from and implications for adjacent fields such as psycholinguistics, developmental psychology, computer science, and comparative cognition. In addition, the collection steers users to the most important, as well as controversial, issues that lie at the frontier of language acquisition research.

With a new introduction by the editor, comprehensive index, and a chronological table of the gathered materials, this four-volume collection provides both student and scholar alike with all the key writings on language acquisition in one convenient and authoritative reference resource

This book introduces a new linguistic reconstruction of the phonology, morphology, and lexicon of Old Chinese, the first Sino-Tibetan language to be reduced to writing. Old Chinese is the language of the earliest Chinese classical texts (1st millennium BCE) and the ancestor of later varieties of Chinese, including all modern Chinese dialects. William Baxter and Laurent Sagart's new reconstruction of Old Chinese moves beyond earlier reconstructions by taking into account important new evidence that has recently become available: better documentation of Chinese dialects that preserve archaic features, such as the Min and Waxiang dialects; better documentation of languages with very early loanwords from Chinese, such as the Hmong-Mien, Tai-Kadai and Vietnamese languages; and a flood of Chinese manuscripts from the first millennium BCE, excavated or discovered in the last several decades. Baxter and Sagart also incorporate recent advances in our understanding of the derivational processes that connect different words that have the same root. They expand our knowledge of Chinese etymology and identify, for the first time, phonological markers of pre-Han dialects, such as the development of *r to -j in a group of east coast dialects, but to -n elsewhere. The most up-to-date reconstruction available, Old Chinese: A New Reconstruction brings the methodology of Old Chinese reconstruction closer to that of comparative reconstructions that have been used successfully in other language families. It is critical reading for anyone seeking an advanced understanding of Old Chinese.

claim is that such morphological processes can be learnt without symbolization and innate knowledge. See Rumelhart and McClelland (1986) for the original model of past tense acquisition, Plunkett and Marchman (1993), Nakisa, Plunkett and Hahn (1996) and Elman et al. (1996) for developments and extensions to other morphological processes, and Marcus et al. (1992) and Pinker and Prince (1988) for criticism. One line of investigation supporting the view of language as a genetic endowment is closely linked to traditional research on language acquisition and argues as follows: If language is innate there must be phenomena that should be accessible from birth in one form or the other. Thus it is clear that the language of children, especially young children and preferably babies should be investigated. As babies unfortunately don't talk, the abilities that are available from birth must be established in ways different from the usual linguistic analysis. Psycholinguistic research of the last few years has shown that at the age of 4 and 8 months and even during their first week of life children already have important language skills. From the fourth day, infants distinguish their mother tongue from other languages. From the first months children prefer the sound of speech to 'other noise'. At the age of 4 months, infants prefer pauses at syntactic boundaries to random pauses.

1) Covering all the layers of the sentence right periphery in Chinese, eight sentence-final particles and the interaction among them are comprehensively studied. 2) Through the lens of feature theory, the theoretical views from a variety of dimensions are discussed. 3) It allows us to see how L2 learners whose first language has no similar equivalents acquire these peripheral particles. 4) With its commonly used nature in spoken Chinese, both the linguistic analysis and the findings from the empirical studies of the particles in this book are significant for learning and teaching of Chinese.

Language is one of humanity's greatest achievements, yet one which virtually all children achieve remarkably quickly. How much more remarkable, therefore, when children learn not one but two languages! There are many single case studies describing children from families where determined parents adopt strategies to maximise their children's chances of becoming bilingual. Many more children, whose parents speak a mixture of languages, also become bilingual without this extra help. How this occurs and why some children have more problems than others in a bilingual environment are some of the issues addressed by this book, which is a longitudinal study of how children learn to use more than one language. The family is assumed to be the key factor in these processes, and bilingual language development is placed firmly within an interactive context, as it is from this context that the development of childhood bilingualism can best be understood. Thus the aims of this book are to examine how young children become bilingual, and to show what factors predict early childhood bilingualism.

One of the most active areas in the field of second language acquisition, language learning motivation is a burgeoning area of research. Yet the plethora of new ideas and research directions can be confusing for newcomers to the discipline to navigate. Offering concise, bite-size overviews of key contemporary research concepts and directions, this book provides an invaluable guide to the contemporary state of the field. Making the discussion of key topics accessible to a wider audience, each chapter is written by a leading expert and reflects on cutting-edge research issues. From well-established concepts, such as engagement and learning goals, to emerging ideas, including contagion and plurilingualism, this book provides easy to understand overviews and analysis of key contemporary themes. Helping readers understand a field which can appear highly technical and overwhelming, Researching Language Learning Motivation provides valuable insights, perspectives and practical applications.

Combines research with pedagogy to provide an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the topic for students approaching it for the first time. With a focus on the cognitive side of language contact, drawing on the closely related subjects of bilingualism and multilingualism, this textbook will also appeal to students beyond those taking Language Contact modules, on modules such as Bilingualism and SLA. The closest competitors all published at least 11 years ago, so this will be far and away the most up-to-date textbook on the market, combining cutting-edge insights from research with a core grounding in the subject.

What makes good language learners tick? What do they do that poor learners don't do? Could we help the poor learner by teaching them some of the good learners' tricks? The nature of second language learning is extremely complex and a great deal of research is needed to improve our understanding of it. In spite of much theorizing, very little has been done to study its processes directly and empirically. This study constitutes a beginning. It sets out to discover the strategies of good language learners. The book will be useful not only to researchers, but also to teachers and to those who make language teaching policy.

This book takes a hard look at some of the assumptions that are customarily made concerning the role of age in second language acquisition. The evidence and arguments the contributors present run counter to the notion that an early start in second language learning is of itself either absolutely sufficient or necessary for the attainment of native-like mastery of a second language. Another theme of the book is a doubt that there is a particular stage of maturity beyond which language learning is no longer fully possible. In short, the book presents a challenge to those who take it as given that second language learning is inevitably different in its essential nature from language acquisition in the childhood years and that second language knowledge acquired beyond the critical period is in all circumstances and in all respects doomed to fossilize at a non-native-like level.

This project is aimed the 16+ age range inside or outside any kind of educational institution. It is for courses concerned with general education - either in general studies programmes or as aspects of specialist teaching. Narrative has been kept to a minimum. Instead, the books are more a collection of different items of teaching and learning materials: for example, the collection of key concepts, and the list of key questions connected withe the study. The books are compact in content and flexible in use.

This book was first published in 1974.