Recent studies of vocal development in infants have shed new light on old questions of how the speech capacity is founded and how it may have evolved in the human species. Vocalizations in the very first months of life appear to provide previously unrecognized clues to the earliest steps in the process by which language came to exist and the processes by which communicative disorders arise.
Perhaps the most interesting sounds made by infants are the uniquely human 'protophones' (loosely, 'babbling'), the precursors to speech. Kimbrough Oller argues that these are most profitably interpreted in the context of a new "infrastructural" model of speech. The model details the manner in which well-formed speech units are constructed, and it reveals how infant vocalizations mature through the first months of life by increasingly adhering to the rules of well-formed speech.
He lays out many advantages of an infrastructural approach. Infrastructural interpretation illuminates the significance of vocal stages, and highlights clinically significant deviations, such as the previously unnoticed delays in vocal development that occur in deaf infants. An infrastructural approach also specifies potential paths of evolution for vocal communicative systems. Infrastructural properties and principles of potential communicative systems prove to be organized according to a natural logic--some properties and principles naturally presuppose others. Consequently some paths of evolution are likely while others can be ruled out. An infrastructural analysis also provides a stable basis for comparisons across species, comparisons that show how human vocal capabilities outstrip those of their primate relatives even during the first months of human infancy.
"The Emergence of the Speech Capacity" will challenge psychologists, linguists, speech pathologists, and primatologists alike to rethink the ways they categorize and describe communication. Oller's infraphonological model permits provocative reconceptualizations of the ways infant vocalizations progress systematically toward speech, insightful comparisons between speech and the vocal systems of other species, and fruitful speculations about the origins of language.

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.

The English-IsiNdebele/IsiNdebele-English Bilingual Dictionary is part of the Pharos entry-level series of bilingual dictionaries for English and the nine official African languages in South Africa. The dictionary is suitable for English or isiNdebele first or second-language speakers wishing to learn an additional language. It will help users build their vocabulary, improve grammar and use common phrases correctly, whether at school level, in the workplace, as a tourist, or just for anyone wishing to learn isiNdebele.

The Pharos series of bilingual dictionaries supports the Department of Basic Education’s Language-in-Education Policy to develop and maintain all the official languages, to promote multilingualism in South Africa, and to support the teaching and learning of all the official
languages.

IsiNdebele is part of the Nguni subfamily of languages with 2.1% (1.1m) of the population as mothertongue speakers and 1.4m second-language users, 2.5m in total (Stats SA 2011).

This book provides an up-to-date account of blind children's developing communicative abilities with particular emphasis on social cognition and language acquisition from infancy to early school age. It purports to foster dialogue between those interested in the study of typically developing children and those interested in the development of children who are blind and to provide insights and new explanations of why the development of blind children may differ from that of sighted children. The book also aims to identify and examine current theoretical issues which are likely to be at the centre of developments in the fields of child language and developmental psychology.
Language Development and Social Interaction in Blind Children is also a timely book. The study of blind children's development constitutes a unique opportunity to study the effect of vision on development, and more specifically on the development of language and certain aspects of social cognition. Current interest in the development of "theory of mind" and perspective taking in language learning, make the case of blind children crucial to our understanding of certain aspects of psychological functioning. The book explores these issues, challenges some widely-held beliefs about the development of communication in blind children, and provides a cohesive picture of our knowledge to date.

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This ground-breaking, provocative book presents an overview of research at the disciplinary intersection of psychoanalysis and linguistics. Understanding that linguistic activity, to a great extent, takes place in unconscious cognition, Thomas Paul Bonfiglio systematically demonstrates how fundamental psychoanalytic mechanisms-such as displacement, condensation, overdetermination, and repetition-have been absent in the history of linguistic inquiry, and explains how these mechanisms can illuminate the understanding of the grammatical structure, evolution, acquisition, and processing of language. Re-examining popular misunderstandings of psychoanalysis along the way, Bonfiglio further proposes a new theoretical configuration of language and expertly sets the future agenda on this subject with new conceptual paradigms for research and teaching. This will be an invaluable, fascinating resource for advanced students and scholars of theoretical and applied linguistics, the cognitive-behavioral sciences, metaphor studies, humor studies and play theory, anthropology, and beyond.

The purpose of this workbook is to provide students with practice in analyzing second language data. For the student of second language learning, "hands-on" experience with actual data is essential in understanding the processes involved in learning a second language. Working through exemplars of the kinds of interlanguages that learners do and do not create brings about a clearer understanding of the principles underlying these interlanguages, as well as the universal principles of language learning (those that are independent of particular languages and interlanguages).
The goal in this workbook is to present data organized in such a way that by working through pedagogically presented data-sets, students are led to a discovery and understanding of theoretical and/or methodological issues. In addition, they acquire the ability to interpret data and to begin to draw conclusions from them. The authors intend that students should go from the data to a conclusion that includes a 3-part statement:
*what else you should want to know about these data;
*why this, specifically, and not something else; and
*how one can empirically research what you want to find out.
This sequence of questions forces students to constantly keep in mind the important question of falsification: What kind of data would it take to falsify the particular conclusions the students come to?
As with the earlier edition of this workbook (Sorace, Gass, & Selinker), two audiocassettes provide language samples for use in the exercises. These cassettes and the teacher's manual are offered free of charge on adoption of the workbook for classroom use; a three-part set (workbook/manual/tapes) is also available.

"Validation in Language Assessment" contributes to the variety of validation approaches and analytical and interpretive techniques only recently adopted by language assessment researchers. Featuring selected papers from the 17th Language Testing Research Colloquium, the volume presents diverse approaches with an international perspective on validation in language assessment.

Ever since the notion of explanatory adequacy was promoted by Chomsky in his 1965 Aspects, linguists and psycholinguists have been in pursuit of a psychologically valid theory of grammar. To be explanatorily adequate, a theory of grammar can not only describe the general characteristics of a language but can also account for the underlying psychological processes of acquiring and processing that language. To be considered psychologically valid, a grammar must be learnable by ordinary children (the problem of acquisition) and must generate sentences that are parsable by ordinary people (the problem of processing). Ultimately, the fields of language acquisition and processing are concerned with the same goal: to build a theory that accounts for grammar as it is acquired by children; accessed in comprehension and production of speech; and represented within the human mind. Unfortunately, these two fields developed independently and have rarely been well-informed about each other's concerns. Both have experienced past difficulties as a result.
Recently, new models have been developed with full consideration to cross-linguistic diversity. Gone are many of the basic assumptions of conventional models, and in their place a variety of innovative and more flexible assumptions have emerged. However, in their attempt to address cross-linguistic issues, these processing models have yet to fully address the developmental challenge: How can a child without a stable grammar process language and still manage to acquire new grammar?
This book attempts to develop a model of language processing that addresses both cross-linguistic and developmental challenges. It proposes to link the setting of a basic configurational parameter during language acquisition to the different organization of processing strategies in left- and right-branching languages. Based primarily on Mazuka's doctoral dissertation, this volume incorporates various responses to the original proposal as well as the author's responses to the comments.

This book is the first to summarize the voluminous literature on the development of cognitive, codification, language, and expressive/affective (CCCE) skills "from a clinical standpoint." Emphasizing the need to ground services in research and theory, the author constructs three basic clinical models--a conceptual model for understanding, a descriptive model for formal assessment, and a facilitative model for intervention. These models have major implications for the work of all those who deal with CCCE problems in a professional capacity.

British English Phonetic Transcription provides an accessible introduction to phonemic, phonetic and intonational transcription with a focus on British English. Featuring exercises, revision tasks and recordings to help students gain hands-on practice, the book takes a learning-by-doing approach and ensures students gain practice using each new symbol or concept introduced before moving on to the next. Consisting of three parts, the book covers: transcribing individual words, including consonants, vowels, primary stress, secondary stress, syllabic consonants and inflections; transcribing phrases and sentences, including liaison, weak forms, elision and assimilation; transcribing intonation, including the structure of English intonation and recognising pitch patterns. Ideally suited as a standalone workbook or for use alongside American English Phonetic Transcription, British English Phonetic Transcription is key reading for undergraduate students of linguistics as well as anyone teaching or learning English as a foreign language.

This book is the first in-depth examination of the application of theories of space to issues of second language learning. The author introduces the work of key thinkers on the theory of space and place and the relevance of their ideas to second language acquisition (SLA). He also outlines a new conceptual framework and set of terms for researching SLA that centre on the idea of 'language learning environments'. The book considers the spatial contexts in which language learning takes place and investigates how these spatial contexts are transformed into individualised language learning environments, as learners engage with a range of human and nonhuman, and physical and nonphysical, resources in their daily lives. Revisiting linguistics and language learning theory from a spatial perspective, the book demonstrates that the question of where people learn languages is equally as important as that of how they do so. This work is essential reading for any researcher wishing to research the role of the environment as an active player in SLA.

Continuing the tradition of this series, which has become a standard reference work in language acquisition, Volume 4 contains chapters on three additional languages/language groups--Finnish, Greek, and Korean. The chapters are selective, critical reviews rather than exhaustive summaries of the course of development of each language. Authors approach the language in question as a case study in a potential crosslinguistic typology of acquisitional problems, considering those data which contribute to issues of general theoretical concern in developmental psycholinguistics and linguistic theory. Each chapter, therefore, provides the following:
* "Grammatical Sketch of Language." Brief grammatical sketch of the language or language group, presenting those linguistic facts which are relevant to the developmental analysis.
* "Sources of Evidence." Summary of basic sources of evidence, characterizing methods of gathering data, and listing key references.
* "Overall Course of Development." Brief summary of the overall course of development in the language or language group, giving an idea of the general problems posed to the child in acquiring a language of this type, summarizing typical errors, domains of relatively error-free acquisition, and the timing of acquisition--areas of the grammar that show relatively precocious or delayed development in crosslinguistic perspective.
* "Data." Specific developmental aspects of the language examined in depth, depending on each individual language and available acquisition data.
* "Conclusions." An interpretive summary of theoretical points raised above, attending to general principles of language development and linguistic organization suggested by the study of a language of this type, plus comparisons with development of other languages.

Offering a unique focus on the development of human communication, this book integrates and synthesizes a more comprehensive array of research than most investigations of communicative development. As such, it incorporates materials dealing with the development of nonverbal communication, language, and cognition, and examines how they are integrated in the growing child's everyday interaction. This information is distilled into a set of key principles and practices--culled from a variety of fields including developmental and social psychology, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and communication--for parents or adults interested in child development.
While this book does not offer an in-depth view in any one area, it provides a comprehensive overview of the various components of human communicative development and its significance for the child's cognitive and emotional growth. It is quite clear that developmental processes are constrained by multiple influences whose interactions have just begun to be uncovered. Examining the diverse facets of communicative development will enable professionals to garner further insights into the mystery of human communication.

This timely collection explores the role of digital technology in language education and assessment during the COVID-19 pandemic. It recognises the unique pressures which the COVID-19 pandemic placed on assessment in language education, and examines the forced shift in assessment strategies to go online, the existing shortfalls, as well as unique affordances of technology-assisted L2 assessment. By showcasing international examples of successful digital and computer-assisted proficiency and skills testing, the volume addresses theoretical and practical concerns relating to test validity, reliability, ethics, and student experience in a range of testing contexts. Particular attention is given to identifying lessons and implications for future research and practice, and the challenges of implementing unplanned computer-assisted language assessment during a crisis. Insightfully unpacking the 'lessons learned' from COVID and its impact on the acceleration of the shift towards online course and assessment delivery, it offers important guidelines for navigating assessment in different instructional settings in times of crisis. It will appeal to scholars, researchers, educators, and faculty with interests in educational measurement, digital education and technology, and language assessment and testing.

This edited volume offers a series of state-of-the-art conceptual papers and empirical research studies which consider how contextual factors at multiple levels dynamically interact with individuals to influence how they go about the complex business of learning and using a second language.

Gunther Kress argues for a radical reappraisal of the phenomenon of literacy, and hence for a profound shift in educational practice. Through close attention to the plethora of objects which children constantly produce--drawings, cut-outs, writings and collages-- Kress suggests a set of principles which reveal the underlying coherence of children's actions-- actions which allow us to connect them with attempts to make meaning before they acquire language and writing.
This book provides fundamental challenges to commonly held assumptions about both language and literacy and thought and action. It places these challenges within the context of speculation about the abilities which will become essential for children as young adults, and calls for the radical decentering of language in educational theory and practice.

How do some language learners triumph against all odds, despite not having obvious heritage links or spending extended periods of time in the L2 environment pre-adulthood? This book delves into the autobiographical stories of learners who achieve nativelike proficiency, opening a narrative window into their experiences and offering insights into their pathways to success. The in-depth analysis ties together a wide range of potentially relevant topics, from motivational vision and international posture to issues of identity, endurance and even musical ability, among other themes. The authors explore whether these successes can be repeated by others and the book will be of use to language teachers interested in learner motivation and the antecedents to high-level ultimate attainment. The book will also be of great interest to researchers working in the areas of language learner psychology, especially in topics concerning language learning motivation, identity and narrative inquiry.

Research on the development of metaphor abilities in children can be dated back as far as 1960, with Asch and Nerlove's pioneering study, which concluded that children were unable to understand metaphors until middle or even late childhood. However, the study of metaphor in children did not take off until the 1970s; research continued to show metaphor as a relatively late-developing skill, based on children's inability to paraphrase correctly metaphoric sentences presented out of any situational or narrative context.
In the past decade, research into the development of figurative language has broadened considerably in scope. Efforts have been underway to demonstrate the cognitive underpinnings of the ability to make sense of figurative language and to demonstrate the role of metaphor and its cousin, analogy, in the development of cognition.
Metaphor is now considered to be a central aspect of language and thought and thus a crucial variable in cognitive development. The articles in this issue support the claim that no longer can any theory of language acquisition afford to ignore how children are able to recognize the distinction between what is said and what is meant and how they are able to grasp what is meant when people say things they do not mean.

Designed to provide practical information to those who are concerned with the development of young children, this book has three goals. First, the authors offer details about patterns of language development over the first three years of life. Although intensive studies have been carried out by examining from one to 20 children in the age range of zero to three years, there has been no longitudinal study of a sample as large as this--53 children--nor have as many measures of language development been obtained from the same children. Examining language development from a broad perspective in this size population allows us to see what generalizations can be made about patterns of language development.
This volume's second goal is to examine the impact of such factors as biology, cognition, and communication input--and the interaction of these factors--which traditionally have been held to play an important role in the course of language development. The comparative influence of each--and the interaction of all three--were examined statistically using children's scores on standard language tests at age three.
The volume's third goal is to provide information to beginning investigators, early childhood educators, and clinicians that can help them in their practice. This includes information about what appear to be good early predictors of language development at three years; language assessment procedures that can be used with children below age three, how these procedures can be used, what they tell us about the language development of young children; and what warning signs should probably be attended to, and which can most likely be ignored. In addition, suggestions are made about what patterns of communicative interaction during the different periods of development seem to be most successful in terms of language development outcomes at three years, and what overall indications the study offers regarding appropriate intervention.

Much of the work currently conducted within the framework of Universal Grammar and language learnability focuses on the acquisition of syntax. However, the learnability issues are just as applicable to the domain of phonology. This volume is the first to gather research that assumes a sophisticated phonological framework and considers the implications of this framework for language acquisition -- both first and second. As such, this book truly deals with phonological acquisition rather than phonetic acquisition.

This book presents a case study on lexical error analysis in the translation products of Arab English majors at the university level with important implications for Arabic-speaking countries. It provides detailed analyses and explanations of the main lexical areas that cause specific difficulties for these students, while also identifying their potential sources. The respective chapters discuss several areas related to the context of the research, the field of SLA, error analysis, language transfer, error taxonomies, language learning, language teaching, and translation training. The analyses and findings presented here contribute to the linguistic field by developing a comprehensive list of lexical error categories based on form, content, and origin of influence regarding translation products. In addition, the book sheds light on the pedagogical aspects contributing to the enhancement of ESL/EFL teaching in the Arab context as well as other contexts where English is taught as a foreign language. The book will help educators and curriculum writers in designing materials, and language researchers as a groundwork for their studies of L2 learners' written products.

This volume offers a timely snapshot of current theory and research in the field of psychology in foreign language learning. It makes a powerful case for a more prominent role for psychology in language learning theory and emphasizes the importance of an understanding of psychological factors for enhancing pedagogical practice. Featuring contributions from leading researchers from around the world, the chapters are designed to be accessible to both specialists and non-specialists. Each chapter focuses on a different psychological construct and provides an overview of current thinking in the area drawing on insights from educational psychology, as well as an example of current research carried out by the authors. The wide range of theoretical perspectives and research approaches are unified by a common concern for the practical realities facing teachers and learners, making this book essential reading for anyone with an interest in the psychology of learning a foreign language.

Extensive Reading is an innovative resource bridging theory and practice for those seeking to learn about extensive reading (ER) for L2 students' language development, including ways to motivate students to read extensively and to assess learning. Grounded in contemporary theory and the latest research both on ER and motivation, experts Sue Leather and Jez Uden offer a rich array of original activities to help teachers in the classroom and beyond with this effective but difficult-to-implement pedagogical tool. Advanced students, researchers, teacher trainers, and pre- and in-service teachers - and ultimately their students themselves - will benefit from this book.

This book defines engagement for the field of language learning and contextualizes it within existing work on the psychology of language learning and teaching. Chapters address broad substantive questions concerned with what engagement is or looks like, and how it can be theorized for the language classroom; methodological questions related to the design, measurement and analysis of engagement in language classrooms and beyond; as well as applied issues examining its antecedents, factors inhibiting and enhancing it, and conditions fostering the re-engagement of language learners who have become disengaged. Through a mix of conceptual and empirical chapters, the book explores similarities and differences between motivation and engagement and addresses questions of whether, how and why learners actually do exert effort, allocate attention, participate and become involved in tangible language learning and use. It will serve as an authoritative benchmark for future theoretical and empirical research into engagement within the classroom and beyond, and will be of interest to anyone wishing to understand the unique insights and contributions the topic of engagement can make to language learning and teaching.

We now know much more about the process of language development in all children, and also much more about variations in the process due to multi-cultural and multi-linguistic backgrounds, and developmental anomalies. The book describes both the remarkable changes in language knowledge and use that occur from infancy through high school, and also the differences in the process due to variations in experience. What has been found to be good educational practice during each of these stages is discussed, emphasising that among other things, good practice involves awareness of, and planning for, diversity in the abilities of children.