Language Acquisition: The Basics is an accessible introduction to the must-know issues in child language development. Covering key topics drawn from contemporary psychology, linguistics and neuroscience, readers are introduced to fundamental concepts, methods, controversies, and discoveries. It follows the remarkable journey children take; from becoming sensitive to language before birth, to the time they string their first words together; from when they use language playfully, to when they tell stories, hold conversations, and share complex ideas. Using examples from 73 different languages, Ibbotson sets this development in a diverse cross-cultural context, as well as describing the universal psychological foundations that allow language to happen. This book, which includes further reading suggestions in each chapter and a glossary of key terms, is the perfect easy-to-understand introductory text for students, teachers, clinicians or anyone with an interest in language development. Drawing together the latest research on typical, atypical and multilingual development, it is the concise beginner's guide to the field.

Observing filmic product translation from multiple perspectives is the challenging subject of this volume, which opens up new ways of reading and sustaining dialogue on both theoretical and didactic levels. Its central focus is an observation of European and Oriental languages, gathering together reflections on English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese, as well as specific languages for hearing-impaired Italians, also analysed in their relation to Italian language and culture. The work focuses on audiovisual language, investigated in the linguistic and cultural dimensions and includes different genres: from election campaign commercials to short films, from animation films produced in the U.S. to Japanese anime, from classic musicals to television series, and finally European and extra European art-house films. Moreover, the volume assembles contributions concentrating both on the oral aspects dedicated to the study of the socio-cultural dimension (e.g. essays on diachronic and diastratic variations in Spanish films, also analysing specific dubbing problems) and on the written dimension represented by interlinguistic subtitles examined in their relationship with the original spoken text (e.g. German films).

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.

The central assertion in this volume is that the young child uses general skills, scaffolded by adults, to acquire the complex knowledge of sound patterns and the goal-directed behaviors for communicating ideas through language and producing speech. A child's acquisition of phonology is seen as a product of her physical and social interaction capacities supported by input from adult models about ambient language sound patterns. Acquisition of phonological knowledge and behavior is a product of this function-oriented complex system. No pre-existing mental knowledge base is necessary for acquiring phonology in this view. Importantly, the child's diverse abilities are used for many other functions as well as phonological acquisition. Throughout, an evaluation is made of the research on patterns of typical development across languages in monolingual and bilingual children and children with speech impairments affecting various aspects of their developing complex system. Also considered is the status of available theoretical perspectives on phonological acquisition relative to an emergence proposal, and contributions that this perspective could make to more comprehensive modeling of the nature of phonological acquisition are proposed. The volume will be of interest to cognitive psychologists, linguistics, and speech pathologists.

This unique, edited book bridges studies in language disorders and linguistic theory with timely contributions from leading scholars in language development. It presents an attempt to define Specific Language Impairment, relating it to children of normal and disordered language capabilities. The chapter presentations examine language development across a variety of populations of children, from those with Specific Language Impairment to second language learners. The contributors discuss criteria for the definition of SLI, compare and contrast SLI with profiles of children with other disorders and dialects, and offer a comprehensive look at the Whole Human Language, which ties together spoken and signed languages. Methodological concerns that affect the credibility and generalizability of the findings are discussed and controversies between opposing linguistic approaches to language acquisition are presented. The conceptual thread that gradually reveals itself as the chapters unfold is a theoretical issue of central importance to cognitive theory, as well as to our understanding of the biological correlates of language--it concerns the variability that linguistic competence can manifest in children under different biological conditions and life circumstances. Language Competence Across Populations: Toward a Definition of Specific Language Impairment is an essential volume for advanced students and scholars in linguistics and psychology who have an interest in language acquisition and language disorders, as well as for the clinical professionals dealing with children with language impairments.

The volume contains 15 papers by linguists from seven different European countries. The papers offer insights into the research results of a number of recent studies conducted in the field of applied linguistics covering topics such as specialized communication, foreign language teaching, terminology problems and the like. Dieser Band enthalt 15 Beitrage von 24 Sprachwissenschaftlern aus sieben europaischen Landern. In den Beitragen werden die neueren Forschungsergebnisse auf dem Gebiet der Angewandten Linguistik veroeffentlicht, in denen es unter anderem um die Themen Fachkommunikation, Fremdsprachenlernen und Terminologiefragen geht.

This volume is a festschrift for Katherine Nelson, an NYU professor who was a pioneer in infant perception and memory. The "mediated mind" is a term coined by Dr. Nelson and it refers to how cognitive development is mediated by the sociocultural context, including language and social interaction. The impact of Nelson's views on the sociocultural basis of cognition and her functionalist perspective on cognitive development are evident in the collection of chapters in this book. The contributors--all leaders in the field of cognitive development--examine ways in which cognition is embedded in everyday, meaningful activities and the role of social context and cultural symbol symptoms, such as language and text influence children's developing concepts and thought. The concept of the mediated mind is examined from a variety of perspectives, including research in concept development, memory development, language learning, the development of literacy, narrative analysis, and children's theory of mind. The significant contribution of this volume is that it addresses all aspects of the mediated mind. Memory--both autobiographical and event-semantic--theory of mind, mental representation, temporality, narrative, and metalinguistic awareness comprise the chapter topics. The breadth of topics represented is a tribute to the impact Nelson's vision has on many developmental "domains." The contributors acknowledge and honor her work. Her theory and research paved the way for the advances in understanding a mediated mind that are evident and that will continue to shape notions of how the human mind develops and evolves within a social, interactive world.

This volume tracks the impact Processing Instruction has made since its conception. The authors explain Processing Instruction, both its main theoretical underpinnings as well as the guidelines for developing structured input practices. They review the empirical research conducted to date, so that readers have an overview of new research carried out on the effects of Processing Instruction. The work concludes with reflections on the generalizability and limits of the research on Processing Instruction and offers future directions for Processing Instruction research.

The study of speech errors, or "slips of the tongue," is a time-honored methodology which serves as a window to the representation and processing of language and has proven to be the most reliable source of data for building theories of speech production planning. However, until Kids' Slips, there has never been a corpus of such errors from children with which to work. This is the first developmental linguistics research volume to document how online processing is revealed in young children, ages 18 months through 5 years, through their slips of the tongue. Thus, this text provides a new methodology and data source, which will greatly expand our ability to uncover the details of early language development. Professor Jaeger's groundbreaking book incorporates both details of her methodology and findings with implications for different aspects of language development, including phonetics and phonology, the lexicon, semantics, morphology, and syntax. While all the child data is included in the book, a Web site hosted by the author provides readers with the adult data as well. Kids' Slips targets those who study language development in linguistics, developmental psychology, and speech and hearing, as well as those who study language representation and processing more generally in the same disciplines.

The central assertion in this volume is that the young child uses general skills, scaffolded by adults, to acquire the complex knowledge of sound patterns and the goal-directed behaviors for communicating ideas through language and producing speech. A child's acquisition of phonology is seen as a product of her physical and social interaction capacities supported by input from adult models about ambient language sound patterns. Acquisition of phonological knowledge and behavior is a product of this function-oriented complex system. No pre-existing mental knowledge base is necessary for acquiring phonology in this view. Importantly, the child's diverse abilities are used for many other functions as well as phonological acquisition. Throughout, an evaluation is made of the research on patterns of typical development across languages in monolingual and bilingual children and children with speech impairments affecting various aspects of their developing complex system. Also considered is the status of available theoretical perspectives on phonological acquisition relative to an emergence proposal, and contributions that this perspective could make to more comprehensive modeling of the nature of phonological acquisition are proposed. The volume will be of interest to cognitive psychologists, linguistics, and speech pathologists.

From Orthography to Pedagogy pays tribute to Richard L. Venezky's work and influence on reading, linguistics, and computer science. This book catalogs findings related to speech and language development, reading and spelling's role in infant speech development, and the present and future advances in the study and theory of speech and cognitive development. The editors focus on the role technology could play in development and advancement of literacy speech and reasoning. Topics include: *speech directed at infants; *speech perception; *cognitive development and spelling; *early reading instruction; *reading and comprehension; and *influences of modern technology and multi-media. Representing a history of study in the field, this book appeals to anyone working in the area of language development, as well as those in related fields such as linguistics and developmental psychology.

This book provides an accessible introduction to some of the methods and theoretical approaches for investigating foreign language (FL) interaction and exchange in online environments. Research approaches which can be applied to Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) are outlined, followed by a discussion of the way in which tools and techniques for data-collection in diverse online contexts can contribute to our understanding of online foreign language interaction. The compilation of chapters presents a comprehensive overview of key issues in virtual, intercultural and multimodal research contexts and gives insight into the particular challenges and situations which this area of language learning implies. Researching Online Foreign Language Interaction and Exchange addresses the needs of researchers and newcomers to the area who are hoping to learn about the current state of the field by providing overviews of varying approaches and extensive literature review as well as extracts of real data to illustrate the theories, methods or issues in question.

This groundbreaking book in theoretical and empirical phraseology research looks at Europe's linguistic situation as a whole, including 74 European and 17 non-European languages. The occurrence of idioms that actually share the same lexical and semantic structure across a large number of languages has never been demonstrated so clearly before Widespread Idioms in Europe and Beyond. This book answers significant questions regarding hitherto vague ideas about the phraseological similarities between European languages and their cultural foundation, ranging from intertextuality, aspects of European mental, material, and social culture, to culturally based perception of natural phenomena. This inventory, which analyzes 190 out of a total of 380 widespread idioms and includes maps, is valuable for academic teaching and further research in the fields of phraseology and figurative language, areal and contact linguistics, and European cultural studies.

In this collection of essays, the author addresses the central issues in syntax theory, comparative syntax and the theoretically conscious study of language acquisition. Key topics are explored, including the properties of null elements and the theory of parameters. Some of the essays presented here have been highly influential in their field, while others are published for the first time.

Speech Acts and Politeness are among the main areas of interest in pragmatics. These communicative phenomena can be considered universal and at the same time language and culture-specific. It is this latter dimension that has been at the centre of recent developments in pragmatics, and it is also the focus of this book. The aim of this book is to reflect this development, providing evidence from four main areas crucial to pragmatics across languages and cultures: a description of a variety of speech acts and politeness strategies in different languages and cultures, a cross-cultural comparison of several speech acts and patterns of politeness, an in-depth analysis of issues concerning the learning and teaching of speech acts and politeness in second/foreign languages, as well as some methodological resources in pragmatics. This book is intended for researchers, scholars and students interested in the field of pragmatics, in general, or in the fields of cross-cultural and second/foreign language pragmatics, and specifically for those interested in speech acts and politeness. It will also be useful to any scholar interested in how communication and culture are related.

Negation is a sine qua non of every human language but is absent from otherwise complex systems of animal communication. In many ways, it is negation that makes us human, imbuing us with the capacity to deny, to contradict, to misrepresent, to lie, and to convey irony. The apparent simplicity of logical negation as a one-place operator that toggles truth and falsity belies the intricate complexity of the expression of negation in natural language. Not only do we find negative adverbs, verbs, copulas, quantifiers, and affixes, but the interaction of negation with other operators (including multiple iterations of negation itself) can be exceedingly complex to describe, extending (as first detailed by Otto Jespersen) to negative concord, negative incorporation, and the widespread occurrence of negative polarity items whose distribution is subject to principles of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. The chapters in this book survey the patterning of negative utterances in natural languages, spanning such foundational issues as how negative sentences are realized cross-linguistically and how that realization tends to change over time, how negation is acquired by children, how it is processed by adults, and how its expression changes over time. Specific chapters offer focused empirical studies of negative polarity, pleonastic negation, and negative/quantifier scope interaction, as well as detailed examinations of the form and function of sentential negation in modern Romance languages and Classical Japanese.

The Iranian languages form the major eastern branch of the Indo-European group of languages, itself part of the larger Indo-Iranian family. Estimated to have between 150 and 200 million native speakers, the Iranian languages constitute one of the world's major language families. This comprehensive volume offers a detailed overview of the principle languages which make up this group: Old Iranian, Middle Iranian, and New Iranian. The Iranian Languages is divided into fifteen chapters. The introductory chapters by the editor present a general overview and a detailed discussion of the linguistic typology of Iranian. The individual chapters which follow are written by leading experts in the field. These provide the reader with concise, non-technical descriptions of a range of Iranian languages. Each chapter follows the same pattern and sequence of topics, taking the reader through the significant features not only of phonology and morphology but also of syntax; from phrase level to complex sentences and pragmatics. Ample examples on all levels are provided with detailed annotation for the non-specialist reader. In addition, each chapter covers lexis, sociolinguistic and typological issues, and concludes with annotated sample texts. This unique resource is the ideal companion for undergraduate and postgraduate students of linguistics and language. It will also be of interest to researchers or anyone with an interest in historical linguistics, linguistics anthropology and language development. Gernot Windfuhr is Professor of Iranian Studies at the University of Michigan; he has published widely on Persian and Iranian languages and linguistics and related languages, as well as on other aspects of Iranian culture including Persian literature and Pre-Islamic Iranian religions.

In this book, modality and its learner variety in Japanese are investigated from the perspective of grammaticalization in the functional framework. It describes the grammatical system of modality in Japanese in terms of the form-function relationship within the scope of a framework based on the European school of modality.

Accordingly, it deals with the modal system and its constituents in Japanese, accommodating all the grammatical means of modariti (modality) in the Nihongo bunpou (Japanese grammar system). This study also casts light on the learner variety of modality, which is comprised of two core systems, epistemic and deontic, both of which are evident at the utterance level and the morphosyntactic level.

The learner variety of modality elucidated here is presented as a proto-modality, which is viewed as a system in its own right rather than as an improvised or distorted version of the native modal system in Japanese.

Reflecting growth in research interest in second language vocabulary over the past 30 years, this edited volume explores the current themes and possible future directions in second language vocabulary research. The collection brings together review papers and quantitative studies, and considers vocabulary in the contexts of teaching, learning and assessment. Key themes explored in the volume include multidimensionality of vocabulary knowledge, the nature of word learnability, the interface between receptive vocabulary knowledge and productive vocabulary use, the partial-to-precise continuum of vocabulary knowledge, conditions favouring vocabulary learning and use, and the use of corpora to develop word lists to inform second language teaching. The themes presented in this volume reflect current thinking and research avenues at the interface between research enquiry and second language teaching practice.

This book examines how Russian-speaking adoptees in three US families actively shape opportunities for language learning and identity construction in everyday interactions. By focusing on a different practice in each family (i.e. narrative talk about the day, metalinguistic discourse or languaging, and code-switching), the analyses uncover different types of learner agency and show how language socialization is collaborative and co-constructed. The learners in this study achieve agency through resistance, participation, and negotiation, and the findings demonstrate the complex ways in which novices transform communities in transnational contexts. The perspectives inform the fields of second language acquisition and language maintenance and shift. The book further provides a rare glimpse of the quotidian negotiations of adoptive family life and suggestions for supporting adoptees as young bilinguals.

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.

The Guidelines for Good Practice of the European Association for Language Testing and Assessment (EALTA) stress the importance of collaboration between all parties involved in the process of developing instruments, activities and programmes for testing and assessment. Collaboration is considered to be as important as validity and reliability, providing a crucial prerequisite for responsibility and respect for students. The papers, covering a range of topics that consider both realities and prospects of collaboration, were originally presented at EALTA conferences from 2008 to 2010.

Morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies the internal structure of words, word-formation mechanisms that give rise to new words, and mechanisms that produce wordforms of existing words. Intended as a companion for students of English language and linguistics at both B.A. and M.A. levels, this textbook provides a comprehensive overview of the entire field of English morphology, including English word-formation and English inflectional morphology. The textbook discusses not only basic introductory issues requiring no prior background in linguistics but also fairly controversial theoretical issues which different linguists treat in a different way. As in the previous volumes of the TELL Series, most of the analyses are illustrated with authentic language data, i.e. examples drawn from language corpora like the Corpus of Contemporary American English and British National Corpus.

This volume investigates the linguistic development of children with regard to their knowledge of the verb and its grammar. The selection of papers gives empirical evidence from a wide variety of languages including Hebrew, German, Croatian, Japanese, English, Spanish, Dutch, Indonesian, Estonian, Russian and French. Findings are interpreted with a focus on cross-linguistic similarities and differences, without subscribing to either a UG-based or usage-based approach. Currently debated topics, such as the role of frequency, as well as traditional ones such as bootstrapping are integrated into the presentation of language-specific, learner-specific and more general properties of the acquisition process.

The syntax and semantics of deverbal action nominals, notoriously ambiguous between event and result interpretation, have been a thought-provoking issue in many areas of theoretical linguistics. This volume contributes to current work on this topic by showing how the analysis of these nouns can benefit from a morphological and lexical-semantic treatment. While being a revealing synthesis of a number of formal accounts on this popular research domain, this study specifically targets the largely unexplored area of result nouns and addresses several crucial issues. What are result nouns in a strictly lexical-semantic perspective? Why do some verb classes allow ambiguous event/result nominal correlates, while others do not? What are the relevant verbal features involved in result noun formation? Is there a range of predictability in the number and types of meaning conveyed by a derived nominal? Couched within a framework of decompositional lexical semantic, the analysis offers original formal solutions to the polysemy issues arising in this word formation domain and convincingly argues in favor of the semantic alignment between the morphologically simplex and complex lexicon. A compelling range of Italian data provides empirical support to the author's claims.