Do loanword adaptations apply on a phonological or a phonetic level? This study addresses this issue by investigating the adaptation of German and French loanwords and proper names with front rounded vowels into Japanese. The adaptation forms of front rounded vowels are analysed from a phonological and a phonetic perspective. Both the phonological and the phonetic analysis can account for part of the data, but neither alone is able to account for all the adaptation forms of German and French front rounded vowels in Japanese. It is shown that adaptations are complex processes determined by a variety of factors such as perception, knowledge of the source language, and written forms. Furthermore, it is shown that socio-linguistic factors have a major impact on adaptation processes.

The articles in this volume were originally presented in spring 2009 at an international conference hosted by the Institute of Germanic and Romance Languages and Cultures at Tallinn University in Estonia. The theme of "crossing boundaries" is reflected in the rich mix of genres, cultures, applications, and critical theories considered here. Indeed, these articles demonstrate that crossing boundaries can be a companionable journey as well an intellectually enriching experience.

Contents: Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk: Translation studies: Cognitive linguistics and corpora - Marcel Thelen: Translation studies: Terminology in theory and practice - Jeanne Dancette: Understanding translators' understanding - Kinga Klaudy: Specification and generalisation of meaning in translation - Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk: Re-conceptualization and the emergence of discourse meaning as a theory of translation - Wolfgang Loerscher: Form- and sense-oriented approaches to translation revisited - Peter Newmark: Translation and culture (dedicated now to the dear memory of a fine translation teacher and translation critic Gunilla Anderson) - Christiane Nord: Text function and meaning in Skopos-oriented translation - Anthony Pym: Discursive persons and the limits of translation - Mary Snell-Hornby: Word against text. Lexical semantics and translation theory (Revisited) - Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit: Prototype definition of translation revisited - Gideon Toury: What's the problem with 'translation problem'? - Christiane Fellbaum: Translating with a semantic net: Matching words and concepts - Ernst-August Gutt: Relevance: A key to quality assessment in translation - Mildred Larson: Translating secondary functions of grammatical structure - Adrienne Lehrer: Problems in the translation of creative neologisms - Albrecht Neubert: Translation contextualised. How electronic text worlds are revolutionising the context of translation - Eugene Nida: Future trends in the Bible translating - Rita Temmerman: Why special language translators need insight into the mechanisms of metaphorical models and figurative denominations - Marcel Thelen: Translating figurative language revisited: Towards a framework for the interpretation of the image behind figurative language as a first step in the translation process - Anna Bednarczyk: Intersemiotic dominant of translation - Lukasz Bogucki: The demise of voice-over? Audiovisual translation in Poland in the 21st century - Mona Baker: Linguistics and the training of translators and interpreters - Belinda Maia: The role of translation theory in the teaching of general and non-literary translation - revisited.y

The objective of this study is to provide an account of the terminology the European Union has created and used with regard to its development cooperation policy since the Treaty of Rome was signed in 1957. For this purpose, a terminological analysis has been conducted, based on a corpus of texts produced by the EU in this domain. A corpus-based approach to terminology has been chosen as it opens up the possibility to gather both conceptual and linguistic as well as usage information about the terminological units. Moreover, it allows the study of terms in the context of communicative situations and enables the analysis of concordances that can be used to reveal possible ideological aspects of the terminology involved. The book not only provides a detailed and comprehensive report on the status quo of the EU's terminology in this field. It also reflects the evolution of its terminology since the establishment of a common European development cooperation policy and thus against the background of an ever-changing socio-economic and political situation. The findings are meant to contribute to a better knowledge and understanding of European development cooperation policy as well as to help improve communication between professionals in European and national bodies.

Winner of the 2011 Kenneth W. Mildenberger Prize Exploring fluency from multiple vantage points that together constitute a cognitive science perspective, this book examines research in second language acquisition and bilingualism that points to promising avenues for understanding and promoting second language fluency. Cognitive Bases of Second Language Fluency covers essential topics such as units of analysis for measuring fluency, the relation of second language fluency to general cognitive fluidity, social and motivational contributors to fluency, and neural correlates of fluency. The author provides clear and accessible summaries of foundational empirical work on speech production, automaticity, lexical access, and other issues of relevance to second language acquisition theory. Cognitive Bases of Second Language Fluency is a valuable reference for scholars in SLA, cognitive psychology, and language teaching, and it can also serve as an ideal textbook for advanced courses in these fields.

Winner of the 2011 Kenneth W. Mildenberger Prize Exploring fluency from multiple vantage points that together constitute a cognitive science perspective, this book examines research in second language acquisition and bilingualism that points to promising avenues for understanding and promoting second language fluency. Cognitive Bases of Second Language Fluency covers essential topics such as units of analysis for measuring fluency, the relation of second language fluency to general cognitive fluidity, social and motivational contributors to fluency, and neural correlates of fluency. The author provides clear and accessible summaries of foundational empirical work on speech production, automaticity, lexical access, and other issues of relevance to second language acquisition theory. Cognitive Bases of Second Language Fluency is a valuable reference for scholars in SLA, cognitive psychology, and language teaching, and it can also serve as an ideal textbook for advanced courses in these fields.

Assessment is omnipresent and multifaceted in contemporary institutions of higher education. This collection provides a sound and revealing overview of language and (inter-)cultural assessment practices in European higher education and beyond (Australia, China and Japan). It addresses mainly the following questions: What sort of assessment is taking place? What purposes does it serve? What representations do teaching staff and learners have of assessing language and (inter-)cultural competences in higher education? The chapters were first presented at the bilingual conference (English and French) Assessing language and (inter-)cultural competences in Higher Education at Turku University (Finland) in 2007. L'evaluation est un phenomene multiforme et omnipresent dans l'enseignement superieur. Ce volume collectif propose un large eventail d'articles, qui passent en revue les pratiques d'evaluation en didactique des langues dans les systemes educatifs europeens mais aussi en Australie, en Chine et au Japon. Les auteurs s'interrogent sur les questions suivantes : quels types d'evaluation sont mis en oeuvre dans le superieur ? Dans quels buts ? Quelles representations les enseignants et les apprenants ont-ils de l'evaluation des competences langagieres et interculturelles ? Les textes qui constituent l'ouvrage ont ete presentes au colloque intitule Evaluation des competences langagieres et (inter-)culturelles dans l'enseignement superieur, organise par l'Universite de Turku (Finlande) en 2007.

In this book the authors address five central problems in the study of second language acquisition: transfer, staged development, cross-learner systematicity, incompleteness and variability. The book begins with a definition of each of these areas and an indication of why they are important for understanding SLA. In Chapters 2-4 attempts to explain these phenomena via early linguistic, sociolinguistic, and cognitive approaches are examined. It is argued that they all fail because they attach insufficient importance to the nature of language. In Chapters 5-9 the central problems are approached from the perspective of Universal Grammar and parametric variation: it is considered that this approach provides greater insights into transfer, staged development, cross-learner systematicity and into some aspects of completeness, but that it has difficulty accounting for variability. Variability, it is then argued in Chapters 10-13, is more attributable to factors related to language use and language processing. The most important of these are: the learner's need to develop hypotheses from data where Universal Grammar may not be accessible or applicable; the learner's need to transform linguistic knowledge into the productions required for language processing in real-time; and the learner's need to communicate effectively with an incomplete linguistic system. The variability observed in second language learners who began learning after the age of seven is attributed to the use of multiple knowledge sources and the different kinds of productions which may underlie second language use. The strands making up this argument are then brought together in Chapter 14 in a single model and indications of further directions for research are provided.

The Think-Aloud Controversy in Second Language Research aims to answer key questions about the validity and uses of think-alouds, verbal reports completed by research participants while they perform a task. It offers an overview of how think-alouds have been used in language research and presents a quantitative meta-analysis of findings from studies involving verbal tasks and think-alouds. The book begins by presenting the theoretical background and empirical research that has examined the reactivity of think-alouds, then offers guidance regarding the practical issues of data collection and analysis, and concludes with implications for the use of think-alouds in language research. With its focus on a much-discussed and somewhat controversial data elicitation method in language research, this timely work is relevant to students and researchers from all theoretical perspectives who collect first or second language data. It serves as a valuable guide for any language researcher who is considering using think-alouds.

Multilinguals are not multiple monolinguals. Yet multilingual assessment proceeds through monolingual norms, as if fair conclusions were possible in the absence of fair comparison. In addition, multilingualism concerns what people do with language, not what languages do to people. Yet research focus remains on multilinguals' languages, as if languages existed despite their users. This book redresses these paradoxes. Multilingual scholars, teachers and speech-language clinicians from Europe, Asia, Australia and the US contribute the first studies dedicated to multilingual norms, those found in real-life multilingual development, assessment and use. Readership includes educators, clinicians, decision-makers and researchers interested in multilingualism.

When people collaborate in professional contexts, and more specifically, when they communicate about and through products in business contexts, they have to make a series of basic choices, one of them concerning the language used in the communication. Another, more long-term-oriented decision is the choice of a name for one's business or product. The two questions are closely related, since in both cases it is an issue of self-presentation for the communicating company or business person. Wenn Menschen in beruflichen Kontexten kooperieren, und insbesondere, wenn sie in Wirtschaftskontexten uber Produkte kommunizieren, betrifft eine ihrer grundlegenden Entscheidungen die Wahl einer Sprache fur die Interaktion. Eine andere, langerfristige, ist die Wahl eines Namens fur Firma oder Produkt. Die beiden Fragen hangen eng zusammen, denn in beiden Fallen geht es darum, wie man sich als Unternehmen oder als Unternehmer selbst prasentiert.

This volume in honor of Susan M. Gass focuses on interaction in second language acquisition from multiple perspectives. International experts in the field of SLA contribute insights and explanations on the interaction approach's compatibility with other theoretical approaches, key empirical studies, interaction in specific contexts, and future directions. Readers will find an enriching discussion of how the interaction research tradition is viewed in a wide range of different appraoches to learning and teaching second languages.

This monograph reports on a longitudinal inquiry into mainland Chinese undergraduates' language learning experiences in an English medium university in a multilingual setting with a focus on their strategic language learning efforts. This book examines the issue as to what extent language learners' strategic learning efforts depend on their 'choice', if 'the element of choice' is the defining characteristic of language learners' strategic learning behaviour. The inquiry, using a qualitative and ethnographic research approach, reveals dynamic interaction between learners' agency and contextual conditions underlying the participants' strategic learning process. Such understanding informs pedagogical efforts to foster individual learners' capacity for strategic learning and their capacities in opening up and sustaining a social learning space for exercising their strategic learning capacity or utilizing their strategic learning knowledge.

Authored by the absolute top authorities in quantitative and mixed methods research in this field. Introduces students to data analysis, and includes extensive coverage of research practices and related issues in design and methodology, and excellent coverage of a range of quantitative and mixed methods. Inclusion of the latter in a research text in applied linguistics is unique. Intuitive, chronological organization makes it easy for students to navigate and understand the book, while also being able to fruitfully consult individual chapters as needed. This organization allows students to conduct their own research studies from beginning to end. A wealth of graphics, visuals, exercises, practice tasks, boxes, and other pedagogic material provides students new to research with the necessary introductions to the key topics and debates in L2 research, as well as the tools to conduct their own research projects. There is no other core course text for SLA/L2-focused research design and analysis. Unlike other research methods core texts, Mackey/Gass focuses on L2 rather on applied linguistics more broadly. It therefore offers coverage of many more relevant methods. Also offers a hands-on guide so that students can conduct their own research. Mackey/Gass is much more user-friendly and well-written than extant books. Other books are a compilation of different contributions and styles without a unifying voice (or written as well as Mackey/Gass).

In The Gestural Origin of Language, Wilcox and Armstrong use evidence from and about sign languages to explore the origins of language as we know it today. According to their model, it is sign, not spoken languages, that is the original mode of human communication. The authors demonstrate that modern language is derived from practical actions and gestures that were increasingly recognised as having the potential to represent and hence to communicate. In other words, the fundamental ability that allows us to use language is our ability to use pictures of icons, rather than linguistic symbols. Evidence from the human fossil record supports the authors' claim by showing that we were anatomically able to produce gestures and signs before we were able to speak fluently. Although speech evolved later as a secondary linguistic communication device that eventually replaced sign language as the primary mode of communication, speech has never entirely replaced signs and gestures.

Never in the recent history of foreign language education have we seen so much earnest concern for the philosophies which underlie research methods. The primary force behind this concern has been the rise of a socio-cultural paradigm in foreign language education from which new ways of integrating teaching theory and practice are emerging. All but one of the papers collected in this volume were presented and discussed at the international seminar Understanding the Language Classroom and New Directions for Language Teaching Research held in Kobe, Japan, from 14 to 17 March 2007. The volume has reframed research accounts of classroom and learner issues by clarifying the powerful connections between philosophically different families of both recently developed and conventional research practices: Exploratory Practice, Action Research, Narrative Inquiry, Learner Autonomy, and Strategy-based Language Learning.

The Iranian languages are a major component of the Indo-European family, and an important link between Asian, European and African languages. They contain features that can provide crucial evidence for synchronic and diachronic typology and other theoretical linguistic issues, but which are widely unknown, and difficult to access. In addition to the descriptions of each language in the family, the volume provides paradigms and syntagms, and systematic comparative-historical and typological statements.

The adoption of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in Higher Education teaching has been widespread. This learning strategy has developed the need to learn foreign languages and to communicate with people with different cultural backgrounds. Culture learning should be part of language and content teaching as Higher Education involves language skills, topic comprehension and sociological capabilities. Teachers explore new teaching strategies which imply diverse goals and focus on different cultural backgrounds. The contributions of this book comment the multicultural awareness of the students involved in learning another language and the facts implied in teaching in a multicultural environment.

This study is an attempt to semantically decompose the most popular metaphorical expressions associated with two particular Web 2.0 practices: social networks and folksonomies. What is a friend on a social networking Web site like MySpace and StudiVZ? Is it polite to poke strangers on Facebook and give them fives on his? How can we subscribe to RSS feeds, if we don't pay subscription fees? Do we really broadcast ourselves on our YouTube channels? These and other similar questions are dealt with from the perspective of the referential and the conceptual approaches to meaning, i.e., what these words stand for (referential/extensional approach) and which concepts they signify (conceptual/intensional approach). Thus, from the referential point of view, a friend on MySpace is only a hyperlink directing to a profile page of another MySpace user. But from the intensional point of view, a friend is a subscriber to the content generated by the profile owner.

Based on an innovative corpus-based approach, this book offers a comprehensive survey of the phonological and phonetic properties of L2 speech in English and German. The first part of the book critically examines current theoretical models and research methodologies in the field of second language acquisition of phonology and describes the advances that have been made in corpus linguistics over the past few years -- in particular, the development of phonological learner corpora. It furthermore presents the first learner corpus of L2 English and L2 German that is fully aligned and has extensive phonological annotations: the LeaP corpus. The second part of the book describes the results of the quantitative and qualitative corpus analyses in the following areas of non-native speech: fluency, final consonant cluster realisation, vowel reduction and speech rhythm, intonation and general foreign accent. In addition, the influence of many non-linguistic factors, including instruction and a stay abroad, on the phonological properties of non-native speech is explored.

The last twenty years has seen a huge evolution in approaches to language-learning, due to new technology as well changing theories on how to best teach languages.

Recognising the key relationship between research, practice and program development, Changing Language Education Through CALL is an important text advocating change that makes effective use of new research into learning styles, as well as new technology. Bringing together sixteen internationally respected experts in second-language acquisition and computer technologies, it presents teachers with user-friendly, flexible ways to incorporate technology into the language learning process and provides both the theoretical and practical basis for CALL applications across a broad spectrum of teaching styles, textbooks and courses.

Practical and clearly presented, each chapter in this book concentrates on the learning process and the teacher's role in facilitating this through the proper and effective use of technology - thus ensuring that the partnership of pedagogical expertise and technological innovation remains the work's focus.

What does learning a language involve? Obviously, a rapid and definitive answer cannot be provided for this question since the aspects and situations affecting language learning are many and varied. From the role of culture to the use of new technologies in foreign language learning, this work aims to offer its readers some of the current research being carried out in different areas relevant to the topic. A long developing project has become reality thanks to the work of several researchers who are also experienced teaching professionals. In this sense, it is worth mentioning that most chapters of the book relate to different aspects of language learning within the classroom context which has resulted in realistic approaches to foreign language learning that can be of great help to those involved and/or interested in this field. Moreover, the clear division into sections allows readers to make their choice on how to proceed with the reading of the book depending on their thematic interests. Five sections make up this practical work: culture and language learning, human resources in language learning, language learning strategies, language learning software and language learning web resources.

This book examines how Japanese learners of English learned about managing politeness while they were studying at language schools in New Zealand. Specifically, it investigates how they learned to produce and interpret a range of disagreement strategies during oppositional talk with native speakers of English. Employing a combined qualitative and quantitative approach to data analysis, the book discusses the initial pragmatic competence of the learners, and describes how their competence developed over a ten-week period. The book outlines some points of cultural divergence which may have influenced the direction and the extent of the learners' pragmatic development. It also sheds light on the language-acquisition strategies utilised by the learners during their tenure in the host culture. Most crucially, the book illuminates patterns of directness and indirectness in the learners' selected disagreement strategies. These patterns challenge the generally accepted theory that politeness always increases with social distance.

A heritage language is the term given to a language spoken at home by bilingual children of immigrant parents. Written by a leading figure in the field, this pioneering, in-depth study brings together three heritage languages - Hindu, Spanish and Romanian - spoken in the United States. It demonstrates how heritage speakers drive morphosyntactic change when certain environmental characteristics are met, and considers the relationship between social and cognitive factors and timing in language acquisition, bilingualism, and language change. It also discusses the implications of the findings for the language education of heritage speakers in the USA and considers how the heritage language can be maintained in the English-speaking school system. Advancing our understanding of heritage language development and change, this book is essential reading for students and researchers of linguistics and multilingualism, immigration, education studies and language policy, as well as educators and policy makers.

Third Language Acquisition and Universal Grammar contains nine chapters on adult third language (L3) or multilingual acquisition from the Universal Grammar (UG) perspective. A variety of languages other than English are involved in the studies reported in the papers, including Cantonese Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Mandarin Chinese, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Thai, with acquisition cases taking place in a number of different geographical locations, such as Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, Norway, Taiwan, Thailand, the UK and the USA. This volume will appeal to those studying L3 acquisition from a variety of theoretical perspectives and should encourage scholarly exchange between the fields of bi-/multilingualism and SLA.