Exploring the canonical topics in second language acquisition, this book introduces different theoretical perspectives and explores the types of research carried out in the field. Individual chapters have been written so that they can stand alone, giving instructors and students total control over the pace and order of study, and the book is written in an accessible conversational style, inviting engagement with this dynamic topic. Second Language Acquisition: - Surveys key studies in the acquisition of morphology, syntax and phonology - Features a whole chapter dedicated to bilingualism, tying together two closely-linked fields - Examines the role and implications of pedagogy in language teaching contexts - Employs end-of-chapter questions, concept practice and suggestions for further reading to encourage deeper engagement with topic

The acquisition of articles in English is notoriously difficult for second language (L2) learners of languages without articles. The current thesis extends this work on L2 English by investigating speakers whose L1s are Japanese and Spanish. Japanese is an article-less language, while Spanish marks definiteness and plural, like English. Specifically, the investigation tests the success of the existing hypotheses in accounting for the performance of these speakers in a series of experimental tasks. Additionally it examines whether a nominal mapping parameter proposed by Chierchia (1998), which determines whether bare NPs in a language are argumental, predicative or of both types, provides insight into L2 learners knowledge of the English nominal domain. Overall, the Spanish L2 learners behaved much more like the native speakers on all the tasks. It is argued that the findings are consistent with the Full Transfer/Partial Access (Hawkins & Chan 1997) and Full Transfer/Full Access (Schwartz & Sprouse 1994, 1996) hypotheses.