Information Structure and Word Order in the Advanced Learner Variety
Information Structure and Word Order in the Advanced Learner Variety

Author: Karen Leube

Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 3898119653

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Highly proficient speakers of a second language who began acquisition as adults are rarely the object of second language acquisition research. In the study described in this book, the speech of 36 advanced learners of German, 20 of whom were considered to have "near-native" proficiency was recorded, transcribed and analyzed according to the "Quaestio Model". The focus of the study was the information structure of the learners' spoken texts and its implications for word order. The study revealed differences in the information structure of texts of learners and native German speakers even for those learners whose performance was nearly indistinguishable from L1 German speakers. The author discusses possible reasons for these differences, suggests implications for second language acquisition theory and draws up lesson plans for using the insights brought forth by the study for the second language and translation classrooms.

Information Highlighting in Advanced Learner English
Information Highlighting in Advanced Learner English

Author: Marcus Callies

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 9027254311

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This book presents the first detailed and comprehensive study of information highlighting in advanced learner language, echoing the increasing interest in questions of near-native competence in SLA research and contributing to the description of advanced interlanguages. It examines the production and comprehension of specific means of information highlighting in English by native speakers and German learners of English as a foreign language, presenting triangulated experimental and learner corpus data as corroborating evidence. The study focuses on learners' use of discourse-pragmatically motivated variations of the basic word order such as inversion, preposing, and it- and wh-clefts, an underexplored field in SLA research to date.The book also provides a critical re-assessment of the study of pragmatics within SLA. It has largely been neglected to date that L2 pragmatic knowledge includes more than the sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic abilities for understanding and performing speech acts. Thus, the book argues for an extension of the scope of inquiry in interlanguage pragmatics beyond the cross-cultural investigation of speech acts. It also discusses pedagogical implications for foreign language teaching and will be of interest to applied linguists and SLA researchers, language teachers and curriculum designers.

Information Structure and the Dynamics of Language Acquisition
Information Structure and the Dynamics of Language Acquisition

Author: Christine Dimroth

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2003-09-18

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 902729643X

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The papers in this volume focus on the impact of information structure on language acquisition, thereby taking different linguistic approaches into account. They start from an empirical point of view, and examine data from natural first and second language acquisition, which cover a wide range of varieties, from early learner language to native speaker production and from gesture to Creole prototypes. The central theme is the interplay between principles of information structure and linguistic structure and its impact on the functioning and development of the learner's system. The papers examine language-internal explanatory factors and in particular the communicative and structural forces that push and shape the acquisition process, and its outcome. On the theoretical level, the approach adopted appeals both to formal and communicative constraints on a learner’s language in use. Two empirical domains provide a 'testing ground' for the respective weight of grammatical versus functional determinants in the acquisition process: (1) the expression of finiteness and scope relations at the utterance level and (2) the expression of anaphoric relations at the discourse level.

The Handbook of Advanced Proficiency in Second Language Acquisition
The Handbook of Advanced Proficiency in Second Language Acquisition

Author: Paul A. Malovrh

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2020-10-13

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 1119261627

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A comprehensive, current review of the research and approaches to advanced proficiency in second language acquisition The Handbook of Advanced Proficiency in Second Language Acquisition offers an overview of the most recent and scientific-based research concerning higher proficiency in second language acquisition (SLA). With contributions from an international team of experts in the field, the Handbook presents several theoretical approaches to SLA and offers an examination of advanced proficiency from the viewpoint of various contexts and dimensions of second language performance. The authors also review linguistic phenomena among advanced learners through the lens of phonology and grammar development. Comprehensive in scope, this book provides an overview of advanced proficiency grounded in socially-relevant domains of second language acquisition including discourse, reading, genre-based writing, and pragmatic competence. The authoritative volume brings together the theoretical accounts of advanced language use combined with solid empirical research. Includes contributions from an international collection of noted scholars in the field of second language acquisition Offers a variety of theoretical approaches to SLA Contains information on the most recent empirical research that contributes to an understanding of SLA Describes performance phenomena according to multiple approaches to SLA Written for scholars, students and linguists, The Handbook of Advanced Proficiency in Second Language Acquisition is a comprehensive text that offers the most recent developments in the study of advanced proficiency in the acquisition of a second language.

Information Structure and its Interfaces
Information Structure and its Interfaces

Author: Lunella Mereu

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2009-02-26

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 3110213974

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The volume presents recent results in the field of Information Structure based on research on Italian and Italian dialects, and on further studies on several typologically different languages. The central idea is that Information Structure is not an exclusive matter of syntax but an interface issue which involves the interplay of at least the phonological, morpho-syntactic and semantic-pragmatic levels of analysis. In addition, the volume is based on the study of actual language use and it adopts a cross-linguistic point of view.

Fortgeschrittene Lernervarietäten
Fortgeschrittene Lernervarietäten

Author: Maik Walter

Publisher: ISSN

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13:

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Der Sammelband umfasst Beiträge, die sich mit dem sprachlichen Verhalten fortgeschrittener Lerner einer fremden Sprache beschäftigen. In der Zweitspracherwerbsforschung hat man sich in den letzten Jahrzehnten vornehmlich mit den frühen Stadien beschäftigt. Im Gegensatz zu den frühen Stadien ist das sprachliche Verhalten fortgeschrittener Lerner wesentlich schwieriger zu untersuchen, da ein Komplex ganz unterschiedlicher Faktoren dieses Verhalten bestimmt. Durch die in den letzten Jahren viel diskutierten korpuslinguistischen Methoden können Gesetzmäßigkeiten des sprachlichen Verhaltens präzise beschrieben werden.

The New Handbook of Second Language Acquisition
The New Handbook of Second Language Acquisition

Author: William C. Ritchie

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 745

ISBN-13: 1848552408

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"The New Handbook of Second Language Acquisition" is a thoroughly revised, re-organized, and re-worked edition of Ritchie and Bhatia's 1996 handbook. The work is divided into six parts, each devoted to a different aspect of the study of SLA. Part I includes a recent history of methods used in SLA research and an overview of currently used methods. Part II contains chapters on Universal Grammar, emergentism, variationism, information-processing, sociocultural, and cognitive-linguistic. Part III is devoted to overviews of SLA research on lexicon, morphosyntax, phonology, pragmatics, sentence processing, and the distinction between implicit and explicit knowledge. Part IV examines neuropsycholgy of SLA, another on child SLA, and the effects of age on second language acquisition and use. Part V is concerned with the contribution of the linguistic environment to SLA, including work on acquisition in different environments, through the Internet, and by deaf learners. Finally, Part VI treats social factors in SLA, including research on acquisition in contact circumstances, on social identity in SLA, on individual differences in SLA, and on the final state of SLA, bilingualism.

Second Language Learning Theories
Second Language Learning Theories

Author: Florence Myles

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-02-04

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 1134639732

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Second Language Learning Theories is an introduction to the field of second language learning for students without a substantial background in linguistics. Drawing on the expertise of both a specialist in the teaching of second languages and a linguist specializing in second language acquisition, this textbook provides an up-to-date introductory survey of the most active and significant perspectives on the subject. In this new edition, the authors have revised and updated the text throughout to reflect the substantial developments that have taken place in the field in recent years. New studies have been incorporated as examples and there is more material on work in L2 phonology and lexis, as well as syntax. The evaluation sections in each chapter have been expanded and generally the book is rebalanced in favour of newer material. The first edition quickly established itself as the textbook of choice for students new to second language learning. The updates and revisions in this new edition ensure that the book remains as fresh, engaging and useful as the day it was first published.

Comparative Perspectives on Language Acquisition
Comparative Perspectives on Language Acquisition

Author: Marzena Watorek

Publisher: Multilingual Matters

Published: 2012-01-09

Total Pages: 625

ISBN-13: 1847696058

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This volume aims to provide a broad view of second language acquisition within a comparative perspective that addresses results concerning adult and child learners across a variety of source and target languages. It brings together contributions at the forefront of language acquisition research that consider a wide range of open questions: What are the precise mechanisms underlying acquisition? How can we characterize learners’ initial state and predict their degree of final achievement? What role do specific (typological) properties of source and target languages play? How does fossilization occur? How does the relative complexity of cognitive systems in adult and child learners affect acquisition? Does language learning influence cognitive organization? Can language learning shed light on our general understanding of human language and language processing?

Particle Placement in English L1 and L2 Academic Writing
Particle Placement in English L1 and L2 Academic Writing

Author: Alexandra Kinne

Publisher: Presses universitaires de Louvain

Published: 2020-09-18

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 2875589857

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This study seeks to contribute to a better understanding of how syntactic variation is affected by probabilistic factors in English as a foreign language (EFL, L2), exemplified by the effect of weight on the syntactic variation with English transitive verb-particle constructions (e.g. look up, sort out) and transitive verb-prepositional phrase (PP) constructions (e.g. take into account, bear in mind). With these constructions, the particle/PP may occur either adjacent to the verb or separated from the verb by a direct object noun phrase (DO NP). Being highly influenced by the weight of the DO NP in native (L1) English, little is known about the factors, including syntactic weight, that govern this variation in L2 English. Against the background of possible native-language transfer, this study examines whether advanced L1-German EFL learners are sensitive to the probabilistic effect of weight on syntactic choices with verb-particle/PP constructions and whether there are differences when compared to English native speakers. Triangulating comparative corpus data and experimental data, i.e. elicited production and elicited assessment, the study provides converging evidence from language production and intuition that the learners have acquired a near-native awareness of weight effects in verb-particle/PP constructions, with differences indicating a tendency to more conservative choices.