Table Of Content

This page intentionally left blank First and Second Language Acquisition Infantsandveryyoungchildrendevelopalmostmiraculouslytheabilityof speech,withoutapparenteffort,withoutevenbeingtaught–asopposedto theteenagerortheadultstrugglingwithout,itseems,everbeingableto reachthesamelevelofproficiencyasfive-year-oldsintheirfirstlanguage. This useful textbook serves as a guide to different types of language acquisition: monolingual and bilingual first language development and childandadultsecondlanguageacquisition.Unlikeotherbooks,itsystem- aticallycomparesfirstandsecondlanguageacquisition,drawingondata from several languages. Research questions and findings from various subfieldsarehelpfullysummarizedtoshowstudentshowtheyarerelated andhowtheyoftencomplementeachother.Specificfactsaboutlanguage, such as where the verb is placed, are used as examples to explain ‘big questions’likethenatureofthehumanLanguageMakingCapacity.The essentialguidetostudyingfirstandsecondlanguageacquisition,itwillbe used on courses in linguistics, modern languages and developmental psychology. ju¨rgenm.meiselisProfessorEmeritusofLinguisticsintheDepartment ofRomanceLanguagesandamemberandformer(1999–2006)Chairof theResearchCenteronMultilingualismattheUniversityofHamburg.He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Distinguished Fellow in the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Calgary. He is one of the founding editors and current co-editor of the journalBilingualism:LanguageandCognition,publishedbyCambridge UniversityPress. CAMBRIDGE TEXTBOOKS IN LINGUISTICS Generaleditors:p. austin, j. bresnan, b. comrie, s. crain, w. dressler, c. ewen, r. lass, d. lightfoot, k. rice, i. roberts, s. romaine, n.v. smith First and Second Language Acquisition Inthisseries l. bauer EnglishWord-Formation s.c. levinson Pragmatics g. brown andg. yule DiscourseAnalysis r. huddleston IntroductiontotheGrammarofEnglish r. lass Phonology b. comrie Tense w. klein SecondLanguageAcquisition a.j. woods,p. fletcher anda. hughes StatisticsinLanguageStudies d.a. cruse LexicalSemantics a. radford TransformationalGrammar m. garman Psycholinguistics g.g. corbett Gender h.j. giegerich EnglishPhonology r. cann FormalSemantics j. laver PrinciplesofPhonetics f.r. palmer GrammaticalRolesandRelations m.a. jones FoundationsofFrenchSyntax a. radford SyntacticTheoryandtheStructureofEnglish:AMinimalistApproach r.d. van valin, jr,andr.j. lapolla Syntax:Structure,MeaningandFunction a. duranti LinguisticAnthropology a. cruttenden IntonationSecondedition j.k. chambers andp. trudgill DialectologySecondedition c. lyons Definiteness r. kager OptimalityTheory j.a. holm AnIntroductiontoPidginsandCreoles g.g. corbett Number c.j. ewen andh. van der hulst ThePhonologicalStructureofWords f.r. palmer MoodandModalitySecondedition b.j. blake CaseSecondedition e. gussman Phonology:AnalysisandTheory m. yip Tone w. croft TypologyandUniversalsSecondedition f. coulmas WritingSystems:AnIntroductiontotheirLinguisticAnalysis p.j. hopper ande.c. traugott GrammaticalizationSecondedition l. white SecondLanguageAcquisitionandUniversalGrammar i. plag Word-FormationinEnglish w. croft anda. cruse CognitiveLinguistics a. siewierska Person a. radford MinimalistSyntax:ExploringtheStructureofEnglish d. bu¨ring BindingTheory m. butt TheoriesofCase n. hornstein,j. nun˜es andk. grohmann UnderstandingMinimalism b.c. lust ChildLanguage:AcquisitionandGrowth g.g. corbett Agreement j.c.l. ingram Neurolinguistics:AnIntroductiontoSpokenLanguageProcessing anditsDisorders j. clackson Indo-EuropeanLinguistics:AnIntroduction m. ariel PragmaticsandGrammar r. cann,r. kempson ande. gregoromichelaki Semantics:AnIntroduction toMeaninginLanguage y. matras LanguageContact d. biber ands. conrad Register,GenreandStyle l. jeffries andd. mcintyre Stylistics r. hudson AnIntroductiontoWordGrammar m.l. murphy LexicalMeaning j.m. meisel FirstandSecondLanguageAcquisition First and Second Language Acquisition Parallels and Differences JÜRGEN M. MEISEL UniversitätHamburgandUniversityofCalgary cambridge university press Cambridge,NewYork,Melbourne,Madrid,CapeTown, Singapore,SãoPaulo,Delhi,Tokyo,MexicoCity CambridgeUniversityPress TheEdinburghBuilding,CambridgeCB28RU,UK PublishedintheUnitedStatesofAmericabyCambridgeUniversityPress,NewYork www.cambridge.org Informationonthistitle:www.cambridge.org/9780521557641 ©CambridgeUniversityPress2011 Thispublicationisincopyright.Subjecttostatutoryexception andtotheprovisionsofrelevantcollectivelicensingagreements, noreproductionofanypartmaytakeplacewithoutthewritten permissionofCambridgeUniversityPress. Firstpublished2011 PrintedintheUnitedKingdomattheUniversityPress,Cambridge AcataloguerecordforthispublicationisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary LibraryofCongressCataloguinginPublicationdata Meisel,JürgenM.,1944– FirstandSecondLanguageAcquisition:ParallelsandDifferences/JürgenM.Meisel. p. cm.–(CambridgeTextbooksinLinguistics) Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindexes. ISBN978-0-521-55294-3(hardback)–ISBN978-0-521-55764-1(paperback) 1. Secondlanguageacquisition. 2. Languageandlanguages–Studyand teaching. I. Title. II. Series. P118.2.M45 2011 418.0071–dc22 2010051571 ISBN978-0-521-55294-3Hardback ISBN978-0-521-55764-1Paperback CambridgeUniversityPresshasnoresponsibilityforthepersistenceor accuracyofURLsforexternalorthird-partyinternetwebsitesreferredto inthispublication,anddoesnotguaranteethatanycontentonsuch websitesis,orwillremain,accurateorappropriate. ToSusanne