Second language acquisition

506 Pages·2016·2.83 MB·English

by  Slabakova

“Thefirsttextbookinmorethantenyearstoofferasolidlylinguisticaccount
ofsecondlanguageacquisition,thisbookclearlyassertsthatthe‘L’of‘SLA’
is for ‘Language’ and it is an excellent alternative to textbooks that increas-
ingly focus less on language and more on nonlinguistic variables. Every
chapter ends with a series of exercises that use authentic language and data
from published articles. This book is a must-read for linguists interested in
SLAandsecondlanguageacquisitionresearchersinterestedinlanguage.”
KathleenBardovi-Harlig,IndianaUniversity
“Awelcomeadditiontothefieldofsecondlanguageacquisition.Itisamust
readforstudentsandscholarswhowanttounderstandgenerativeapproaches
toSLA.” SusanGass,MichiganStateUniversity
“Slabakovaguidesthereadersystematicallythrougharicharrayofobserva-
tions and hypotheses, leading up to her ‘bottleneck hypothesis’: a proposal
about where learning difficulty lies for second language learners. This
thought-provoking overview will be required reading for anyone seriously
interestedinunderstandingthecomplexbusinessofhowpeoplelearnsecond
languages.” RogerHawkins,UniversityofEssex
“An up-to-date, lively and accessible account of the generative approach to
second language acquisition research. Readers across the field will find it an
extremelyusefulintroduction to key theoreticalideas and currentdebates in
generativistSLA,illustratedwithdiscussionofanimpressiverangeofempir-
icalstudies.Studentswillenjoytheregularthought-provokingquestionsand
activities,aswellasthelinkstoclassroominstruction.”
RosamondMitchell,UniversityofSouthampton
“A thought-provoking perspective on generative linguistic approaches to
second language acquisition, as well as an up-to-date overview of current
issuesandresearch.Themainfocusisonadultsecondlanguageacquisition,
placed in the broader context of linguistic theory, first language acquisition,
andbilingualism.Thebookwillbeofconsiderableinteresttoresearchersand
studentsinfieldssuchassecondlanguageacquisition,linguistics,andapplied
linguistics.” LydiaWhite,McGillUniversity
“Thetimeisrightforanupdateofgenerativeperspectivesonsecondlanguage
acquisition and Slabakova’s Second Language Acquisition does the trick. In
thisbook,theauthorbringstogetherlinguisticandpsycholinguistic(process-
ing) aspects of language acquisition in a variety of contexts, with eventual
implicationsforandtieswithinstructionalmatters.Theresultisanup-to-date
andreadabletextsuitableforclassroomandnon-classroomusethatwillboth
informandprovoke.Highlyrecommended.”
BillVanPatten,MichiganStateUniversity
OXFORD CORE LINGUISTICS
GENERAL EDITOR
David Adger
PUBLISHED
Core Syntax
David Adger
I-Language:An Introduction to Linguistics as Cognitive Science
Second edition
Daniela Isac and Charles Reiss
Second Language Acquisition
Roumyana Slabakova
IN PREPARATION
Theoretical Morphology
Edited by Karlos Arregui-Urbina and Andrew Nevins
Introduction to Acoustic Phonetics
Charles Reiss
Introduction to Linguistic Theory
Peter Svenonius
Second Language
Acquisition
Roumyana Slabakova
1
3
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ToLydiaWhite

Contents
Preface xiii
Listofabbreviations xvii
Listoffigures xix
PARTI Language
1 Languagearchitecture 3
1.1 Whatislanguage?Whatisknowledgeoflanguage? 3
1.2 Thelanguagearchitecture 10
1.3 Whatexactlyhastobeacquired? 16
1.4 ThescientificmethodinSLAresearch 18
1.5 Exercises 21
2 Languagevariation 24
2.1 Howdolanguagesdiffer? 24
2.2 PrinciplesandParametersinhistory 29
2.3 TheMinimalistProgram 38
2.4 Whatisthelearningtaskforbilinguals? 44
2.5 Exercises 47
3 Thepsychologicalrealityoflanguageinuse 52
3.1 Whathappenswhenwehearasentence? 53
3.2 Phonologicalperceptionandlexicalrecognition 53
3.3 Morphology 57
3.4 Thesyntacticparser 60
3.5 Modelsofsyntacticprocessing 66
3.6 Workingmemory 72
3.7 Thepsychologicalrealityoflanguageand
thegrammar 75
3.8 Exercises 76
viii CONTENTS
PARTII Language Acquisition
4 TheCriticalPeriodHypothesis 83
4.1 Theviewfrombiology 83
4.2 Thetwopositionsinsecondlanguageacquisition 85
4.3 Globalnativelikenessversusdifferentsensitiveperiods
fortheseparatepartsofthegrammar 86
4.4 Thefirstandthesecondlanguageascommunicating
vessels 90
4.5 Effectsofbilingualism:Isthebilingualtwo
monolingualsinonemind? 92
4.6 Theimportanceoftheinput 95
4.7 Anindirectwayofappreciatingtheimportance
ofinput 99
4.8 Conclusions 102
4.9 Exercises 104
5 Firstlanguageacquisition,twofirstlanguages 110
5.1 Acquisitionofthesoundsofone’snativelanguage 110
5.2 Learningwordmeanings 115
5.3 Acquisitionoffunctionalmorphologyandsyntax 119
5.4 Acquisitionofsemanticsandpragmatics 130
5.5 Bilingual firstlanguageacquisition 132
5.6 Exercises 136
6 Childsecondlanguage,multilingualandheritage
languageacquisition,languageattrition 141
6.1 AdultL2acquisition 142
6.2 ChildL2acquisition 142
6.3 L3/Lnacquisition 147
6.4 Heritagelanguagelearners 153
6.5 Languageattrition 158
6.6 Commonalitiesanddifferencesbetweenthefour
acquisitioncontexts 161
6.6.1 Isagethecrucialfactorinbilingualacquisition? 161
6.6.2 TheCriticalPeriodHypothesisandthe
importanceoftheinput 162
6.6.3 Whatkindofinput? 163
CONTENTS ix
6.6.4 Whichareasofthegrammarsufferwith
reducedinput? 163
6.6.5 Arefirstandsecondlanguageacquisition
qualitativelydifferent? 164
6.7 Exercises 168
PARTIII Second LanguageAcquisition
7 Acquisitionof(functional)morphology 175
7.1 Morphemestudies 176
7.2 Syntax-before-morphology,White(2003) 182
7.3 RepresentationalDeficitHypotheses 186
7.4 TheMissingSurfaceInflectionHypothesis 189
7.5 TheProsodicTransferHypothesis 194
7.6 TheFeatureReassemblyHypothesis 197
7.7 Exercises 203
8 Acquisitionofsyntax 208
8.1 Ahistoricalexcursionintothenotionofparameter
(throughtheages) 208
8.2 RepresentationalDeficitversusFullFunctional
Representationaccounts 213
8.3 Wordorder 215
8.4 Verbmovement 221
8.5 Wh-movement 227
8.6 Conclusion 235
8.7 Exercises 236
9 Acquisitionofthementallexicon 245
9.1 Mentalrepresentationandaccessoflexicalitems 246
9.1.1 Bilinguallexiconrepresentationmodels 247
9.1.2 Thebilinguallexiconisintegratedacross
languages 248
9.1.3 Thebilinguallexiconisaccessedina
language-independentway 249
9.1.4 Languageexposureanduseaffectsthe
activationofwordsinthelexicon 250
9.1.5 Languagecontextmaynotaffectbilingual
languageactivation 251