The Acquisition of Spanish in Understudied Language Pairings


Book Description

By examining the acquisition of Spanish in combination with languages other than English (Arabic, Basque, Catalan, Chinese, Dutch, Farsi, French, German, Nahuatl, Quechua, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish), this volume advances novel data pertinent to the field’s understanding of acquisition of Spanish in the XXI century. Its crosslinguistic nature invites us to reconsider major theoretical questions such as the role of L1 transfer, linguistic typology, and onset of acquisition from a fresh perspective, and to question the validity of the traditional parameter (re)setting perspective taken in SLA. Additionally, this volume underscores the necessity of providing accurate descriptions of the language pairings investigated, emphasizing the interconnection between linguistic and SLA theory, and pushing us to a more atomic view of the system in which features and feature bundles mapped onto lexical items comprise the skeleton of language. This volume is of great relevance for researchers and students of SLA alike.




The Acquisition of Spanish


Book Description

As the first text to present, in one place, a comprehensive and systematic overview of Spanish Language Acquisition research, The Acquisition of Spanish: A Research Overview in Multilingual Learning Contexts discusses a range of theoretical perspectives that outline issues surrounding language learning and the gaps in its research and teaching. Drawing on classic and current empirical studies on learner cohorts at different proficiency stages all over the world, the authors aim to bring bi-/multilingualism to the forefront to provide the reader with a deeper conceptual understanding of the challenges faced by different groups of Spanish learners in various learning contexts. Eve Zyzik and Melissa A. Bowles expertly synthesize and analyze a range of linguistic features and factors affecting learning, connecting these insights from Spanish to key theoretical and applied questions in SLA research more broadly. The text concludes with observations about research methodology, indicating the gaps in the literature and setting an agenda for future work in Spanish SLA to move the field forward. This unique, cohesive volume will be an invaluable foundational resource to advanced students and researchers in SLA, bilingualism/multilingualism, Hispanic & Romance studies, applied linguistics, education, and related areas who are interested in LOTEs (languages other than English) and Spanish SLA in particular. It will also be useful to those studying to become Spanish second language educators.




Language Acquisition and Contact in the Iberian Peninsula


Book Description

The Spanish language is spoken by an estimated 477 million people worldwide. This volume focuses on the contact between Spanish and other language varieties, including Catalan, Portuguese and Galician in the Spanish Peninsula. The book explores the characteristics of such language contact situations from structural, developmental, societal and cognitive perspectives.




The Cambridge Handbook of Spanish Linguistics


Book Description

Written for both researchers and advanced students, this Handbook provides a state-of-the-art survey of the field of Spanish linguistics. Balancing different theoretical perspectives among expert scholars, it provides an in-depth examination of all sub-fields of research in Hispanic linguistics, with a focus on recent advances.




Language Patterns in Spanish and Beyond


Book Description

The scholarly articles included in this volume represent significant contributions to the fields of formal and descriptive syntax, conversational analysis and speech act theory, as well as language development and bilingualism. Taken together, these studies adopt a variety of methodological techniques—ranging from grammaticality judgments to corpus-based analysis to experimental approaches—to offer rich insights into different aspects of Ibero-Romance grammar. The volume consists of three parts, organized in accordance with the topics treated in the chapters they comprise. Part I focuses on structural patterns, Part II analyzes pragmatic ones, and Part III investigates the acquisition of linguistic aspects found in the speech of L1, L2 and heritage speakers. The authors address these issues by relying on empirically rooted linguistic approaches to data collection, which are coupled with current theoretical assumptions on the nature of sentence structure, discourse dynamics and language acquisition. The volume will be of interest to anyone researching or studying Hispanic and Ibero-Romance linguistics.




Current Theoretical and Applied Perspectives on Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics


Book Description

Current Theoretical and Applied Perspectives on Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics is a 15-chapter compilation written by both established and emerging scholars representing a wide array of theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives. Each chapter presents original and significant findings, contextualizes them within the broader empirical work, and identifies directions for future research on a variety of subfields of study such as phonetics/phonology studies, formal acquisition theory, second and heritage language acquisition, language variation, and linguistic landscapes. Given its scope and significance, this volume will be of relevance to not only academics and researchers of all theoretical stripes, but also to a more general audience new to the field of Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics.




The Acquisition of Differential Object Marking


Book Description

Differential Object marking (DOM), a linguistic phenomenon in which a direct object is morphologically marked for semantic and pragmatic reasons, has attracted the attention of several subfields of linguistics in the past few years. DOM has evolved diachronically in many languages, whereas it has disappeared from others; it is easily acquired by monolingual children, but presents high instability and variability in bilingual acquisition and language contact situations. This edited collection contributes to further our understanding of the nature and development of DOM in the languages of the world, in acquisition, and in language contact, variation, and change. The thirteen chapters in this volume present new empirical data from Estonian, Spanish, Turkish, Korean, Hindi, Romanian and Basque in different acquisition contexts and learner populations. They also bring together multiple theoretical and methodological perspectives to account for the complexity and dynamicity of this widespread linguistic phenomenon.




The Handbook of Advanced Proficiency in Second Language Acquisition


Book Description

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.




The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, Morphosyntax, and Semantics


Book Description

This handbook provides innovative and comprehensive coverage of research on the second language acquisition (SLA) of morphosyntax, semantics, and the interface between the two. Organized by grammatical topic, the chapters are written by experts from formal and functional perspectives in the SLA of morphosyntax and semantics, providing in-depth yet accessible coverage of these areas. All chapters highlight the theoretical underpinnings of much work in SLA and their links to theoretical syntax and semantics; making comparisons to other populations, including child language acquirers, bilinguals, and heritage speakers (links to first language acquisition and bilingualism); dedicating a portion of each chapter to the research methods used to investigate the linguistic phenomenon in question (links to psycholinguistics and experimental linguistics); and, where relevant, including intervention studies on the phenomenon in question (links to applied linguistics). The volume will be indispensable to SLA researchers and students who work on any aspect of the SLA of morphosyntax or semantics. With its coverage of a variety of methodologies and comparisons to other populations (such as child language acquirers, early bilinguals, heritage speakers, and monolingual adults), the handbook is expected to also be of much interest to linguists who work in psycholinguistics, first language acquisition, and bilingualism.




Second Language Acquisition


Book Description

Based on classic and cutting-edge research, this textbook shows how grammatical phenomena can best be taught to second language and bilingual learners. Bringing together second language research, linguistics, pedagogical grammar, and language teaching, it demonstrates how linguistic theory and second language acquisition findings optimize classroom intervention research. The book assumes a generative approach but covers intervention studies from a variety of theoretical perspectives. Each chapter describes relevant linguistic structures, discusses core challenges, summarizes research findings, and concludes with classroom and lab-based intervention studies. The authors provide tools to help to design linguistically informed intervention studies, including discussion questions, application questions, case studies, and sample interventions. Online resources feature lecture slides and intervention materials, with data analysis exercises, ensuring the content is clear and ready to use. Requiring no more than a basic course in linguistics, the material serves advanced undergraduates and first-year graduate students studying applied linguistics, education, or language teaching.