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This volume is a collection of 13 chapters each devoted to a particular issue that is crucial to our understanding of the way learners acquire learn and use an L2 sound system. In addition it spans both theory and application in L2 phonology. The book is divided into three parts with each section unified by broad thematic content: Part I “Theoretical Issues and Frameworks in L2 Phonology” lays the groundwork for examining L2 phonological acquisition. Part II “Second Language Speech Perception and Production” examines these two aspects of L2 speech in more detail. Finally Part III “Technology Training and Curriculum” bridges the gap between theory and practice. Each chapter examines theoretical frameworks major research findings (both classic and recent) methodological issues and choices for conducting research in a particular area of L2 phonology and major implications of the research findings for more general models of language acquisition and/or pedagogy.

This book establishes a dialog between experimental psychology and electrophysiology in the study of infant language development. On the one hand traditional methods of investigation into language development have reached a high level of refinement despite being confined to observing infants’ overt behavioral responses. On the other hand more recent methods such as neuroimaging and in particular event-related potentials provide access to implicit responses from the infant brain while often relying on rather gross experimental contrasts. The aims of this book are both to provide neuroscientists with an overview of the ingenious behavioral paradigms that have been developed in the field of language development and to introduce the power of neurophysiological indices to behavioral experimentalists. The two approaches are compared at various levels of processing: phonetic discrimination categorical perception speech segmentation syllable and word recognition semantic priming. A general discussion brings together the two approaches highlights their respective contributions and limitations and proposes constructive ideas for future integration.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>

Language complexity has recently attracted considerable attention from linguists of many different persuasions. This volume – a thematic selection of papers from the conference Approaches to Complexity in Language held in Helsinki August 2005 – is the first collection of articles devoted to the topic. The sixteen chapters of the volume approach the notion of language complexity from a variety of perspectives. The papers are divided into three thematic sections that reflect the central themes of the book: Typology and theory Contact and change Creoles and pidgins. The book is mainly intended for typologists historical linguists contact linguists and creolists as well as all linguists interested in language complexity in general. As the first collective volume on a very topical theme the book is expected to be of lasting interest to the linguistic community.

From linguistic areas to areal linguistics explores language description and typology in terms of areal background presenting case studies in areal linguistics. Some concern well-established linguistic areas such as the Balkan other regions such as East Nusantara (Indonesia) and the Guapore-Mamore (Amazon) regions have never before been studied in an areal perspective and yet other areas are involved in current debates. The insight has gained ground that languages owe many of their characteristics to the languages they are in contact with over time. Yet the nature of these areal influences remains a matter of debate. Furthermore areas are often hard to define. Hence the title: a shift from linguistic areas as concrete and circumscribed objects to a new way of doing linguistics: areally. New findings include the observation that there may be many more language areas than previously recognized. The book is primarily directed at linguists working in descriptive comparative historical and typological linguistics. Since it covers linguistic areas from four continents it will have a wide appeal.

This book addresses the key role of phraseology in second language acquisition and instruction. It is divided into three main sections: Extracting and Describing Phraseological Units investigates the role played by native and learner corpora in the extraction and description of multiword units two initial and crucial steps in informing language pedagogy; Learning Phraseological Units deals with the learning aspect an oft-neglected yet essential dimension of phraseology in second/foreign language pedagogy this section also addresses issues in new literacies; and Recording and Exploiting Phraseological Units focuses on pedagogical tools notably monolingual and bilingual dictionaries and textbooks. This stimulating collection presents cutting edge research in the field and identifies major avenues for future theoretical and applied work. It is of particular relevance to researchers and teachers interested in the patterned nature of language.

This book reports research on the Problem-Solution rhetorical pattern which has to date received very little attention in corpus-based studies. Insights from genre analysis and systemic-functional grammar are also applied to the analysis of the Problem-Solution pattern thus moving towards a more multi-faceted analysis of corpus data. The pattern is investigated in two specialized corpora of technically-oriented report writing a professional corpus and a student corpus using a key word and key-key word analysis. Phraseological analyses of key words in both corpora are presented. Data show that students’ writing lacks a range of lexico-grammatical patternings for expressing the Problem and Solution elements of the pattern. The book concludes with some pedagogic implications and applications of the findings. Suggested concordancing activities are discussed within the context of key issues in the field of data-driven learning.

This book details the development of eleven modal auxiliaries in late 18^th- and 19^th-century Canadian English in a framework of new-dialect formation. The study assesses features of the modal auxiliaries tracing influences to British and American input varieties parallel developments or Canadian innovations. The findings are based on the Corpus of Early Ontario English pre-Confederation Section the first electronic corpus of early Canadian English. The data which are drawn from newspapers diaries and letters include original transcriptions from manuscript sources and texts from semi-literate writers. While the overall results are generally coherent with new-dialect formation theory the Ontarian context suggests a number of adaptations to the current model. In addition to its general Late Modern English focus New-Dialect Formation in Canada traces changes in epistemic modal functions up to the present day offering answers to the loss of root uses in the central modals. By comparing Canadian with British and American data important theoretical insights on the origins of the variety are gained. The study offers a sociohistorical perspective on a still understudied variety of North American English by combining language-internal features with settlement history in this first monograph-length diachronic treatment of Canadian English in real time.

This book represents the first comprehensive overview over the history of negation in German. It addresses both the development of the negation particles as well as the diachrony of indefinites in the scope of negation and the phenomenon of Negative Concord. Being based on a corpus study of several Old and Middle High German texts it comprises a wealth of historical examples with additional comparison to Modern Standard German and dialects as well as crosslinguistic data from a variety of languages. The findings are placed in the context of typological research and are analysed in terms of current syntactic and semantic theory of negation arguing for an unchanged underlying syntactic structure with changes in the lexical filling of NegP and in the lexical features of indefinites resulting in crucial changes in the syntactic patterns of negation. This book is of interest to scholars of German linguistics historical linguists as well as anyone working in the field of negation.

This book explores the issue of politeness phenomena and socially appropriate behavior in two societies Mexico and the United States in three different contexts: refusing invitations requests and suggestions. In addition to a state-of-the-art review of the speech act of refusals in numerous languages the book provides a rigorous analysis of data collection methods utilized to examine speech act behavior at the production and perception levels. Many examples of native speaker interactions illustrate the similarities and differences observed in the realization patterns and the perception of refusals by Mexicans and Americans in formal and informal situations. The data are analyzed in terms of refusal sequences and pragmatic strategies which are strategically used to carry out relational work during the negotiation of face. The results of the quantitative and qualitative analyses are interpreted in light of the notions of face politeness and relational work in Mexico and the United States. This publication will be of interest to researchers and students in pragmatics and discourse analysis cross-cultural communication and sociology.

How do infants and young children coordinate information in real time to arrive at sentence meaning from the words and structure of the sentence and from the nonlinguistic context? This volume introduces readers to an emerging field of research experimental developmental psycholinguistics and to the four predominant methodologies used to study on-line language processing in children. Authored by key figures in psycholinguistics neuroscience and developmental psychology the chapters cover event-related brain potentials free-viewing eyetracking looking-while-listening and reaction-time techniques also providing a historical backdrop for this line of research. Multiple aspects of experimental design data collection and data analysis are addressed in detail alongside surveys of recent important findings about how infants and children process sounds words and sentences. Indispensable for students and researchers working in the areas of language acquisition developmental psychology and developmental neuroscience of language this volume will also appeal to speech language pathologists and early childhood educators.