ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics - Volume 113, Issue 1, 1996

Vocabulary development can be achieved by helping the foreign learner of English to acquire productivity and non-productivity in English derivation. In addition, the English productive derivatives should be given special attention in teaching to and learning by native-Arabic speakers because the Arabic language is a language of derivation and it is highly productive. This paper tests how the adult native-Arabic speakers learning English as a foreign language acquire English productive and non-productive derivatives. This will be done by comparing productivity in standard written Arabic and standard written English through contrastive analysis. The concept of contrastive analysis (CA) is initially called upon the fact that Arabic is a language of productive derivation while English is a language of more than one source of word-formation; borrowing, compounding and derivation. Moreover, productivity in English is not high. Secondly, morphology is subject to avoidance phenomenon by foreign learners. Hence, the predictive value of CA and also its testing in this paper should be very helpful for English teachers to native-Arabic speakers learning English and other foreign learners, language acquisition researchers, applied linguists, methodologists and textbook-writers.

This study investigates the subsequential relationship between repetition and the other three types of self-initiated self-repair — correction, abandonment, and postponement — in the speech of Arab EFL students: Repetition followed by correction (Re → C), by abandonment (Re → A), and by postponement (Re → P). It also examines the repetition as repair (Re/R) pattern when it is followed by an error (Re/R → E). Subjects of the study were twenty-seven beginning EFL students whose native language was Arabic and who attended a college in Saudi Arabia: fifteen from level one and twelve from level two. The data of the study confirm the frequent use of repetition as a self-repair device, particularly repetition used as repair (the Re/R pattern), and that Re/R functions almost exclusively as a planning or stalling device. Also there appeared to be a subsequential relationship between repetition and abandonment (the Re → A pattern), particularly with the first-year subjects; a subsequential relationship between repetition and correction (the Re → C pattern) for the level one group, and a subsequential relationship between repetition as repair and a following error (the Re/R → E pattern) for both groups. However, this last pattern particularly needs further testing.

A common assumption is that international students in English-speaking countries have well-developed competence in academic language, but have deficiencies in conversational language. This assumption is in contrast to the situation among limited English speaking children (CUMMINS, 1989). If true, this lack of conversational language is a problem; even if international students do not plan to reside in an English-speaking country after their studies are complete, the status of English today as a world language means that professionals in many fields need to be able to interact with colleagues on an informal basis.

49 adult acquirers of English as a second language took two tests probing restrictive relative clause competence. The amount of reported pleasure reading done by subjects were the only significant predictor of both measures. Neither years of formal study nor length of residence in the United States was a significant predictor. These results are consistent with the input hypothesis.

This paper describes the first stage of a pedagogically oriented programme of research, the ultimate objective being to facilitate the learning of lexis within the context of the language learning programmes already developed within our respective universities, namely, the Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix (Namur, Belgium) and Wuhan University of Hydraulic and Electrical Engineering (Wuhan, China). This first stage consists in exploring the personal language learning practices and perceptions of the student populations concerned. We have already completed the second stage which attempts to highlight the most salient and persistent difficulties encountered by our respective student populations. At present, we are investigating various exercises and techniques which, in the light of theoretical and empirical findings, should facilitate their learning of lexis; if proved effective, they would eventually be integrated into the existing language programmes.

The phenomenon of involuntary mental rehearsal or "Din in the head," has been associated by researchers with second language (L2) acquisition, primarily with beginning learners. This study provides new evidence for Din in association with the acquisition of new linguistic elements from a different population of language acquirers, advanced first language readers. The results lend support to the claims made by Krashen concerning the nature of L1 and L2 acquisition, and indicate a connection between acquisition and the perceived pleasure of the Din phenomenon. Possible implications for the selection of L1 and L2 classroom activities are discussed.

In a paper dealing with the computational analysis of dictionaries, Boguraev ("Building a Lexicon: The Contribution of Computers", in International Journal of Lexicography, 4:3, Autumn 1991) claims that exploiting definition patterns in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (PROCTER, 1978) to identify verbs participating in the causative/inchoative alternation misses a number of verb candidates. His contention is that this linguistic property of verbs is reflected in the structure of dictionary definitions and not in the language of definitions. However, the algorithm he suggests for extracting causative/inchoative verbs from LDOCE on the basis of purely structural regularities is not sufficiently selective insofar as it also identifies verbs which participate in other types of transitivity alternations, such as, for instance, the reciprocal alternation.

Several linguists have pointed out that the past tense has the implicature that the situation it refers to is no longer the case at the moment of speaking (cf. John lived in London in 1985, but he no longer does). In this article, it is argued that in certain types of sentences the implicature associated with the past tense is more likely to be cancelled than in others. It is shown how (un)-boundedness, (a)telicity and the status of adverbials in terms of given or new influence the likelihood of a past tense situation still/no longer being the case at the moment of speaking.

We describe a statistical methodology that provides a quantitative definition of the concept of phonological space that has been used for a long time as a purely qualitative description of languages. We apply this description to five corpora : four of French language, and one of Polish language. We obtain cartesian planes where the speakers are represented as points. We show that we can discriminate the five corpora. We end by pointing to applications to the learning and destruction of phonological capabilities.