Language, Interaction and Acquisition - Volume 8, Issue 2, 2017

This paper examines how native speakers (NS) and non-native speakers (NNS) of Italian approach topic organisation (topic shift, topic closure, digressions, topic recovery, and summary) in oral interactions. The research focuses on which discourse markers (DMs) are used when speakers try to organise discourse topics, and the differences between NS and NNS when performing such metadiscourse functions. The analysis is based on data from a spoken corpus designed to study conversational strategies in Spanish learners of L2 Italian. It reveals that the acquisition of metadiscourse functions progresses at different rates depending on the function: whereas learners have a good pragmatic competence in using DMs for the introduction of new topics in conversation, they have difficulties with other functions, such as topic closure or summary. In addition, the function of topic recovery after a digression is explicitly marked by NNS by DMs which are not found in native varieties.

Placement errors of object clitics (OCL) in French have been documented in 2L1 and L2 but not in L1 acquisition ( Granfeldt, 2012 ; Hamann & Belletti, 2006 ). In the present study, we investigate whether placement errors of third person singular OCLs may be due to cross-linguistic influence. We exposed bilingual children (successive L1 French/L2 Italian and L1 Italian/L2 French and simultaneous 2L1 Italian/French) to an OCL elicitation task. The results showed significant differences between the 2L1 and L2 groups in comparison with the L1 groups, and between the languages, thus corroborating the findings of previous studies. Production accuracy of OCLs in general was highest in L1, and higher in Italian than in French. However, OCL placement errors were found in 2L1 French and L2 Italian as well as in the L1 French of children who had Italian as L2. These findings suggest that cross-linguistic influence is bidirectional ( Foroodi-Nejad & Paradis, 2009 ; Chenjie Gu, 2010 ; Nicoladis, 1999 ). We discuss these results in relation to the proposal that cross-linguistic influence should occur only in one direction, i.e. only in one language, and only under certain conditions ( Hulk & Müller, 2000 ; Müller & Hulk, 2001 ).

Certain grammatical morphemes are variably produced in the speech of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Previous research tends to view this as a consequence of either a deficit in linguistic knowledge or a limitation in processing capacity; however, both approaches raise problems. For example, linguistic accounts are unable to explain why these children’s problems are mostly with production rather than comprehension. Processing accounts, on the other hand, have difficulty explaining why affected children have differing levels of problems with grammatical morphemes that are similar on the surface (e.g. English plural -s vs. third person singular -s). In this paper, a new, phonological account is proposed which avoids these problems, and better captures the wide array of data presented in the literature. It is proposed that children with SLI have problems with organizing segmental data into prosodic structures that are linguistically highly marked, in particular those that involve various forms of extraprosodicity.

The purpose of the present study was to examine some of the motivations and longitudinal consequences of military service in L2 Swedish for L1 Finnish conscripts in Finland’s only Swedish language garrison. Cross-sectional data (N = 42), analyzed with Bayesian path analysis, indicates that promotional instrumentality enhanced participants’ L2 ideal selves, but integrative orientation did not. The L2 ideal self predicts L2 learning intentions in the army, but only among learners with low L2 proficiency at the beginning of military service. Longitudinal data (N = 17), analyzed with a Bayesian model selection procedure, shows that after six months in the army, participants reported higher levels of L2 proficiency, lower levels of L2 use anxiety and more positive attitudes towards L2 speakers than at the beginning of military service.

This article questions some aspects of McNeill’s (2014) “imagistic” conception of gesture and his theory of the origin of language. In their stead, the article presents a kinesiological approach, and advances a hypothesis for a dual origin of symbolic gesture. The significance of the human artifactual environment in this context allows us to give precedence to brachial articulation over image. In nonhuman apes, the dyadic brachial origins of gestures show striking similarities in form and meaning to human brachial gestures. Manual gestures linked to object manipulation appeared as humankind acquired manual skills. These gestures express triadic values. Before speech, humans most probably already used dyadic symbolic gestures.