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Language Attrition
'Language attrition' describes the loss of, or changes to, grammatical and other features of a language as a result of declining use by speakers who have changed their linguistic environment and language habits. In such a situation there may, for example, be simplification in the tense system or in certain properties of subordinate clauses; some vocabulary items might fall into disuse and phonetic features may be restructured. These changes can be affected by features of the speaker's environment, but also by his or her attitudes and processes of identification. This book provides a detailed and up-to-date introduction to the way in which language attrition can affect language, as well as to the extra- and sociolinguistic features involved. It also familiarizes the reader with experimental approaches to attrition and data analysis techniques and provides hands-on guidelines on how to apply them.
Foreign Language Research in Cross-cultural Perspective
This volume focuses on priorities for research in language pedagogy. The aim is to give an up-to-date overview of current thinking about important research issues such as the viability of large scale comparisons, the quantitative/qualitative research controversy, new trends in language testing and evaluation, and the role of different learning environments. In their discussions of these issues researchers from the US and from different countries in Europe show to what extent the priorities differ on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
German Diasporic Experiences
Co-published with the Waterloo Centre for German Studies For centuries, large numbers of German-speaking people have emigrated from settlements in Europe to other countries and continents. In German Diasporic Experiences: Identity, Migration, and Loss, more than forty international contributors describe and discuss aspects of the history, language, and culture of these migrant groups, individuals, and their descendants. Part I focuses on identity, with essays exploring the connections among language, politics, and the construction of histories—national, familial, and personal—in German-speaking diasporic communities around the world. Part II deals with migration, examining such issues as...
Social and structural aspects of language contact and change
This book brings together papers that discuss social and structural aspects of language contact and language change. Several papers look at the relevance of historical documents to determine the linguistic nature of early contact varieties, while others investigate the specific processes of contact-induced change that were involved in the emergence and development of these languages. A third set of papers look at how new datasets and greater sensitivity to social issues can help to (re)assess persistent theoretical and empirical questions as well as help to open up new avenues of research. In particular they highlight the heterogeneity of contemporary language practices and attitudes often obscured in sociolinguistic research. The contributions all focus on language variation and change but investigate it from a variety of disciplinary and empirical perspectives and cover a range of linguistic contexts.
The Mysteries of Bilingualism
Eleven critical issues in the study of bilingualism: Insightful analyses by renowned expert François Grosjean The majority of people living around the world today are able to speak more than one language, yet many aspects of the nature and experience of bilingualism raise unresolved questions for researchers. Who exactly is bilingual? What is the extent of bilingualism? How do infant bilinguals who acquire two languages at the same time manage to separate them? Does language processing work differently when bilinguals are interacting with monolinguals and with bilinguals? When a speaker changes their language, do they also change aspects of their personality? In The Mysteries of Bilingualis...
Intonation in Language Contact
The intense language contact between Spanish and Catalan in Catalonia has led to cross-linguistic influence at all linguistic levels, but its effect on the prosody of these languages has received little attention to date. Based on semi-spontaneous and read speech data from 31 Catalan–Spanish bilinguals, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the intonation of Spanish and Catalan as spoken in Girona, with a focus on the speakers’ bilingualism. These contact varieties share numerous intonational properties, with differences mainly in the frequency of specific tunes in certain contexts. However, they also exhibit significant variation, often linked to extralinguistic factors such as the bilinguals’ language dominance. Overall, the intonation of these contact varieties results from substratum transfer and wholesale convergence between the prosodic systems of Spanish and Catalan. The book is particularly relevant to scholars researching prosody, language contact, variation, and multilingualism.
Talking and Testing
A collection of papers that document various dimensions of the ways in which the language learner and the language proficiency interviewer use language to accomplish oral language assessment tasks.
The Handbook of the Neuroscience of Multilingualism
The definitive guide to 21st century investigations of multilingual neuroscience The Handbook of the Neuroscience of Multilingualism provides a comprehensive survey of neurocognitive investigations of multiple-language speakers. Prominent scholar John W. Schwieter offers a unique collection of works from globally recognized researchers in neuroscience, psycholinguistics, neurobiology, psychology, neuroimaging, and others, to provide a multidisciplinary overview of relevant topics. Authoritative coverage of state-of-the-art research provides readers with fundamental knowledge of significant theories and methods, language impairments and disorders, and neural representations, functions, and pr...
Second Language Pronunciation
In the field of second language (L2) acquisition, the number of studies focusing on L2 pronunciation instruction and perceptual/production training has increased as new classroom methodologies have been proposed and new goals for L2 pronunciation have been set. This book brings together different approaches to L2 pronunciation research in the classroom or in the language laboratory. 13 chapters, written by well-known researchers focusing on a variety of first and target languages, are divided into four parts: Pronunciation development and intelligibility: implications for teaching and training studies; L2 pronunciation teaching; L2 pronunciation training: implications for the classroom; and Pronunciation in the laboratory: High Variability Phonetic Training. Intended for researchers in the fields of second language acquisition, phonetics, phonology, psycholinguistics, speech therapies, speech technology, as well as second language teaching, this book not only summarizes the current research questions on L2 pronunciation teaching and training, but also predicts future scenarios for both researchers and practitioners in the field.
Proceedings of Methods XIII
This volume of papers from the 13th International Conference on Methods in Dialectology, held at the University of Leeds in 2008, collects together current research and recent methodological developments in the study of dialects by new and established scholars. It is organised into themed sections reporting on historical dialectology, dialect literature, the production of dialect maps and atlases, and the collection and organisation of material for dialect dictionaries and corpora. Perceptual dialectology and dialect intelligibility are also featured, and there are linguistic analyses of dialectal data from many language varieties.
