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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...
The future of English linguistics as envisaged by the editors of Topics in English Linguistics lies in empirical studies which integrate work in English linguistics into general and theoretical linguistics on the one hand, and comparative linguistics on the other. The TiEL series features volumes that present interesting new data and analyses, and above all fresh approaches that contribute to the overall aim of the series, which is to further outstanding research in English linguistics.
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...
This collection of articles provides theoretical foundations and perspectives for language attrition research. Its purpose is to enable investigations of L1 attrition to avail themselves more fully and more fundamentally of the theoretical frameworks that have been formulated with respect to SLA and bilingualism. In the thirteen papers collected here, experts in particular disciplines of bilingualism, such as neurolinguistics, formal linguistics, contact linguistics and language and identity, provide an in-depth perspective on L1 attrition which will make the translation of theory to hypothesis easier for future research.
'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.
The contributions in this volume present cutting-edge theoretical and structural analyses of issues surrounding German-language islands, or "Sprachinseln," throughout the world. The individual topics of study in this volume focus on various aspects of these German-language islands such as (but not limited to) phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects of these languages under investigation. Collectively, the body of research contained in this volume explores significantly under-researched topics in the fields of language contact and language attrition and illustrates how this on-going research can be enhanced through the application of formal theoretical frameworks and structural analyses.
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.
This volume, through highly selective and rigorous review processes, has collected eight empirical studies showcasing research advances in multiple domains including child first language, adult additional language, and heritage language acquisition. The studies are theoretically motivated and have adopted a spectrum of innovative methodological strategies to achieve a broader understanding of the nature of learning and the learning process. The volume encompasses a wide range of contents: 1) The L1 and L2 acquisition of syntax, semantics, phonetics, and the syntax-discourse interface; 2) Data comparisons across different learner groups: L1 Chinese children, L2 Chinese learners, and Chinese h...
Gestures are prevalent in communication and tightly linked to language and speech. As such they can shed important light on issues of language development across the lifespan. This volume, originally published as a Special Issue of "Gesture" Volume 8:2 (2008), brings together studies from different disciplines that examine language development in children and adults from varying perspectives. It provides a review of common theoretical and empirical themes, and the contributions address topics such as gesture use in prelinguistic infants, the relationship between gestures and lexical development in typically and atypically developing children and in second language learners, what gestures reveal about discourse, and how all languages that adult second language speakers know can influence each other. The papers exemplify a vibrant new field of study with relevance for multiple disciplines.
Review text: This book is an important contribution to research on multilingualism: the author does not only discuss theoretical aspects of this research field but also attempts to verify theoretical premises with respect to their empirical validity.(Dieter Wolff, Bergische Universität Wuppertal).