This volume aims to provide a broad view of second language acquisition within a comparative perspective that addresses results concerning adult and child learners across a variety of source and target languages. It brings together contributions at the forefront of language acquisition research that consider a wide range of open questions: What are the precise mechanisms underlying acquisition? How can we characterize learners’ initial state and predict their degree of final achievement? What role do specific (typological) properties of source and target languages play? How does fossilization occur? How does the relative complexity of cognitive systems in adult and child learners affect acquisition? Does language learning influence cognitive organization? Can language learning shed light on our general understanding of human language and language processing?
Table of Contents:
Introduction-Marzena Watorek, Sandra Benazzo & Maya Hickmann: New Comparative Perspectives in the Study of Language Acquisition – Clive Perdue’s Legacy
Part I. Second Language Acquisition: From Initial to Final Stages
1. Wolfgang Klein: From the Learner’s Point of View
2. Rebekah Rast: L2 Input and the L2 Initial State: The Writings of Clive Perdue
3. Angelika Becker: Finiteness and the Acquisition of Negation
4. Sara Schimke, Joshe Verhagen & Giusy Turco: The Different Role of Additive and Negative Particles in the Development of Finiteness in Early Adult L2 German and L2 Dutch
5. Giuliano Bernini: Lexical Categories in the Target Language and the Lexical Categorisation of Learners: The Word Class of Adverbs
6. Jili Sun: Is it Necessary for Chinese Learners to Mark Time? Reflexions about the Use of Temporal Adverbs with Respect to Verbal Morphology Relations
7. Pascale Trévisiol: The Development of Reference to Time and Space in L3 French: Evidence from Narratives
8. Alexandra Vraciu: Accounting for Verbal Morphology in Advanced Varieties of English L2: Aspect or Discourse?
9. Inge Bartning: High-level Proficiency in Second Language Use: The Case of French
10. David Singleton: Ultimate Attainment and the CPH: Some Thorny Issues
11. Sandra Benazzo: Learner Varieties and Creating Language Anew: How Acquisitional Studies can Contribute to Language Evolution Research
12. Ivani Fusellier: Multiple Perspectives on the Emergence and Development of Human Language: B. Comrie, C. Perdue and D. Slobin
Part II. L1 and L2 Acquisition: Learner Type Perspective
13. Dan Slobin: Child Language Study and Adult Language Acquisition: Twenty Years Later
14. Natasha Müller & Nadine Eichler: Mixing of Functional Categories in Bilingual Children and in Second Language Learners.
15. Suzanne Schlyter & Anita Thomas: L1 or L2 Acquisition? Finiteness in Child Second Language Learners (chL2), Compared to Adult L2 Learners (adL2) and Young Bilingual Children (2L1)
16. Rosmary Tracy & Vytautas Lemke: Young L2 and L1 Learners: More Alike than Different
17. Christine Dimroth & Stefanie Haberzettl: The Older the Better, or More is More: Language Acquisition in Childhood
18. Sandra Benazzo, Clive Perdue, Marzena Watorek: Additive Scope Particles and Anaphoric Linkage in Narrative and Descriptive Texts: A Developmental Study in French L1 & L2
19. Patrizia Giuliano: Discourse Cohesion in Narrative Texts: The Role of Additive Particles in Italian L1 and L2
20. Henrëtte Hendriks & Marzena Watorek: The Role of Conceptual Development in the Acquisition of the Spatial Domain by L1 and L2 Learners of French, English and Polish
21. Ewa Lenart: The Grammaticalisation of Nominals in French L1 and L2: A Comparative Study of Child and Adult Acquisition
Part III. Typological Variation and Language Acquisition
22. Anna Giacalone-Ramat: Typology Meets Second Language Acquisition
23. Rainer Dietrich, Chung Shan Kao & Werner Sommer: Linguistic Relativity…Another Turn to the Screw
24. Annie-Claude Demagny: Path in L2 Acquisition: The Expression of Temporality in Spatially Oriented Narratives
25. Carmen Muñoz: A Cross-linguistic Study of Narratives with Special Attention to the Progressive: A Contrast between English, Spanish and Catalan
26. Tatiana Aleksandrova: Reference to Entities in Fictional Narratives of Russian/French Quasi-Bilinguals
27. Cecilia Andorno: The Cohesive Function of Word Order in L1 and L2 Italian: How V-S Structures Mark Local and Global Coherence in the Discourse of Native Speakers and of Learners
28. Christiane Von Stutterheim, Ute Halm & Mary Carroll: Macrostructural Principles and the Development of Narrative Competence in L1 German: The Role of Grammar in 8-14 Year Olds
29. Michèle Kail: On-line Sentence Processing in Children and Adults: General and Specific Constraints: A Crosslinguistic Study in Four Languages
Closure-Sir John Lyons: A Personal Tribute
About the Author :
Marzena Watorek is Professor in Linguistics at the University Paris 8. Her research interests include first and second language acquisition, particularly discourse production, initial processing of the input by adult learners, and the interface between language acquisition and teaching.
Sandra Benazzo is Associate Professor in Linguistics and French as a Second Language at the University Lille 3. Her research mainly concerns L2 acquisition in the domain of temporality, information structure, discourse organization and the comparison with L1 acquisition.
Maya Hickmann is Research Director in the Laboratoire Structures Formelles du Langage (CNRS and Université Paris 8). Her research mainly focuses on the role of structural vs. functional and universal vs. language-specific determinants in first and second language acquisition.
Review :
This well-edited collection of papers responds to the theoretical issues that concerned Clive Perdue throughout his productive career. The 29 chapters examine similarities and differences between monolinguals, childhood bilinguals, and adult and child learners of a second language. We see how learner productions are influenced by perceptual abilities, L1 transfer, and explicit learning as they operate across the lifespan, rather than some uniform expiration of a critical period.
In this volume, written by collaborators and friends of Clive Perdue, we find both familiar themes such as the expression of meaning in language, and unfamiliar ones such as the critical period, evolution, and signed language. Well-studied migrant workers provide data as do new populations (tutored learners, child L2ers, near native adult L2ers, bilinguals). What binds the contributions is a concern with simpler linguistic systems. A worthy tribute to Clive's intellectual legacy.
