Information Highlighting in Advanced Learner English: The syntax–pragmatics interface in second language acquisition(186 Pragmatics & Beyond New Series)

This book presents the first detailed and comprehensive study of information highlighting in advanced learner language, echoing the increasing interest in questions of near-native competence in SLA research and contributing to the description of advanced interlanguages. It examines the production and comprehension of specific means of information highlighting in English by native speakers and German learners of English as a foreign language, presenting triangulated experimental and learner corpus data as corroborating evidence. The study focuses on learners’ use of discourse-pragmatically motivated variations of the basic word order such as inversion, preposing, and it- and wh-clefts, an underexplored field in SLA research to date.The book also provides a critical re-assessment of the study of pragmatics within SLA. It has largely been neglected to date that L2 pragmatic knowledge includes more than the sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic abilities for understanding and performing speech acts. Thus, the book argues for an extension of the scope of inquiry in interlanguage pragmatics beyond the cross-cultural investigation of speech acts. It also discusses pedagogical implications for foreign language teaching and will be of interest to applied linguists and SLA researchers, language teachers and curriculum designers.

Table of Contents:
1. Abbreviations; 2. List of tables; 3. List of figures; 4. Preface; 5. Chapter 1. Introduction; 6. Chapter 2. Information highlighting in English; 7. Chapter 3. Information structure and information highlighting in English and German: A comparative perspective; 8. Chapter 4. Pragmatics and information highlighting in SLA research; 9. Chapter 5. Research design; 10. Chapter 6. Experimental study; 11. Chapter 7. Learner-corpus study; 12. Chapter 8. Discussion and conclusion; 13. References; 14. Appendices; 15. Index

Review :
Marcus Callies provides SLA researchers with a well-implemented study of the ability of German learners of English to produce pragmatically marked instances of focus and emphasis along with a comparison of how native English speakers express empahasis and focus through lexico-grammatical and syntactic means. Given the lack of research in the area of advanced learners, this study is a superb example of how advanced learner language can be analyzed not only through an experimental study but also in conjunction with written English corpora. This book will be of great interest to syntax specialists and applied linguists. The research on developing bilingualism now shows a very large number of investigations of pragmatics and even more of syntax. Far fewer are the studies that bring these two areas together, and far fewer still are those that do so as well as Marcus Callies has done in this book. The questions that Dr. Callies addresses in this book are among the most persistent and troublesome in second language studies: In what ways is the second language knowledge of very advanced learners similar to or different from native speaker knowledge? And how does a learner balance syntactic and discursive resources in achieving information focus in a new language? In this comprehensive and careful study of advanced German learners of English, Dr. Callies has provided answers to both those questions. The results of this careful and well-written study will be of great interest to linguists, second language acquisition researchers, language teachers, and writers of foreign language textbooks.