Second Language Acquisition [electronic resource] /
Roumyana Slabakova.
- Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, 3 United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2016.
- xxi, 483 p. : illustrations.
- Oxford core linguistics .
Includes bibliographical references and index.
pt. I Language -- 1.Language architecture -- 1.1.What is language? What is knowledge of language? -- 1.2.The language architecture -- 1.3.What exactly has to be acquired? -- 1.4.The scientific method in SLA research -- 1.5.Exercises -- 2.Language variation -- 2.1.How do languages differ? -- 2.2.Principles and Parameters in history -- 2.3.The Minimalist Program -- 2.4.What is the learning task for bilinguals? -- 2.5.Exercises -- 3.The psychological reality of language in use -- 3.1.What happens when we hear a sentence? -- 3.2.Phonological perception and lexical recognition -- 3.3.Morphology -- 3.4.The syntactic parser -- 3.5.Models of syntactic processing -- 3.6.Working memory -- 3.7.The psychological reality of language and the grammar -- 3.8.Exercises -- pt. II Language Acquisition -- 4.The Critical Period Hypothesis -- 4.1.The view from biology -- 4.2.The two positions in second language acquisition Note continued: 4.3.Global nativelikeness versus different sensitive periods for the separate parts of the grammar -- 4.4.The first and the second language as communicating vessels -- 4.5.Effects of bilingualism: Is the bilingual two monolinguals in one mind? -- 4.6.The importance of the input -- 4.7.An indirect way of appreciating the importance of input -- 4.8.Conclusions -- 4.9.Exercises -- 5.First language acquisition, two first languages -- 5.1.Acquisition of the sounds of one's native language -- 5.2.Learning word meanings -- 5.3.Acquisition of functional morphology and syntax -- 5.4.Acquisition of semantics and pragmatics -- 5.5.Bilingual first language acquisition -- 5.6.Exercises -- 6.Child second language, multilingual and heritage language acquisition, language attrition -- 6.1.Adult L2 acquisition -- 6.2.Child L2 acquisition -- 6.3.L3/Ln acquisition -- 6.4.Heritage language learners -- 6.5.Language attrition Note continued: 6.6.Commonalities and differences between the four acquisition contexts -- 6.6.1.Is age the crucial factor in bilingual acquisition? -- 6.6.2.The Critical Period Hypothesis and the importance of the input -- 6.6.3.What kind of input? -- 6.6.4.Which areas of the grammar suffer with reduced input? -- 6.6.5.Are first and second language acquisition qualitatively different? -- 6.7.Exercises -- pt. III Second Language Acquisition -- 7.Acquisition of (functional) morphology -- 7.1.Morpheme studies -- 7.2.Syntax-before-morphology, White (2003) -- 7.3.Representational Deficit Hypotheses -- 7.4.The Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis -- 7.5.The Prosodic Transfer Hypothesis -- 7.6.The Feature Reassembly Hypothesis -- 7.7.Exercises -- 8.Acquisition of syntax -- 8.1.A historical excursion into the notion of parameter (through the ages) -- 8.2.Representational Deficit versus Full Functional Representation accounts -- 8.3.Word order -- 8.4.Verb movement Note continued: 8.5.Wh-movement -- 8.6.Conclusion -- 8.7.Exercises -- 9.Acquisition of the mental lexicon -- 9.1.Mental representation and access of lexical items -- 9.1.1.Bilingual lexicon representation models -- 9.1.2.The bilingual lexicon is integrated across languages -- 9.1.3.The bilingual lexicon is accessed in a language-independent way -- 9.1.4.Language exposure and use affects the activation of words in the lexicon -- 9.1.5.Language context may not affect bilingual language activation -- 9.2.Inhibition of one language to speak another -- 9.3.Morphological decomposition in the lexicon -- 9.4.Argument structure -- 9.5.Transfer of reference -- 9.6.Conclusion -- 9.7.Exercises -- 10.Acquisition of the syntax-semantics interface -- 10.1.Types of meaning -- 10.2.Mismatches at the syntax -- semantics interface -- 10.3.L2 acquisition of syntax -- semantics mismatches -- 10.4.Poverty of the Stimulus learning situations in semantics -- 10.5.Meaning of novel constructions Note continued: 10.6.Conjuring up something from nothing -- 10.7.Conclusions -- 10.8.Exercises -- 11.Acquisition of the syntax-discourse and semantics-pragmatics interfaces -- 11.1.Where is the syntax-discourse Interface? -- 11.2.Marking of Topic and Focus across second languages -- 11.3.Word order: constraints and strategies -- 11.4.Pronoun reference -- 11.5.Intonation at the syntax -- discourse interface -- 11.6.Scalar implicatures -- 11.7.Conclusion -- 11.8.Exercises -- 12.L2 processing -- 12.1.Experimental techniques employed in bilingual processing studies -- 12.2.Accounts and predictions -- 12.3.L2 processing of functional morphology -- 12.4.Parsing and syntactic processing in the L2 -- 12.5.Integration of meaning in syntactic processing -- 12.6.Individual differences in grammar processing -- 12.7.Conclusion -- 12.8.Exercises -- 13.The Bottleneck Hypothesis and its implications for the second language classroom -- 13.1.The Bottleneck Hypothesis again Note continued: 13.1.1.What is special about the inflectional morphology? -- 13.1.2.Lexical access and processing of functional morphology -- 13.1.3.If the inflectional morphology is available, complex syntax is not a barrier to meaning -- 13.1.4.If the inflectional morphology is available, semantics and pragmatics are not a problem -- 13.1.5.Putting it all together -- 13.2.Situating the Bottleneck Hypothesis in L2 learning and teaching -- 13.3.Focus on form, interaction, practice, and input processing in the classroom -- 13.4.How to, and how not to, focus on the functional morphology in the classroom -- 13.5.Final words: what is difficult and what is easy to acquire In a second language -- 13.6.Exercises.
This textbook approaches second language acquisition from the perspective of generative linguistics. Roumyana Slabakova reviews and discusses paradigms and findings from the last thirty years of research in the field, focussing in particular on how the second or additional language is represented in the mind and how it is used in communication. The adoption and analysis of a specific model of acquisition, the Bottleneck Hypothesis, provides a unifying perspective. The book assumes some non-technical knowledge of linguistics, but important concepts are clearly introduced and defined throughout, making it a valuable resource not only for undergraduate and graduate students of linguistics, but also for researchers in cognitive science and language teachers.