A comprehensive introduction to how people learn second languages (L2s), this textbook approaches the topic through five problems the L2 learner has to solve: 'breaking into' the L2; associating forms with meanings; learning sentence structure; learning phrasal and sentential meaning; and learning the use of the L2 in context. These problems are linked throughout to the L2 acquisition of lexis, morphology, syntax, semantics, phonetics/phonology and language-use in a reader-friendly way, using key studies to build a comprehensive picture of how L2s are learned. 'In a nutshell' summaries of chapter sections provide helpful signposts to the developing argument, whilst end-of-chapter activities encourage the reader to reflect on the ideas presented, analyse data and think creatively about the problems encountered. The roles of innate knowledge, input, and the age at which learning starts are also considered. This essential textbook will enable students to think objectively about language, and will be an asset to any introductory course on second language acquisition.

A compelling history of the national conflicts that resulted from efforts to produce the first definitive American dictionary of English The Dictionary Wars recounts the patriotic fervor in the early American republic to produce a definitive national dictionary that would rival Samuel Johnson's 1755 Dictionary of the English Language. But what began as a cultural war of independence from Britain devolved into a battle among lexicographers, authors, scholars, and publishers, all vying for dictionary supremacy and shattering forever the dream of a unified American language. Peter Martin tells of the intense rivalry between America's first lexicographers, Noah Webster and Joseph Emerson Worcester, and how their conflict continued beyond Webster's death, when the ambitious Merriam brothers acquired publishing rights to Webster's American Dictionary. The dictionary wars also engaged America's colleges, libraries, newspapers, religious groups, and state legislatures at a pivotal historical moment that coincided with rising literacy and the print revolution. Delving into personal stories and national debates, The Dictionary Wars examines the linguistic struggles that underpinned the founding and growth of a nation.

This clear and concise introduction offers students of linguistics and English language a comprehensive overview of English grammar, including word structure, major and minor word classes, phrases, clauses and sentences. Based on twenty years' teaching practice, Louise Cummings adopts a unique approach of using three real-world contexts - first language acquisition, language disorders and non-standard dialects - as a pedagogical tool to make grammatical concepts meaningful to students and to improve engagement and understanding. In seven accessible chapters, students are encouraged to develop the analytical skills they require to give a comprehensive description of the grammar of the English language. A range of supportive learning aids is used, including: * Learning objectives and section 'key points' summaries * Varied examples from world Englishes and print media * Homework assignments, exercises and revision questions * Targeted further reading suggestions and 'special topics' boxes * A glossary of 300 entries * An extensive range of online resources for instructors and students, including a test bank of 140 multiple-choice questions, useful links and an answer key.

Learning a foreign language is much easier when it is approached with a knowledge of language structure ('grammar'), but many students find grammar mystifying. This text explains points of grammar straightforwardly using examples from several widely-studied languages, including English, so that students can see how the same principles work across different languages, and how the structures of different languages correspond both formally and functionally. The use of concrete examples makes grammar less abstract and easier to grasp, allowing students to relate what they are learning to knowledge that they already possess unconsciously; it simultaneously brings that knowledge up to a conscious level.

The compelling story of a young woman's emergence into the world after spending her first 13 years strapped to a chair, and her rescue and exploitation by scientists hoping to gain new insight into language acquisition.

Now in its second edition, this volume provides an up to date, accessible, yet authoritative introduction to feedback on second language writing for upper undergraduate and postgraduate students, teachers and researchers in TESOL, applied linguistics, composition studies and English for academic purposes (EAP). Chapters written by leading experts emphasise the potential that feedback has for helping to create a supportive teaching environment, for conveying and modelling ideas about good writing, for developing the ways students talk about writing, and for mediating the relationship between students' wider cultural and social worlds and their growing familiarity with new literacy practices. In addition to updated chapters from the first edition, this edition includes new chapters which focus on new and developing areas of feedback research including student engagement and participation with feedback, the links between SLA and feedback research, automated computer feedback and the use by students of internet resources and social media as feedback resources.

For college students in courses with the same topic in communication disorders, psychology, and education. A best-selling, comprehensive, easy-to-understand introduction to language development. This best-selling introduction to language development text offers a cohesive, easy-to-understand overview of all aspects of the subject, from syntax, morphology, and semantics, to phonology and pragmatics. Each idea and concept is explained in a way that is clear to even beginning students and then reinforced with outstanding pedagogical aids such as discussion questions, chapter objectives, reflections, and main point boxed features. The book looks at how children learn to communicate in general and in English specifically, while emphasizing individual patterns of communication development. The new Ninth Edition continues the distribution of bilingual and dialectal development throughout the text; expands the discussion of children from lower-SES families, including those living in homeless shelters; makes substantial improvements in the organization and clarity of Chapter 4 on cognition and its relationship to speech and language; consolidates information on Theory of Mind in one chapter; improves readability throughout with more thorough explanations, simplification of terms, and increased use of headings and bullets; weeds out redundancies and asides to help streamline the reading; provides more child language examples throughout; and thoroughly updates the research, including the addition of several hundred new references.

What is the lexicon, what does it contain, and how is it structured? What principles determine the functioning of the lexicon as a component of natural language grammar? What role does lexical information play in linguistic theory? This accessible introduction aims to answer these questions, and explores the relation of the lexicon to grammar as a whole. It includes a critical overview of major theoretical frameworks, and puts forward a unified treatment of lexical structure and design. The text can be used for introductory and advanced courses, and for courses that touch upon different aspects of the lexicon, such as lexical semantics, lexicography, syntax, general linguistics, computational lexicology and ontology design. The book provides students with a set of tools which will enable them to work with lexical data for all kinds of purposes, including an abundance of exercises and in-class activities designed to ensure that students are actively engaged with the content and effectively acquire the necessary knowledge and skills they need.

This book offers a comprehensive linguistic analysis of contemporary US television series. Adopting an interdisciplinary and multimethodological approach, Monika Bednarek brings together linguistic analysis of the Sydney Corpus of Television Dialogue with analysis of scriptwriting manuals, interviews with Hollywood scriptwriters, and a survey undertaken with university students about their consumption of TV series. In so doing, she presents five new and original empirical studies. The focus on language use in a professional context (the television industry), on scriptwriting pedagogy, and on learning and teaching provides an applied linguistic lens on TV series. This is complemented by perspectives taken from media linguistics, corpus linguistics and sociocultural linguistics/sociolinguistics. Throughout the book, multiple dialogue extracts are presented from a wide variety of well-known fictional television series, including The Big Bang Theory, Grey's Anatomy and Bones. Researchers in applied linguistics, discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics and media linguistics will find the book both stimulating and unique in its approach.

The spread of English as a global language has resulted in the emergence of a number of related fields of research within applied linguistics, including English as an International Language, English as a Lingua Franca, and World Englishes. Here, Heath Rose and Nicola Galloway consolidate this work by exploring how the global spread of English has impacted TESOL, uniting similar movements in second language acquisition, such as translanguaging and the multilingual turn. They build on a number of concrete proposals for change and innovation in English language teaching practice, whilst offering a detailed examination of how to incorporate a Global Englishes perspective into the multiple faces of TESOL, putting research-informed practice at the forefront. Global Englishes for Language Teaching is a ground-breaking attempt to unite discussions on the pedagogical implications of the global spread of English into a single text for researchers and practicing teachers.

The ability to speak two or more languages is a common human experience, whether for children born into bilingual families, young people enrolled in foreign language classes, or mature and older adults learning and using more than one language to meet life's needs and desires. This Handbook offers a developmentally oriented and socially contextualized survey of research into individual bilingualism, comprising the learning, use and, as the case may be, unlearning of two or more spoken and signed languages and language varieties. A wide range of topics is covered, from ideologies, policy, the law, and economics, to exposure and input, language education, measurement of bilingual abilities, attrition and forgetting, and giftedness in bilinguals. Also explored are cross- and intra-disciplinary connections with psychology, clinical linguistics, second language acquisition, education, cognitive science, neurolinguistics, contact linguistics, and sign language research.

A dictionary records a language and a cultural world. This global history of lexicography is the first survey of all the dictionaries which humans have made, from the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, India, and the Greco-Roman world, to the contemporary speech communities of every inhabited continent. Their makers included poets and soldiers, saints and courtiers, a scribe in an ancient Egyptian 'house of life' and a Vietnamese queen. Their physical forms include Tamil palm-leaf manuscripts and the dictionary apps which are supporting endangered Australian languages. Through engaging and accessible studies, a diverse team of leading scholars provide fascinating insight into the dictionaries of hundreds of languages, into the imaginative worlds of those who used or observed them, and into a dazzling variety of the literate cultures of humankind.

Bilingual language behaviour is driven by numerous factors that are usually studied in isolation, even though individual factors never operate alone. Bringing together key insights from psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics, Luna Filipovic presents a new model of bilingual language processing that captures bilingualism within and across minds. The model enables readers to explain traditional puzzles in the field, and accounts for some apparently contradictory reports in different studies. It shows how theory can be applied in practice and how practice feeds back into theory, with mutual benefits. Bilinguals are studied in action, when they interact with other bilinguals or monolinguals, when they recall witnessed events in real life and in the lab and when they translate and interpret for the benefit of monolinguals. This interdisciplinary take on bilingualism in action will lead to new research on bilingualism itself, and to applications in forensic linguistics and translation studies.

Authoritative and accessible, this book introduces the theory and practice of teaching writing to students of EFL/ESL learners. While assuming no specialist knowledge, Ken Hyland systematically sets out the key issues of course design, lesson planning, texts and materials, tasks, feedback and assessment and how current research can inform classroom practice. This second edition is completely revised to include up-to-date work on automated feedback, plagiarism, social media, Virtual Learning Environments and teacher workload issues. It takes the clear stance that student writers not only need realistic strategies for drafting and revising, but also a clear understanding of genre to structure their writing experiences according to the expectations of particular communities of readers and the constraints of particular contexts. Review exercises, reflection questions, plentiful examples and a new extensive glossary make the book invaluable to both prospective and practicing teachers alike.

Focusing on Slavic languages, Danko Sipka provides a systematic approach to lexical indicators of cultural identity. In contrast to existing research, which focuses heavily on syntactic and phonological approaches, Sipka's approach is novel, more systematic and encompassing, and postulates three lexical layers of cultural identity: deep, exchange, and surface. The deep layer pertains to culture-specific words, divisions, and features that are generally not subject to change and intervention. The exchange layer includes lexical markers of cultural influences resulting from lexical borrowing, which situates the speakers into various cultural circles. This layer is subject to gradual changes and some limited level of intervention from linguistic elites is possible. Finally, the surface layer encompasses the processes and consequences of lexical planning. It is subject to abrupt changes and it is shaped in constant negotiation between linguistic elites and general body of speakers.

Teaching and Researching Speaking provides an overview of the main approaches to researching spoken language and their practical application to teaching, classroom materials, and assessment. The history and current practices of teaching and researching speaking are presented through the lens of bigger theoretical issues about the object of study in linguistics, social attitudes to the spoken form, and the relationships between spoken and written language. A unique feature of the book is the way it clearly explains the nature of speaking and how it is researched and puts it into the context of a readable and holistic overview of language theory. This new edition is fully updated and revised to reflect the latest developments on classroom materials and oral assessment, as well as innovations in conversation analysis. The resources section is brought up-to-date with new media and currently available networks, online corpora, and mobile applications. This is a key resource for applied linguistics students, English language teachers, teacher trainers, and novice researchers.

Introduction to Language Development is a textbook designed for use in undergraduate language acquisition courses. The primary components of language development (morphology, phonology, semantics, syntax, pragmatics, literacy development, and multicultural and multilinguistic differences) are presented in an uncomplicated manner, along with examples that illustrate children's speech and language behaviors. The proposed book describes the typical speech and language development of preschool-, early school-, and later school-aged children. The goal of this text is to provide students with knowledge of typical speech and language development. To further students' understanding of the material, each chapter begins with chapter objectives to focus students' attention on the main points in that chapter. Typical developmental norms are presented in tables and figures, such as the norms for morphological and phonological acquisition. This text also offers study questions at the end of every chapter to ensure that students understand the material in that chapter. Information is presented in a succinct and uncomplicated manner, appropriate for undergraduate students. Information is also be geared to prepare them for later classes that require knowledge of typical language acquisition, such as the courses dealing with speech and language disorders. The text also addresses the problem that many existing texts contain limited information on multicultural and multilinguistic language differences. This information is essential as approximately 10.8% (over 5.3 million) of school-age children in the United States are English language learners (National Clearinghouse for English language acquisition, 2011). In addition, literacy is poorly represented in most current texts, a topic that of national concern for both native-English language speaking and English language learning children.

The Iranian languages are a major component of the Indo-European family, and an important link between Asian, European and African languages. They contain features that can provide crucial evidence for synchronic and diachronic typology and other theoretical linguistic issues, but which are widely unknown, and difficult to access. In addition to the descriptions of each language in the family, the volume provides paradigms and syntagms, and systematic comparative-historical and typological statements.

This book correlates English-speaking children's brain development and acquisition of language with the linguistic input that comes from children's books. Drawing from the most current research on the developing brain, the author demonstrates how language acquisition is exclusively interactive, and highlights the benefit that accrues when that interaction includes the exploratory language play found in early childhood literature. Through discussions of specific domains of grammar, the relation of these domains to children's literature through scaffolding, and the resultant linguistic and cognitive advantages for the child, this volume offers an innovative approach to early brain maturation.

First Published in 1984. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

A state-of-the-art, in-depth survey of the topics, approaches and theories in Spanish linguistics today. The language is researched from a number of different perspectives. This Handbook surveys the major advances and findings, with a special focus on recent accomplishments in the field. It provides an accurate and complete overview of research, as well as facilitating future directions. It encourages the reader to make connections between chapters and units, and promotes cross-theoretical dialogue. The contributions are by a wide range of specialists, writing on topics including corpus linguistics, phonology and phonetics, morphosyntax, pragmatics, the role of the speaker and speech context, language acquisition and grammaticalization. This is a must-have volume for researchers looking to contextualize their own research and for students seeking a one-stop resource on Spanish linguistics.

Providing a solid foundation in second language acquisition, this book has become the leading introduction to the subject for students of linguistics, psychology and education, and trainee language teachers. Now in its third edition, the textbook offers comprehensive coverage of fundamental concepts, including second language acquisition (SLA) in adults and children, in formal and informal learning contexts, and in diverse socio-cultural settings, and takes an interdisciplinary approach, encouraging students to consider SLA from linguistic, psychological and social perspectives. Each chapter contains a list of key terms, a summary, and a range of graded exercises suitable for self-testing and class discussion. The third edition has been revised throughout, and features new material on the practical aspects of teaching language, along with updated online resources, including new classroom activities to accompany each chapter, as well as updated references and further reading suggestions.

This book constitutes a timely contribution to the existing literature by presenting a relatively comprehensive, neurobiological account of certain aspects of second language acquisition. It represents the collaborative efforts of members of the Neurobiology of Language Research Group in the Applied Linguistics and TESL Department at UCLA. Members of the group are trained in neurobiology and then use this knowledge to develop biological accounts of various aspects of applied linguistics.
The volume avoids the corticocentric bias that characterizes many brain-language publications--both cortical and subcortical structures receive their appropriate attention. In addition, it demonstrates that enough is presently known about the brain to inform our conceptualizations of how humans acquire second languages, thus, it provides a refreshingly novel, highly integrative contribution to the (second) language acquisition literature.
The goal of the research program was based on the need to drawmore links between the neurobiological mechanisms and second language acquisition. As such, the book promotes a neurobiology of language that starts with the brain and moves to behavior. The fundamental insights presented should guide second language acquisition researchers for years to come.

The Indo-Aryan languages, spoken by at least 700 million people in the Republic of India, in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Maldive Islands, and in countries where immigrants from South Asia have settled, constitute a major group within the Indo-European family. They have a claim to great antiquity, with the earliest Vedic Sanskrit texts dating to the end of the second millennium B.C. This language family supplies a historical documentation of language change over a longer period than any other subgroup of Indo-European. Further, the interaction between Indo-Aryan and Dravidan, Munda, and Tibeto-Burmese languages as well as Arabic and other Indo-European languages affords a rich field of study for borrowing and adaptation. Major features of Indo-Aryan languages have been described before, but there is a need for a synoptic treatment of these languages.