The papers in this volume focus on the impact of information structure on language acquisition, thereby taking different linguistic approaches into account. They start from an empirical point of view, and examine data from natural first and second language acquisition, which cover a wide range of varieties, from early learner language to native speaker production and from gesture to Creole prototypes. The central theme is the interplay between principles of information structure and linguistic structure and its impact on the functioning and development of the learner's system. The papers examine language-internal explanatory factors and in particular the communicative and structural forces that push and shape the acquisition process, and its outcome. On the theoretical level, the approach adopted appeals both to formal and communicative constraints on a learner s language in use. Two empirical domains provide a 'testing ground' for the respective weight of grammatical versus functional determinants in the acquisition process: (1) the expression of finiteness and scope relations at the utterance level and (2) the expression of anaphoric relations at the discourse level.

This book brings together a collection of articles characterized by two main themes: the contrastive study of parallel phenomena in two or more languages, and an essentially functional approach in which language is regarded, first and foremost, as a rich and complex communication system, inextricably embedded in sociocultural and psychological contexts of use. The majority of the studies reported is empirical in nature, many making use of corpora or other textual materials in the language(s) under investigation. The book begins with an introductory section in which the editors provide surveys of the state of the art in both functional and contrastive linguistics. The other five sections of the volume are devoted to (i) a cognitive perspective on form and function, (ii) information structure, (iii) collocations and formulaic language, (iv) language learning, and (v) discourse and culture.

Dummy auxiliaries are seemingly superfluous words that appear in learner varieties across languages. This volume is an up-to-date overview of research on dummy auxiliaries with contributions covering English, Dutch, German, French, Cypriot-Greek, first and second language acquisition, and specific language impairment as well as dialectal variation.

This volume aims to provide a broad view of second language acquisition, from initial to final stages. It does this within a comparative perspective that addresses results concerning adult and child learners across a variety of source and target languages, in order to assess the relative weight of cognitive and typological determinants during language learning.

Within the field of second language acquisition, interest in the acquisition of French as a second language has a long-standing tradition, especially in the European context. The aim of this book is to offer a synthesis of current research within this area. It contains contributions from different researchers in the field, including studies on the acquisition of grammar, formulaic language, lexis and pragmatic devices, and covering interlanguage development from beginner level up to very advanced, presumably near-native levels of proficiency. The learners in the studies reported in the volume represent different L1 backgrounds and age groups. The chapters shed light on current issues in research on second language acquisition from different theoretical perspectives, and contribute to a better understanding of L2 French and SLA in general. The volume should be of interest for students, teachers and researchers of L2 French and SLA. Originally published in Language, Interaction and Acquisition 3:1 (2012)

"The New Handbook of Second Language Acquisition" is a thoroughly revised, re-organized, and re-worked edition of Ritchie and Bhatia's 1996 handbook. The work is divided into six parts, each devoted to a different aspect of the study of SLA. Part I includes a recent history of methods used in SLA research and an overview of currently used methods. Part II contains chapters on Universal Grammar, emergentism, variationism, information-processing, sociocultural, and cognitive-linguistic. Part III is devoted to overviews of SLA research on lexicon, morphosyntax, phonology, pragmatics, sentence processing, and the distinction between implicit and explicit knowledge. Part IV examines neuropsycholgy of SLA, another on child SLA, and the effects of age on second language acquisition and use. Part V is concerned with the contribution of the linguistic environment to SLA, including work on acquisition in different environments, through the Internet, and by deaf learners. Finally, Part VI treats social factors in SLA, including research on acquisition in contact circumstances, on social identity in SLA, on individual differences in SLA, and on the final state of SLA, bilingualism.

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.

Acquisition of the native language proceeds in a stage-wise manner for both typically developing (TD) children and children with developmental language disorder (DLD). As shown in TD children learning Dutch and German, the ability to establish contextual cohesion serves as the driving force to proceed from a simple, lexical system to a more complex, functional system. It is argued that precisely this ability is challenged in children with DLD. The present book offers an account of the functional linguistic features fit to achieve contextual cohesion in language production. It provides a rationale for practitioners to develop linguistically founded tools to be used in speech therapy.

There is a growing interest in second language acquisition (SLA) research in interdisciplinary approaches as that are by theoretical as much as practical need of understanding language learning and performance. Intellectually, second language acquisition research is now a recognised independent field of academic inquiry concerned with cognitive, psychological, social and pragmatic aspects of the phenomenon of second language development. SLA research tends to be both highly theoretical and experimental and as such lends itself well to the rigour of scientific research. It is in this context that the use of well articulated theories and concepts is increasingly seen as an essential research and ‘thinking’ tool for understanding and conducting SLA research. Processability Theory (Pienemann 1998) is one of the more prominent theories that have been applied across a number of second languages. The logic underlying processability theory is that at any stage during the developmental process, the learner can produce and comprehend only those target language linguistic forms which the current state of the language processor (i.e. the learner lantguage) can handle. It is therefore crucial to understand the architecture of the language processor and the way in which it handles second language development. The chapters included in this book will report on the various technical and theoretical aspects of experimental SLA research across a number of typologically different languages. The book includes detailed chapters outlining the key theoretical claims and methodological requirements underpiniing this kind of SLA research. Many of the subsequent chapters report Procesability Theory-related studies to the wider field of SLA research. Though the emphasis is on cross-linguistic experimental research undertaken within the parameters of Processability Theory, the book nevertheless sheds the light on the nexus between bilingualism and theory-driven second language acquisition research.

This is the first edited volume that tackles the acquisition of the present (tense, aspect, temporality), an under-researched area, particularly compared to the acquisition of past temporality. The first two chapters focus on the L1 acquisition of English from the perspective of the Aspect hypothesis and the Verb-Island hypothesis Wang & Shirai) and the L1 acquisition of French from the perspective of the zero-tense hypothesis (Demirdache & Lungu). The remaining chapters tackle the L2 acquisition of English (Liszka, Al-Thubaiti, Vraciu), French (Ayoun, Saillard), Spanish (Gabriele et al.), Russian (Martelle) and Japanese (Shirai & Li) by learners of different L1s (French, English, Arabic, Chinese and Korean), testing various semantic and syntactic hypotheses. The last chapter presents a summary of the findings, and offers a few conclusions as well as broad directions for future research.