front cover of Acquisition and Loss of Nationality, Volume 1
Acquisition and Loss of Nationality, Volume 1
Comparative Analyses: Policies and Trends in 15 European Countries
Edited by Rainer Bauböck, Eva Ersboll, Kees Groenendijk, and Harald Waldrauch
Amsterdam University Press, 2006
Acquisition and Loss of Nationality brings together a team of thirty researchers for an in-depth analysis of nationality laws in all fifteen pre-2004 member states of the European Union. Volume One presents detailed comparisons of the citizenship laws of all fifteen nations, while Volume Two contains individual studies of each country's laws. Together, the books are the most comprehensive available resource on the question of European nationality.
[more]

front cover of Acquisition and Loss of Nationality, Volume 2
Acquisition and Loss of Nationality, Volume 2
Policies and Trends in 15 European Countries: Country Analyses
Edited by Rainer Bauböck, Eva Ersbøll, Kees Groenendijk, and Harald Waldrauch
Amsterdam University Press, 2006
Acquisition and Loss of Nationality brings together a team of thirty researchers for an in-depth analysis of nationality laws in all fifteen pre-2004 member states of the European Union. Volume One presents detailed comparisons of the citizenship laws of all fifteen nations, while Volume Two contains individual studies of each country's laws. Together, the books are the most comprehensive available resource on the question of European nationality.
[more]

logo for Georgetown University Press
The Acquisition of Egyptian Arabic as a Native Language
Margaret K. Omar
Georgetown University Press

In 1968 Margaret K. Omar (Nydell) spent four months in a small Egyptian village called Sheikh Mubarak. Located in Middle Egypt near Al-Minya, residents of Sheik Mubarak speak in a dialect closer to Sa'eedi, not the dialect spoken in Cairo. Omar spent time there conducting interviews, examinations, and taping sessions with children and families to study primary language acquisition in non-Western languages.

Based on her fieldwork, Omar describes the physical and social environment in which the native language was learned, the development of early communication and speech, and when and how children learn the phonology, vocabulary, morphology, and syntactical patterns of Egyptian Arabic. Omar makes comparisons with aspects of language acquisition of other languages, primarily English, and explores implications for the theory of language acquisition.

Originally published in 1973, this book is the most thorough and complete analysis of the stages in which children learn Arabic as a first language. The Arabic in this book is presented in transcription, making the information accessible to all linguists interested in language acquisition.

[more]

front cover of The Comparative Method of Language Acquisition Research
The Comparative Method of Language Acquisition Research
Clifton Pye
University of Chicago Press, 2017
The Mayan family of languages is ancient and unique. With their distinctive relational nouns, positionals, and complex grammatical voices, they are quite alien to English and have never been shown to be genetically related to other New World tongues. These qualities, Clifton Pye shows, afford a particular opportunity for linguistic insight. Both an overview of lessons Pye has gleaned from more than thirty years of studying how children learn Mayan languages as well as a strong case for a novel method of researching crosslinguistic language acquisition more broadly, this book demonstrates the value of a close, granular analysis of a small language lineage for untangling the complexities of first language acquisition.

Pye here applies the comparative method to three Mayan languages—K’iche’, Mam, and Ch’ol—showing how differences in the use of verbs are connected to differences in the subject markers and pronouns used by children and adults. His holistic approach allows him to observe how small differences between the languages lead to significant differences in the structure of the children’s lexicon and grammar, and to learn why that is so. More than this, he expects that such careful scrutiny of related languages’ variable solutions to specific problems will yield new insights into how children acquire complex grammars. Studying such an array of related languages, he argues, is a necessary condition for understanding how any particular language is used; studying languages in isolation, comparing them only to one’s native tongue, is merely collecting linguistic curiosities.
[more]

front cover of Consciousness and the Acquisition of Language
Consciousness and the Acquisition of Language
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Northwestern University Press, 1979
The tools, concepts, and vocabulary of phenomenology are used in this book to explore language in a multitude of contexts.
[more]

front cover of Constructing a Language
Constructing a Language
A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition
Michael Tomasello
Harvard University Press, 2003

In this groundbreaking book, Michael Tomasello presents a comprehensive usage-based theory of language acquisition. Drawing together a vast body of empirical research in cognitive science, linguistics, and developmental psychology, Tomasello demonstrates that we don’t need a self-contained “language instinct” to explain how children learn language. Their linguistic ability is interwoven with other cognitive abilities.

Tomasello argues that the essence of language is its symbolic dimension, which rests on the uniquely human ability to comprehend intention. Grammar emerges as the speakers of a language create linguistic constructions out of recurring sequences of symbols; children pick up these patterns in the buzz of words they hear around them.

All theories of language acquisition assume these fundamental skills of intention-reading and pattern-finding. Some formal linguistic theories posit a second set of acquisition processes to connect somehow with an innate universal grammar. But these extra processes, Tomasello argues, are completely unnecessary—important to save a theory but not to explain the phenomenon.

For all its empirical weaknesses, Chomskian generative grammar has ruled the linguistic world for forty years. Constructing a Language offers a compellingly argued, psychologically sound new vision for the study of language acquisition.

[more]

front cover of Constructions in Acquisition
Constructions in Acquisition
Edited by Barb Kelly and Eve V. Clark
CSLI, 2006
The Acquisition of Constructions is the culmination of new research into constructions of grammar in languages as diverse as Cantonese, English, French, German, Mandarin, Thai, and Tzeltal. The contributors, all noted scholars in the field of construction grammar, investigate the acquisition of constructions—that is, the consistent patterns for combining words and phrases within a language—in children, from the first and most rudimentary gesture combinations to the production of larger syntactic constructions and complex clauses. Timely and comprehensive, it will be a superb resource for scholars of syntax.
[more]

front cover of Deaf Epistemologies
Deaf Epistemologies
Multiple Perspectives on the Acquisition of Knowledge
Peter V. Paul
Gallaudet University Press, 2012

Epistemology is the study of how “knowledge” is formed. Standard epistemology isolates the “known” from the “knowers,” thereby defining “knowledge” as objectively constant. Multiple epistemologies suggest that individuals learn in different ways shaped by life factors such as education, family, ethnicity, history, and regional beliefs. In this groundbreaking volume, editors Peter V. Paul and Donald F. Moores call on ten other noted scholars and researchers to join them in examining the many ways that deaf people see and acquire deaf knowledge.

       This collection considers three major groups of deaf knowledge perspectives: sociological and anthropological, historical/psychological and literary, and educational and philosophical. The first explores the adoption of a naturalized, critical epistemological stance in evaluating research; the epistemology of a positive deaf identity; how personal epistemologies can help form deaf education policies; and valuing deaf indigenous knowledge in research. The next part considers dueling epistemologies in educating deaf learners; reforms in deaf education; the role of deaf children of hearing parents in creating Deaf epistemologies; and the benefit of reading literature with deaf characters for all students. The final part explores the application of the Qualitative-Similarity Hypothesis to deaf students’ acquisition of knowledge; a metaparadigm for literacy instruction in bilingual-bicultural education; collaborative knowledge-building to access academia; and examination of the benefits and disadvantages of being deaf.

[more]

front cover of Little Words
Little Words
Their History, Phonology, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics, and Acquisition
Ronald P. Leow, Héctor Campos, and Donna Lardiere, Editors
Georgetown University Press, 2009

Little Words is an interdisciplinary examination of the functions and change in the use of clitics, pronouns, determiners, conjunctions, discourse particles, auxiliary/light verbs, prepositions, and other “little words” that have played a central role in linguistic theory and in language acquisition research. Leading scholars present advanced research in phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, discourse function, historical development, variation, and acquisition by children and adults.

This unique volume integrates the views and findings of these different research areas into one professional source to be used within and across disciplines. Languages studied include English, Spanish, French, Romanian, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Slavonic, and Medieval Leonese.

[more]

front cover of Measured Language
Measured Language
Quantitative Studies of Acquisition, Assessment, and Variation
Jeffrey Connor-Linton and Luke Wander Amoroso, Editors
Georgetown University Press, 2014

Measured Language: Quantitative Studies of Acquisition, Assessment, and Variation focuses on ways in which various aspects of language can be quantified and how measurement informs and advances our understanding of language. The metaphors and operationalizations of quantification serve as an important lingua franca for seemingly disparate areas of linguistic research, allowing methods and constructs to be translated from one area of linguistic investigation to another.

Measured Language includes forms of measurement and quantitative analysis current in diverse areas of linguistic research from language assessment to language change, from generative linguistics to experimental psycholinguistics, and from longitudinal studies to classroom research. Contributors demonstrate how to operationalize a construct, develop a reliable way to measure it, and finally validate that measurement—and share the relevance of their perspectives and findings to other areas of linguistic inquiry. The range and clarity of the research collected here ensures that even linguists who would not traditionally use quantitative methods will find this volume useful.

[more]

logo for Georgetown University Press
Mi lengua
Spanish as a Heritage Language in the United States, Research and Practice
Ana Roca and M. Cecilia Colombi, Editors
Georgetown University Press, 2003

An increasing number of U.S. Latinos are seeking to become more proficient in Spanish. The Spanish they may have been exposed to in childhood may not be sufficient when they find themselves as adults in more demanding environments, academic or professional. Heritage language learners appear in a wide spectrum of proficiency, from those who have a low level of speaking abilities, to those who may have a higher degree of bilingualism, but not fluent. Whatever the individual case may be, these heritage speakers of Spanish have different linguistic and pedagogical needs than those students learning Spanish as a second or foreign language.

The members of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP) have identified teaching heritage learners as their second greatest area of concern (after proficiency testing). Editors Ana Roca and Cecilia Colombi saw a great need for greater availability and dissemination of scholarly research in applied linguistics and pedagogy that address the development and maintenance of Spanish as a heritage language and the teaching of Spanish to U.S. Hispanic bilingual students in grades K-16. The result is Mi lengua: Spanish as a Heritage Language in the United States.

Mi lengua delves into the research, theory, and practice of teaching Spanish as a heritage language in the United States. The editors and contributors examine theoretical considerations in the field of Heritage Language Development (HLD) as well as community and classroom-based research studies at the elementary, secondary, and university levels. Some chapters are written in Spanish and each chapter presents a practical section on pedagogical implications that provides practice-related suggestions for the teaching of Spanish as a heritage language to students from elementary grades to secondary and college and university levels.

[more]

front cover of Spanish as a Heritage Language in the United States
Spanish as a Heritage Language in the United States
The State of the Field
Sara M. Beaudrie and Marta Fairclough, Editors
Georgetown University Press, 2012

There is growing interest in heritage language learners—individuals who have a personal or familial connection to a nonmajority language. Spanish learners represent the largest segment of this population in the United States.

In this comprehensive volume, experts offer an interdisciplinary overview of research on Spanish as a heritage language in the United States. They also address the central role of education within the field. Contributors offer a wealth of resources for teachers while proposing future directions for scholarship.

[more]

front cover of Syntactic Development
Syntactic Development
William O'Grady
University of Chicago Press, 1997
Syntactic Development presents a broad critical survey of the research literature on child language development. Giving balanced coverage to both theoretical and empirical issues, William O'Grady constructs an up-to-date picture of how children acquire the syntax of English.

Part 1 offers an overview of the developmental data pertaining to a range of syntactic phenomena, including word order, subject drop, embedded clauses, wh-questions, inversion, relative clauses, passives, and anaphora. Part 2 considers the various theories that have been advanced to explain the facts of development as well as the learnability problem, reporting on work in the mainstream formalist framework but also considering the results of alternative approaches.

Covering a wide range of perspectives in the modern study of syntactic development, this book is an invaluable reference for specialists in the field of language acquisition and provides an excellent introduction to the acquisition of syntax for students and researchers in psychology, linguistics, and cognitive science.
[more]

logo for Georgetown University Press
Variable Properties in Language
Their Nature and Acquisition
David W. Lightfoot and Jonathan Havenhill, Editors
Georgetown University Press, 2019

This edited volume, based on papers presented at the 2017 Georgetown University Round Table on Language and Linguistics (GURT), approaches the study of language variation from a variety of angles. Language variation research asks broad questions such as, "Why are languages' grammatical structures different from one another?" as well as more specific word-level questions such as, "Why are words that are pronounced differently still recognized to be the same words?" Too often, research on variation has been siloed based on the particular question—sociolinguists do not talk to historical linguists, who do not talk to phoneticians, and so on. This edited volume seeks to bring discussions from different subfields of linguistics together to explore language variation in a broader sense and acknowledge the complexity and interwoven nature of variation itself.

[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter