Even though second-language learners may master the grammar and vocabulary of the new languages, they almost never achieve a native phonology (accent). Scholars and professionals dealing with second-language learners would agree that this is one of the most persistent challenges they face.Now, for the first time, Roy Major's Foreign Accent covers the exploding scholarship in this area and lays out the issues specifically for audiences in the second language acquisition and...

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, e...

Cognitive science is a cross-disciplinary enterprise devoted to understanding the nature of the mind. In recent years, investigators in philosophy, psychology, the neurosciences, artificial intelligence, and a host of other disciplines have come to appreciate how much they can learn from one another about the various dimensions of cognition. The result has been the emergence of one of the most exciting and fruitful areas of inter-disciplinary research in the history of science. This volume...

The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition brings together fifty leading international figures in the field to produce a state-of-the-art overview of Second Language Acquisition.The Handbook covers a wide range of topics related to Second Language Acquisition: language in context, linguistic, psycholinguistic, and neurolinguistic theories and perspectives, skill learning, individual differences, L2 learning settings, and language assessment. All chapter...

What is language and how can we investigate its acquisition by children or adults? What perspectives exist from which to view acquisition? What internal constraints and external factors shape acquisition? What are the properties of interlanguage systems? This comprehensive 31-chapter handbook is an authoritative survey of second language acquisition (SLA). Its multi-perspective synopsis on recent developments in SLA research provides significant contributions by established experts and wid...

Infants and very young children develop almost miraculously the ability of speech, without apparent effort, without even being taught - as opposed to the teenager or the adult struggling without, it seems, ever being able to reach the same level of proficiency as five year olds in their first language. This useful textbook serves as a guide to different types of language acquisition: monolingual and bilingual first language development and child and adult second language acquisition. Unlik...

This extremely up-to-date book, Speech Production and Second Language Acquisition, is the first volume in the exciting new series, Cognitive Science and Second Language Acquisition. This new volume provides a thorough overview of the field and proposes a new integrative model of how L2 speech is produced.The study of speech production is its own subfield within cognitive science. One of the aims of this new book, as is true of the series, is to make cognitive science theor...

This volume explores the elusive subject of English prosody—the stress, rhythm and intonation of the language—, and its relevance for English language teaching. Its sharp focus will be especially welcomed by teachers of English to non-native speakers, but also by scholars and researchers interested in Applied Linguistics. The book examines key issues in the development of prosody and delves into the role of intonation in the construction of meaning. The contributions tackle difficult areas...

Humans instinctively form words by weaving patterns of meaningless speech elements. Moreover, we do so in specific, regular ways. We contrast dogs and gods, favour blogs to lbogs. We begin forming sound-patterns at birth and, like songbirds, we do so spontaneously, even in the absence of an adult model. We even impose these phonological patterns on invented cultural technologies such as reading and writing. But why are humans compelled to generate phonological patterns? And why do differen...

The Cambridge Handbook of Child Language brings together the world's foremost researchers to provide a one-stop resource for the study of language acquisition and development. Grouped into five thematic sections, the handbook is organized by topic, making it easier for students and researchers to use when looking up specific in-depth information. It covers a wider range of subjects than any other handbook on the market, with chapters covering both theories and methods in child language res...

Taking an accessible and cross-linguistic approach, Understanding Child Language Acquisition introduces readers to the most important research on child language acquisition over the last fifty years, as well as to some of the most influential theories in the field. Rather than just describing what children can do at different ages Rowland explains why these research findings are important and what they tell us about how children acquire language.Key features include:

This interdisciplinary synthesis of the social psychological aspects of language use provides an integrative and timely review of language as social action. The book successfully weaves together research from philosophy, linguistics, sociolinguistics, anthropology, social and cognitive psychology, pragmatics, and artificial intelligence. In this way, it clearly demonstrates how many aspects of social life are mediated by language and how understanding language use requires an understanding...