When humans learn languages, are they also learning how to create shared meaning? In The Usage-based Study of Language Learning and Multilingualism, a cadre of international experts say yes and offer cutting-edge research in usage-based linguistics to explore how language acquisition, in particular multilingual language acquisition, works.Each chapter presents an original study that supports the view that language learning is initiated through local and meaningful communic...

Is children's language acquisition based on innate linguistic structures or built from cognitive and communicative skills? This book summarises the major theoretical debates in all of the core domains of child language acquisition research (phonology, word-learning, inflectional morphology, syntax and binding) and includes a complete introduction to the two major contrasting theoretical approaches: generativist and constructivist. For each debate, the predictions of the competing accounts ...

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...

Whether we grow up with one, two, or several languages during our early years of life, many of us will learn a second, foreign, or heritage language in later years. The field of Second language acquisition (SLA, for short) investigates the human capacity to learn additional languages in late childhood, adolescence, or adulthood, after the first language --in the case of monolinguals-- or languages --in the case of bilinguals-- have already been acquired. Understanding Second Language A...

A comprehensive textbook on bilingual language acquisition.Increasingly, children grow up hearing two languages from birth. This comprehensive textbook explains how children learn to understand and speak those languages.It brings together both established knowledge and the latest findings about different areas of bilingual language development. It also includes new analyses of previously published materials. The book describes how bilingually raised childre...

Errors in Language Learning and Use is an up-to-date introduction and guide to the study of errors in language, and is also a critical survey of previous work. Error Analysis occupies a central position within Applied Linguistics, and seeks to clarify questions such as `Does correctness matter?', `Is it more important to speak fluently and write imaginatively or to communicate one's message?'Carl James provides a scholarly and well-illustrated theoretical and historical ba...

Code-switching – the alternating use of two languages in the same stretch of discourse by a bilingual speaker – is a dominant topic in the study of bilingualism and a phenomenon that generates a great deal of pointed discussion in the public domain. This handbook provides the most comprehensive guide to this bilingual phenomenon to date. Drawing on empirical data from a wide range of language pairings, the leading researchers in the study of bilingualism examine the linguistic, social and ...

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...

"[This book] opens a window into the process of psycholinguistics, pulling together classic and cutting-edge research from a number of different areas to provide an engaging and insightful introduction to the study of language processing. Psycholinguistics 101 is sure to hook students with its enthusiasm as it provides a clear introduction to the modern research in this field."Maria Polinsky, PhDHarvard UniversityHow is language repres...

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...

Heritage speakers are native speakers of a minority language they learn at home, but due to socio-political pressure from the majority language spoken in their community, their heritage language does not fully develop. In the last decade, the acquisition of heritage languages has become a central focus of study within linguistics and applied linguistics. This work centres on the grammatical development of the heritage language and the language learning trajectory of heritage speakers, synt...

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: