LINGUIST List 14.199

Mon Jan 20 2003

Qs: SLA Theory, Style Analysis Software

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Sanooch Na-thalang, SLA theory
2. Chris Holcomb, Style Analysis Software?

Dear all,

Could anyone tell me the status of 'contrastive analysis', 'error
analysis' and 'interlanguage' in current second language acquisition
theory? Do people still talk about these terms and, if yes, in what
way? Are there any new developments that have been used to account for
linguistic phenomena these 3 approaches used to have been claimed to
do? 

Regards, 

Sanooch

I'm beginning a book-lenth research project on style, one that will
require me to sift through a large corpus of texts. I'm trying to come
up with ways to facilitate this process, and wonder if the
Linguistlist community might be able to point me to a style analysis
software package that performs the following:

1. Is Windows compatible
2. Can handle a relatively large sample of text (say, the length of
the average journal article or larger)
3. Will pump out or highlight stylistically/linguistically relevant
information (I know that's a rather vague way to put it, but
initially, at least, I'm trying to get a broad sense of what is
available).

One more note about myself that might aid prospective responders to
this querry: I'm a rhetorician who is primarily interested in
exploring the rhetorical/pragmatic/aesthetic consequences of
linguistic choice.

Thank you,
Chris Holcomb

Associate Professor of English
University of South Carolina 

Subject-Language: English; Code: ENG