Paperback: ISBN: 3895863726 Pages: 152 Price: Europe EURO 52
Abstract:
This work explores the development of aspects of discourse competence by
French immersion students in Ontario, Canada. It represents a new front for
second language acquisition and immersion research in that, firstly, it
provides an in-depth analysis of the mastery by immersion students of
several polysemous and poly-functional words (i.e., comme/like;
donc/alors/(ça) fait que/so; bon; and là), words playing key roles in the
expression of fundamental semantic notions (e.g., comparison, consequence,
location) and discursive functions (e.g., emphasis, topic shifting, turn
yielding). Secondly, it offers insight into the use of discourse markers by
immersion students, an as yet under-researched area.
Finally, it documents the influence on second language learners’ discourse
competence exerted by a range of independent factors, many of which have
not before been applied to research on the development of this competence.
Katherine Rehner completed her Ph.D. in Second Language Education at the
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto and
held a two-year federally-funded Canadian post-doctoral fellowship in the
Department of French Studies and the Department of Languages, Literatures
and Linguistics at York University. Her research to date has focused
primarily on the development of sociolinguistic and discourse competencies
by advanced second language learners of French.
Linguistic Field(s):
Language Acquisition
Sociolinguistics
Date: 23-Nov-2004 From: Ulrich Lueders <lincom.europat-online.de> Subject: Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries to Improve the Analysis of Second Language Data: Geeslin
Title: Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries to Improve the Analysis of Second Language Data
Subtitle: A Study of Copula Choice with Adjectives in Spanish
Series Title: LINCOM Studies in Language Acquisitions 15
Paperback: ISBN: 3895863734 Pages: 181 Price: Europe EURO 56
Abstract:
This volume focuses on the acquisition of the two Spanish copular verbs,
ser 'to be' and estar 'to be', by English-speaking adult learners. It
outlines a cross-disciplinary approach in which syntactic, semantic and
pragmatic features are assessed as predictors of copula choice.
This new model of analysis, which uses several variables that are
simultaneously present in the discourse context, provides a description of
learner language while focusing on language use. This research has
implications for theoretical and sociolinguistic approaches to copula
choice, and is generalizable to other areas of interest within the field of
second language acquisition.
The first section of this book critically examines studies in theoretical
and sociolinguistics.
The second section includes an in-depth review of previous research on the
second language acquisition of copula choice, followed by the presentation
and application of a new model of analysis to data from novice,
intermediate and advanced learners, and native Spanish speakers. The final
section addresses pedagogical and theoretical implications, and outlines
future research goals.
Kimberly L. Geeslin is an Assistant Professor of Hispanic Linguistics at
Indiana University. Her work on the second language acquisition of Spanish
has appeared in Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Linguistics,
Language Learning and Hispania.
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