LINGUIST List 21.4063 Thu Oct 14 2010 Review: Language Acquisition; Pragmatics; Syntax: Callies (2009) Editor for this issue: Monica Macaulay <monicalinguistlist.org> This LINGUIST List issue is a review of a book published by one of our supporting publishers, commissioned by our book review editorial staff. We welcome discussion of this book review on the list, and particularly invite the author(s) or editor(s) of this book to join in. If you are interested in reviewing a book for LINGUIST, look for the most recent posting with the subject "Reviews: AVAILABLE FOR REVIEW", and follow the instructions at the top of the message. You can also contact the book review staff directly. Directory         1.     Christopher Shedd , Information Highlighting in Advanced Learner English Message 1: Information Highlighting in Advanced Learner English Date: 14-Oct-2010 From: Christopher Shedd <cbsheddolemiss.edu> Subject: Information Highlighting in Advanced Learner English E-mail this message to a friend Discuss this message Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/20/20-1777.html AUTHOR: Marcus Callies TITLE: Information Highlighting in Advanced Learner English SUBTITLE: The syntax-pragmatics interface in second language acquisition SERIES TITLE: Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 186 PUBLISHER: John Benjamins YEAR: 2009 C. Blake Shedd, Intensive English Program, Department of Modern Languages, University of Mississippi SUMMARY This monograph is a publication of the author's revised doctoral dissertation at Phillips-University Marburg and is intended for individuals interested in a thorough introduction to original research on aspects of the interlanguage of German second language learners of English. Making use of English language corpora and including an experimental study of learner and native speaker (NS) writing, this book offers readers a theoretical approach and a practical consideration of research on German students' mastery of English syntax, particularly clefting and inversion. First, the author introduces how English handles information highlighting with syntactic structures. Then, he compares and contrasts how German and English use focusing devices. Next, a discussion of second language acquisition (SLA) pragmatics is presented using the framework of information structure and focusing devices. The author presents his research methodology for two studies (one experimental, the other a learner-corpus study) in which he examines how German learners produce information highlighting syntactic structures in comparison to native speakers (NS). Finally, the author presents his findings, offers insight on how to refine his methodology, and suggests how this research affects SLA teaching methodology and practice. Chapter 1, ''Introduction,'' offers a brief survey of information structure (IS) theory and an analysis of how English uses syntactic means to highlight information. Callies gives examples of the six types of syntactic devices that he studies through both written surveys and electronic corpora of native and non-native speakers (NNS) of English. Finally, the author outlines the research questions of the present study, which focus specifically on which highlighting means German learners of English use in order to place focus on sentence constituents. Callies lays the foundation of the possible lexical and syntactic means of information highlighting available in English in Chapter 2, ''Information highlighting in English.'' The author presents a thorough discussion of current scholarship on information structure and establishes his intention to follow a pragmatic approach grounded in information structure theory to examine the results of this study. Presenting the concept of syntactic weight and how it relates to information highlighting, Callies presents an exhaustive review of current research while also presenting basic explications of terminology like topic, focus, emphasis, intensification, contrast, etc. Finally, he presents numerous examples of each of these terms with an explanation of their form and function as used in highlighting sentence elements through syntactic and lexico-grammatical means. In Chapter 3, ''Information structure and information highlighting in English and German: A comparative perspective,'' the author contrasts how German and English express focus as a part of the languages' information structures. Beginning with a comparison of language typology with respect to languages that have a grammatical word order and a pragmatic word order, Callies analyzes how English and German differ in relation to their treatment of topics and subjects. Following this analysis is a systematic examination of each of these information highlighting techniques: topicalization, preposing, inversion, clefts (which are divided further based on what lexical item or syntactic construction characterizes the cleft), and lexico-grammatical elements. The author concludes that German and English, while sometimes overlapping in how information can be highlighted, differ greatly in the distribution of the individual highlighting techniques. After the theoretical consideration of IS highlighting means in the previous chapter, Callies discusses in Chapter 4, ''Pragmatics and information highlighting in SLA research,'' how a learner's pragmatic competence affects syntactic information highlighting. Focusing mainly on pragmatic competence, the author presents the numerous theories of competencies of second language learners; here he also discusses two theories on the sequential order of acquisition of grammar and pragmatics. Focusing on topic and subject prominence as well as pragmatic and grammatical word order, Callies presents research studies of English language learners from differing linguistic backgrounds in order to analyze the transfer of a learner's L1 (native language) pragmatic knowledge of syntactic information highlighting to the L2 (second language). The author concludes that how a learner's L1 deals with prominence and word order will affect the learner's ability to recognize and produce correct information highlighting structures in the L2. Callies then considers corpora-based research that reveals that English NS and NNS exhibit a demonstrably different frequency and quantity of lexical intensifiers and focus particles, pragmatic markers, and focus constructions. He concludes the chapter by looking at how language universals and language typology theory can be relevant for SLA theory, specifically when considered from a Universal Grammar or functional-typology perspective. Lastly, he poses the research questions he will consider in this study. In Chapter 5, ''Research Design,'' the author details how he undertakes the current study and how data is collected and analyzed. This study utilizes both elicited data from English NS and NNS through a written questionnaire (followed up by oral interviews) and also written corpus data from NS and NNS. The focus of this study is to determine whether pragmatic use of information highlighting structures differs between English NS and advanced German learners of English. Callies discusses the theoretical and practical concerns of determining learner fluency and lists the criteria used in this study to determine whether students were advanced (among which two were deemed crucial: how long subjects had formally studied English and how much they had been exposed to English). The questionnaire seeks to elicit marked syntactic structures that express focus or emphasis on certain sentence constituents. A detailed explanation of the questionnaire is provided in the chapter (readers are directed to complete reproductions of the questionnaire provided in the appendix). The following focusing devices are exemplified from the data: no marked syntactic structure, clefts (sub-divided into six categories), inversion, preposing, topicalization, (non-)extraposition, and existential constructions. The author presents in Chapter 6, ''Experimental Study,'' the findings of the written questionnaire. Extensive statistics are provided along with numerous graphs that depict a comparison of how English NS and German NNS vary in their use of the focusing devices studied in the experiment. The author offers explanations for why certain constructions are used by the NS and NNS. Actual data is also presented from the written questionnaires. Lastly, transcriptions of retrospective interviews with subjects are provided in order to relate the subjects' self-assessment of production and knowledge of pragmatic information highlighting structures and lexemes. Chapter 7, ''Learner-corpus study,'' offers an extensive breakdown of learner and native speaker production of syntactic and lexico-grammatical highlighting means in corpora of NS and NNS written compositions. Accompanying examples from the corpora, numerous tables quantify production of different highlighting means by NS and learners. The author offers a summary of how highlighting elements are used pragmatically and how usage differs by NS and NNS. In light of the data collected, the author returns to his research questions in Chapter 8, ''Discussion and conclusion,'' and discusses the significance of the findings in regards to commonly held beliefs that crosslinguistic transfer is the basis for errors in L2 production of pragmatic highlighting elements. He concludes that language typology offers a better explanation for how learners highlight sentence constituents, mainly as a response to the parameter of subject-prominence. Lastly, Callies briefly mentions limitations of the study and implications of the research findings for second language teaching. EVALUATION Marcus Callies provides SLA researchers with a well-implemented study of the ability of German learners of English to produce pragmatically marked instances of focus and emphasis along with a comparison of how native English speakers express emphasis and focus through lexico-grammatical and syntactic means. Given the lack of research in the area of advanced learners, this study is a superb example of how advanced learner language can be analyzed not only through an experimental study but also in conjunction with written English corpora. This book will be of great interest to syntax specialists and applied linguists, but I think it might be too technical for the average ESL teacher, who will, however, benefit from an abundance of examples that aid the non-specialist in understanding the highly detailed explanations of syntactic variation to express focus and emphasis. The author's conclusions hold import for the ESL teacher in that they point to another reason for learner errors -- language typology -- and not to transfer of L1 pragmatic knowledge; more information on how to measure the influence of language typology on second language learners would be of great help to teachers as they attempt to refine teaching methods that reflect this research. ABOUT THE REVIEWER Blake Shedd is a full-time instructor in the Intensive English Program in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Mississippi. In 2008 he received a Master of Arts in German from the University of Mississippi, where he is currently working part-time on a Master of Arts in Modern Languages with an specialization in Teaching English as a Second Language. His research interests include English and German language teaching, historical linguistics, the history of the English language, and Old English. Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 14-Oct-2010       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.