LINGUIST List 23.608 Sun Feb 05 2012 Review: Applied Ling.; Lang. Acquisition: Roberts et al. (2011) Editor for this issue: Joseph Salmons <jsalmonslinguistlist.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.     Libby Gertken , EUROSLA Yearbook Message 1: EUROSLA Yearbook Date: 05-Feb-2012 From: Libby Gertken <libmallyahoo.com> Subject: EUROSLA Yearbook E-mail this message to a friend Discuss this message Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/22/22-3504.html EDITORS: Leah Roberts, Gabriele Pallotti, Camilla Bettoni TITLE: EUROSLA Yearbook SUBTITLE: Volume 11 (2011) SERIES TITLE: EUROSLA Yearbook 11 PUBLISHER: John Benjamins YEAR: 2011 Libby M. Gertken, Department of French and Italian, University of Texas-Austin SUMMARY This volume contains a range of perspectives on second language (L2) acquisition in the form of 11 papers originally presented at the EUROSLA 20 conference in Reggio Emilia in 2010 and the EUROSLA 2009 conference in Cork. Within the broad theme of L2 acquisition, the contributions of this volume address language testing, the lexicon, morphosyntax, and the syntax-discourse interface. The first five papers represent non-traditional approaches to L2 acquisition, while the latter six are more conventional in their topics, methodology, and (mostly generative) theoretical framework. This review outlines the objectives, methodology, results, and conclusions of each paper and evaluates the qualities of the volume as a whole. Maria del Mar Suárez and Carmen Muñoz ("Aptitude age, and cognitive development: The MLAT-E in Spanish and Catalan") provide the first of two papers directly related to language testing. The authors investigated whether language aptitude, as measured by the Modern Language Aptitude Test-Elementary (MLAT-E), is stable among young language learners. They examined the performance of Catalan-Spanish bilinguals in grades 3 through 7 on the Spanish and Catalan versions of the MLAT-E. An increase in mean scores with increasing age for both versions of the MLAT-E suggests that language aptitude is not static in children. The smallest change across grades was found between grades 6 and 7, which the authors interpret as a plateau in language aptitude and the starting point of stability of aptitude scores (though the scores of higher grades were not evaluated). The authors argue that a spike in aptitude scores between grades 3 and 4 coincides with a Piagetian theory of cognitive development. It is precisely at grades 3-4 (ages 8-9) when the cognitive operations required to successfully perform a portion of the MLAT-E subtests start to develop (the concrete operational stage), and the plateau in aptitude scores in grade 6 (age 12) is related to the mastery of these cognitive operations (the formal operational stage). One conclusion offered is that the MLAT-E may not measure what it claims to measure at ages 8-9. Relating aptitude scores to cognitive development is an intuitive explanation for the observed uneven score increase across grades, though alternative hypotheses deserve mention. The question of stability in language aptitude is also left somewhat unresolved considering that a plateau in scores around the age of 12 cannot be confirmed without either longitudinal data or cross-sectional data that includes scores above this age. J. Charles Alderson and Ari Huhta ("Can research into the diagnostic testing of reading in a second or foreign language contribute to SLA research?") continue the theme of language testing in their consideration of the mutual benefits of cooperation between L2 acquisition research and language testing, specifically as it pertains to the study and testing of second and foreign language reading. The paper does a good job of reinforcing basic principles of testing (e.g., the importance of clearly defined constructs, of determining the reliability and validity of tasks) and provides a thorough review of the construct of reading. The authors report on three ongoing research projects. Project 1 looks at reading in a first language in order to determine what makes an item on a reading test difficult, from which it is inferred what cognitive processes are involved in responding to that item. Four judges rated 100 items on the Programme for International Student Assessment test according to a pool of potential predictors of difficulty (e.g., Register of the text) using a 3- or 4-point scale. Ratings were compared to item difficulty values (not explicitly defined). A regression analysis showed moderate prediction of difficulty--27.9% to 46.3% variation explained--when variables were grouped in larger categories (e.g., Structural Prominence). Project 2 looks at foreign language and L2 reading and examines whether item difficulty on the Pearson Test of English Academic can be predicted by variables similar to those in Project 1. Project 3 is a large-scale effort involving three studies--its goal is to more directly investigate the cognitive variables that affect language learners' reading through cognitive tests (e.g., Backwards digit span memory task). The paper's broader aim is to encourage L2 acquisition scholars to draw on insights from L2 testing--and vice versa--in order to better understand the processes involved in second and foreign language reading and how they are acquired. The paper by Dieter Thoma ("Guessing and risk attitude in L2 vocabulary tests") conceptually links the previous two testing-related papers with the upcoming two lexicon-oriented papers in its discussion of guessing in L2 vocabulary tests. Thoma looks into what causes students to resort to guessing, which is traditionally attributed to the L2 proficiency and risk attitude of test takers. More proficient test takers guess less often and more successfully, and risk-averse personalities tend to make fewer guesses. 135 German-speaking learners of English as a foreign language participated in a computer-based yes/no vocabulary test designed to estimate receptive vocabulary size. Participants were shown both English words and pseudowords and asked to decide whether or not they knew its meaning. Participants also completed a translation task involving all words from the yes/no task. Guessing was operationalized as number of false alarms on the yes/no test ('yes' response to a pseudoword) and the number of hits on the yes/no test ('yes' response to a word) that participants could not translate. A risk attitude test was also administered. Results from stepwise regression analyses revealed that inappropriate or lack of semantic word knowledge was the best predictor of false alarm rates on the yes/no test. Contrary to conventional understanding, guessing was found to be unrelated to both general lexical proficiency (defined as accuracy on the translation task) and risk attitude. The authors propose a novel scoring method for discrete vocabulary tests based on these findings. Camilla Bardel and Christina Lindqvist ("Developing a lexical profiler for spoken French L2 and Italian L2: The role of frequency, thematic vocabulary and cognates") seek to improve upon frequency-based assessments of lexical richness in oral production. One means of measuring lexical richness in an L2 is to conduct Lexical Frequency Profiles (Laufer & Nation, 1995), in which a high proportion of low-frequency words denotes a high level of lexical proficiency. The paper argues that not all low-frequency words should be considered advanced. Results from an earlier lexical frequency profiling analysis are presented first. Interviews with L2 learners and native speakers of French and Italian yielded data that were transcribed and analyzed for lexical frequency. 24 Swedish-speaking L2 French participants were classified as either advanced low or advanced high proficiency, and 30 Swedish-speaking L2 Italian participants were sorted into intermediate or advanced proficiency groups. It is unclear what specific criteria were used in these classifications other than "morpho-syntactic criteria" (p.80). Nevertheless, proportions of low-frequency words were found to correspond to proficiency at the group level, with less advanced L2 learners exhibiting lower proportions of low-frequency words than more advanced groups. Yet there was overlap between groups, and some L2 learners even outperformed native speakers. This paper presents a qualitative analysis of the intra-group variation, focusing on 8 learners who scored unexpectedly high or low for their proficiency group. All low-frequency words produced by these participants were categorized as Thematic (e.g., travel and transport, sports and spare time activities), Cognates, or Other. Including thematic vocabulary was an attempt to capture the fact that some low-frequency words are in fact common in classroom settings. One problem with this method is that not all participants were classroom learners. Results of the qualitative analysis showed that whereas each participant used thematic vocabulary to roughly the same extent, they differed in their use of cognates, with more advanced learners using a greater number and variety. The authors contend that accounting for qualitative aspects of low-frequency words provides a better indicator of lexical richness than quantity alone. Paul Meara's contribution ("Gossamer or bindweed? Association links between common words") is an exploratory case study on the organization of the mental lexicon in native speakers. Citing problems with current methods of examining word associations, he introduces an innovative methodology that allows for more comprehensive analysis of associative links among words in different frequency bands. The author was the sole subject of the case study. 500 randomly selected English word pairs were presented to the participant using dedicated software, one pair at a time. The task was to determine whether there was a link or association between the words. Over a six-month period, the participant responded to 75,000 word pairs. The mean number of links per 500 word pairs for each of 5 frequency bands was collected. Results indicated that links within the 1000 most frequent words are more likely to be identified than links from other frequency bands. The density of the connections seems to decline with frequency as well. Meara concludes that associative networks may be more dense than traditionally described but that density may vary in different parts of the lexicon. As may be expected, it appears that low frequency words have fewer associations and thus form a less dense network. To conclude, Meara relates his native speaker study to L2 acquisition by suggesting that the construction of associative networks may play a major role in the acquisition of L2 competence. While Meara is frank about the limitations of a single-subject, researcher-as-subject pilot study, his contribution to this volume offers promising research directions for vocabulary study in native speakers as well as L2 speakers. The next paper by Masanori Bannai ("The nature of variable sensitivity to agreement violations in L2 English") is a departure from the preceding papers in its focus on morphosyntax and its more traditional, generative approach to L2 acquisition, which is echoed in the next five papers. The author reports on Self-Paced Reading and Grammaticality Judgment Tasks involving Japanese learners of L2 English (n=37) and native English speakers (n=13) that were aimed at assessing sensitivity to violations of subject-verb number agreement. Participants were of low to upper intermediate proficiency, according to standardized test scores. Stimuli in both tasks included grammatical and ungrammatical sentences containing omission of 3rd person plural subject-verb agreement ("…the doctor drinks/*drink…"), overuse of 3rd person plural subject-verb agreement ("…those two sisters make/*makes…"), omission and overuse with an intervening adverb ("…the mother often cooks/*cook…"), and omission and overuse with a PP complement in the subject DP ("…the student with a large bag carries/*carry…"). Grammaticality judgment results indicated that learners and native speakers were aware of agreement violations for all sentence types. In the Self-Paced Reading Task, native speakers showed violation sensitivity to all but one sentence type--ungrammatical sentences with a PP complement--for which they displayed attraction errors. Reaction time data showed that learners were insensitive to violations involving the omission of 3rd person singular -s but highly sensitive to overuse of the 3rd person singular except for cases in which an adverb intervened between the subject and verb. It is argued that sensitivity to overuse of the 3rd person singular -s was adversely affected by an intervening adverb because L2 learners implement subject-verb agreement based on the Vocabulary entry for /s/, which is sensitive to disruption of a string of co-occurring terminal nodes (cf. Hawkins & Casillas, 2008), rather than on AGREE operations. Staying within generative morphosyntax but introducing the theme of discourse-related phenomena that dominate the rest of the volume, the paper by Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes ("Feature composition in Differential Object Marking") treats the acquisition of interpretable (semantic) features relating to the use of the personal preposition 'a' with direct objects in Spanish. Use of this structure is conditioned by the animacy/specificity of the NP, the animacy/agentivity of the subject, and the semantics of the predicate. Participants in an Acceptability Judgment Task included 49 English-speaking learners of L2 Spanish of three proficiency levels and 16 native Spanish controls. Advanced, high-intermediate, and low-intermediate L2 participants were grouped according to scores on a standardized proficiency test, which also corresponded to years of exposure (8, 5, and 1, respectively). Stimuli included acceptable and unacceptable sentences containing prepositional 'a' preceded by short background stories for context. (e.g., Nunca he estado en New York. Un amigo mío estudió allí y le escribo para preguntarle dónde podría vivir sin peligro: ¿Tu conoces a New York muy bien? ¿Dónde podría vivir?. 'I have never been to New York. A friend of mine studied there and I am writing to ask where one could live safely: Do you know New York very well? Where could I live?'). L2 learners behaved differently from native speakers across proficiencies, though no clear developmental pattern was detected. Greater accuracy at all levels was observed when the sole feature conditioning the use of 'a' was +/-animate. On the other hand, more variability was observed when a response required access to more than one feature. The authors take these results as evidence that the acquisition of prepositional 'a' is more difficult when multiple features are involved such that learners' acquisition begins with less complex form-to-function mapping and evolves, given sufficiently clear input, to include more complex conditions for use of prepositional 'a'. Feature learning is thus not an all-or-nothing undertaking. Findings are claimed to support a broadened version of Lardiere's (2008, 2009) Feature Reassembly Hypothesis. Tiffany Judy ("L1/L2 parametric directionality matters: More on the Null Subject Parameter") tested whether the Null Subject Parameter can be reset in adult Spanish-speaking learners of L2 English. L2 participants were considered advanced learners since 14 out of 18 were enrolled in an American university. Unfortunately, this coarse-grained classification masks any variability in proficiency among the participants. (Five participants were found to show clearer Spanish-like interpretations of null pronominals, and it would be interesting to see if proficiency was a factor.) L2 groups and a native English control group completed a Grammaticality Judgment/Correction Task and a Context Matching Interpretation Task designed to assess acceptance of grammatical overt subjects and ungrammatical null subjects in several syntactic positions and contexts. In the Context Matching Interpretation task, participants read a brief contextual paragraph and responded to a follow up question that either corresponded to a coreferential or disjoint interpretation of a subject pronoun. (e.g., Jeremy and Cole work at a very prestigious company. There is an executive position open that everyone wants. Jeremy doesn't think that he will get it due to lack of experience. / In your immediate interpretation: Who does Jeremy suppose will not get the job? / A. Jeremy B. Someone other than Jeremy). It was found that L2 speakers converged with native speakers in referential and grammatical expletive contexts of the Grammaticality Judgment Task (e.g., it rains/*rains), but they did not accurately distinguish between null and overt subjects in ungrammatical expletive contexts. In the Context Matching Interpretation task, L2 participants performed significantly differently from native speakers; the former did not show a strong preference for coreferential over disjoint interpretation as natives did. This result is taken to reveal a Spanish-influenced interpretation of overt embedded subjects, and, together with the Grammaticality Judgment Task results, indicates that L2 participants have not reset the Null Subject Parameter, as predicted by the superset/subset status of the languages in question and in line with predictions of the Full Transfer/Full Access model (Schwartz & Sprouse, 1994; 1996). Reference constraints on null subjects are also the focus of the paper by Lucy Xia Zhao ("The syntax and interpretation of embedded null subjects in Chinese, and their acquisition by English-speaking learners"), this time in English-speaking learners of L2 Chinese. Zhao reports on a study that tested whether L2 learners of Chinese interpret null embedded subjects in a native-like way. Chinese null embedded subjects can refer either to a matrix subject or a discourse entity. 39 English-speaking learners of L2 Chinese and 16 native Chinese controls participated in a Picture Judgment Task and a Written Interpretation Task. L2 speakers were of high-intermediate or advanced proficiency, according to a cloze test. The Picture Judgment Task included two types of pictures: a coreferential one that depicted a situation in which the embedded null subject referred to the matrix subject (Lao Lu shuo 'e' xihuan kan zuqiu 'Lao Lu says that 'e' likes watching football'), and a disjoint one that depicted a situation in which the embedded null subject referred to a person other than the matrix subject. For the Written Interpretation Task, participants indicated their preference in interpretation of a null or realized element in a test sentence. It was found that the high-intermediate L2 group allowed an embedded null subject to refer to the matrix subject but not to a discourse entity and that only advanced learners performed like natives in allowing both interpretations. The difference in L2 groups is interpreted as evidence of a delay in the acquisition of categories at the syntax-discourse interface, but the author also notes their ultimate learnability. Several explanations for the late acquisition of the topic deletion type of embedded null subject are proposed, though conclusions are tentative as they do not correspond to data from the present study. Roumyana Slabakova, Jason Rothman, and Paula Kempchinsky ("Gradient competence at the Syntax-Discourse Interface") looked at acceptability judgments from 67 English-speaking learners of L2 Spanish and 21 native Spanish speakers on dislocation structures. The authors tested participants' knowledge of the discourse and semantic constraints in Clitic Right Dislocation through an online Felicity Judgment Task. The task included a brief context presented aurally and visually, followed by a short dialogue with two alternatives (e.g., … Juan: ¿Crees que los muebles aquí son buenos? 'Do you think that the furniture here is good?' / A. Sofía: # Claro que sí, lo compré ahí, mi sofá. 'Of course, it I-bought there, my sofa' B. Sofía: * Claro que sí, compré ahí, mi sofá. 'Of course, I-bought there, my sofa'). Participants judged sentences as felicitous or infelicitous on a scale of 1 to 4. Data show that natives found Clitic Right Dislocation mildly unacceptable. Intermediate learners did not show acquisition of either discourse or semantic constraints. Advanced and near-native L2 groups, however, demonstrated knowledge of syntax-discourse constraints in their acceptance of clitic-doubled dislocations and rejection of non-clitic-doubled ones. The main question posed is why some non-natives performed better than natives in that their acceptability ratings corresponded to theoretical expectations while natives' did not. The authors point to Duffield's (2003; 2005) concepts of underlying and surface competence. Natives are sensitive to the low frequency of Clitic Right Dislocation (surface competence), while learners show categorical knowledge of its acceptability (underlying competence). Natives, though aware of the underlying acceptability of right dislocation, have alternative ways of capturing competence that are conditioned by discourse appropriateness, and such wider surface competence interferes with categorical underlying competence. The authors conclude that surface competence is probabilistic and gradient, sensitive to phenomena such as the contextual appropriateness of a structure. The volume ends with a paper by Camilla Bettoni and Bruno di Biase ("Beyond canonical order: The acquisition of marked word orders in Italian as a second language"), who offer a different perspective on the syntax-discourse interface. Via Processability Theory (Pienemann, 1998) and references to lexicalist approaches such as Levelt's (1989) speech production model and Lexical Functional Grammar, the authors assess the development from canonical to non-canonical word orders in L2 speakers of Italian of multiple first-language backgrounds. 15 learners of varying proficiency in Italian completed four tasks designed to elicit a number of grammatical structures. The first was a Picture Story Retelling Task which encouraged use of canonical word orders with referential subject pronouns and pro-drop. A Spot-The-Difference Task was designed to elicit adjective topicalization. The third task was an "Animal Dinner" Task aimed at eliciting object topicalizations. The final task targeted question formation. Distributions of the different constructions produced were used to arrange participants into developmental stages. The weakest participant at the first stage produced only declarative sentences with unmarked word order. The lower stages are characterized generally by morphological inaccuracy. With increased accuracy comes more target-like pro-drop structures and grammatical questions. At the final stage, participants produce grammatical questions, topicalizations, and show increased morphological accuracy. The authors suggest that their Processability Theory-based developmental scale is also implicational since there were no learners who produced a structure at the highest stage without producing any at the preceding stage. EVALUATION The 2011 EUROSLA Yearbook is a very good resource for beginning L2 acquisition researchers, as review sections are generally thorough and informative. Established researchers will appreciate the theoretical and empirical contributions to established topics in L2 acquisition. The addition of papers on L2 testing are especially on trend as interest in testing and assessment becomes more and more prominent in the field of L2 acquisition (e.g., Tremblay, 2011; Marian et al., 2007; and the special issue of the "International Journal of Bilingualism" on measurement of bilingual proficiency, June 2011, Vol. 15 Issue 2). The editors succeed in creating a coherent collection of papers under the very broad umbrella of L2 acquisition. Although there is an array of topics, languages, and participant types, and no cross-referencing, the presentation order is logical and comprehensible, and observant readers will appreciate the conceptual links from one article to the next. One shortcoming is that the papers do not include particularly innovative or advanced methodologies or statistical analysis. Meara's paper stands out for its innovative methodology, but the morphosyntax and syntax-discourse studies almost exclusively involve Grammaticality or Acceptability Judgment Tasks (with the exception of Bettoni & di Biase's production study). The only on-line methodology is the Self-Paced Reading Task in Bannai's paper. Statistically, regressions and ANOVAs are suitable to the Yearbook's purposes, though the use of mixed-effects analyses in linguistic research is on the rise (e.g., Baayen et al., 2008). Nevertheless, important themes emerge from the 2011 EUROSLA Yearbook that will guide L2 acquisition research in the next decade. Notable is the emphasis on individual analysis as well as group analysis, which is important because group results may hide individual variation (Bardel & Lindqvist; Guijarro-Fuentes; Judy; Slabakova, Rothman, & Kempchinsky). Another common thread is that structures at the syntax-discourse interface are ultimately acquirable but may show protracted acquisition (Guijarro-Fuentes; Judy; Zhao). Such a conclusion highlights the role of proficiency in L2 acquisition (also a theme in this volume) and reflects an important paradigm shift towards ascertaining L2 capacities and away from concentrating on deficits (e.g., Birdsong, 2005). Interestingly, a discrepancy emerges in this volume between two research teams' measurements of proficiency using the same instrument. Both teams use the Diploma Español de Lengua Extranjera test for Spanish. Guijarro-Fuentes measures proficiency with the following rankings: Advanced 39-50, High intermediate 25-38, Low intermediate 0-24. By contrast, Slabakova, Rothman, and Kempchinsky measure proficiency thus: Near-native 47-50, Advanced 40-47, Intermediate 30-39. This discrepancy reinforces an acknowledged need for better ways of assessing proficiency in L2 research. Overall, this collection of papers highlights rigorous research being undertaken in L2 acquisition and testing, and each contribution suggests a number of paths for future work. The organization of papers is well planned, and the selected papers showcase the fine work in L2 studies presented at the EUROSLA conference. REFERENCES Baayen, R.H., Davidson, D.J., & Bates, D.M. (2008). Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language, 59, 390-412. Birdsong, D. (2005). Nativelikeness and non-nativelikeness in L2A research. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 43, 319-328. Duffield, N. (2005). Implications of competent gradience. Moderne Sprachen, 48, 95-117. Duffield, N. (2003). Measures of competent gradience. In The Interface between Syntax and the Lexicon in Second Language Acquisition, R. van Hout, A. Hulk, F. Kuiken, & R. Towell (eds), 98-127. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hawkins, R. & Casillas, G. (2008). Explaining frequency of verb morphology in early L2 speech. Lingua, 118, 595-612. Lardiere, D. (2009). Some thoughts on the contrastive analysis of features in second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 25, 173-227. Lardiere, D. (2008). Feature-assembly in second language acquisition. In The Role of Formal Features in Second Language Acquisition, J. Liceras, H. Zobl, and H. Goodluck (eds), 106-140. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Laufer, B. & Nation, P. (1995). Vocabulary size and use: Lexical richness in L2 written production. Applied Linguistics, 16, 307-322. Levelt, W.J.M. (1989). Speaking: From Intention to Articulation. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Marian, V., Blumenfeld, H., & Kaushanskaya, M. (2007). The Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q): Assessing language profiles in bilinguals and multilinguals. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 50, 4, 940-967. Pienemann, M. (1998). Language Processing and Second Language Development: Processability Theory. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Schwartz, B. & Sprouse, R. (1996). L2 cognitive states and the Full Transfer/Full Access model. Second Language Research, 12, 40-72. Schwartz, B. & Sprouse, R. (1994). Word order and nominative case in nonnative language acquisition: A longitudinal study of L1 Turkish German interlanguage. In Language Acquisition Studies in Generative Grammar, T. Hoekstra and B. Schwartz (eds), 317-368. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Tremblay, A. (2011). Proficiency assessment standards in second language acquisition research. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 33, 339-372. ABOUT THE REVIEWER Libby M. Gertken is a Ph.D. candidate in French linguistics at the University of Texas-Austin, where she is currently employed as an Assistant Instructor of French, and will complete her degree in May 2013. She studies second language acquisition from a psycholinguistic perspective. Her dissertation concerns the real-time processing of syntax by adult learners of French (native English speakers) and how second language proficiency and dominance affect parsing strategies. Other projects include the creation of an easy-to-use instrument to assess bilingual language dominance with support from the Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning (http://www.coerll.utexas.edu/coerll/) and investigating "good enough" processing among native and non-native speakers of French. Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 05-Feb-2012       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.