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This innovative and original volume brings together studies that apply cognitive and functional linguistics to the study of the L2 acquisition of Japanese. With each article grounded on the usage-based model and/or conceptual notions such as foregrounding and subjectivity, the volume sheds light on how cognitive and functional linguistics can help us understand aspects of Japanese acquisition that have been neglected by traditionalists.
This volume, grounded on usage-based models of language, is an edited collection of empirical research examining how cognitive linguistics can advance Japanese pedagogy. Each chapter presents an acquisition or classroom study which focuses on challenging features and leads instructors and researchers into new realms of analysis by showing innovative views and practices resulting in better understanding and improved L2 learning of Japanese.
Nearly half a century has passed since Hymes proposed the concept of communicative competence to describe the knowledge and skills required for the appropriate use of language in a social context. During these decades, a number of scholars have applied and refined this concept. In language education, communicative competence has been identified as a major objective of learning. This book will inform readers about communicative competence as a highly complex construct encompassing an array of sub-competencies such as linguistic skills and proficiencies, knowledge of socio-cultural and socio-pragmatic codes, and the ability to engage in textual and conversational discourse. Findings from research in related disciplines have pointed to the significance of factors that can contribute to the attainment of communicative competence. Various teaching practices and relevant Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools will be also introduced and discussed to achieve communicative competence as a complex ability. It is a timely contribution to current research on key areas in the teaching, learning and acquisition of second/foreign languages.
In recent years, the focus of linguistic research has shifted from sentence to larger units such as text and discourse and accordingly from syntax to semantics and pragmatics. This has led to the development and application of corresponding discourse semantic and pragmatic theories such as, for instance, (S)DRT, Centering Theory, Accessibility Theory, QUD, Generalized Conversational Implicatures, Super Monsters and Gesture Semantics and new empirical approaches in the framework of experimental semantics and pragmatics or corpus linguistic discourse analysis. The contributions to this collected volume build on these developments and investigate the linguistic foundations of narration from various perspectives. The contributions address topics such as speech and thought representation, free indirect speech, information structure, anaphora resolution, co-speech gestures, classifier constructions as well as role shift and constructed action. The volume provides new insights in the linguistic structures underlying narration in written, spoken, and sign languages from an experimental, developmental, historical, typological, and theoretical perspective. The contributions will appeal to theoretical linguists, sign language linguists, typologists, literary scholars, psycholinguists, and philosophers.
Traditionally, research on human language has taken speech and written language as the only domains of investigation. However, there is now a wealth of empirical studies documenting visual aspects of language, ranging from rich studies of sign languages, which are self-contained visual language systems, to the field of gesture studies, which examines speech-associated gestures, facial expressions, and other bodily movements related to communicative expressions. But despite this large body of work, sign language and gestures are rarely treated together in theoretical discussions. This volume aims to remedy that by considering both types of visual language jointly in order to transcend (artificial) theoretical divides, and to arrive at a comprehensive account of the human language faculty. This collection seeks to pave the way for an inherently multimodal view of language, in which visible actions of the body play a crucial role. The 19 papers in this volume address four broad and overlapping topics: (1) the multimodal nature of language; (2) multimodal representation of meaning; (3) multimodal and multichannel prosody; and (4) acquisition and development of visual language in children and adults.
This book discusses ten grammatical items, with main focus on prepositions and plural nouns, to illustrate the structure of Japanese English or the English spoken by 32 Japanese nationals who are the L2 users of English. Adopting an inductive, theory-neutral, analysis of empirical data collected from recordings of presentational talks, the author demonstrates how standard and nonstandard grammatical forms are distributed, and categorizes these based largely on functional factors. The book describes grammatical forms as a fundamental aspect of linguistic study and adopts a corpus-driven approach to qualify structural features characterizing usage data. This formalization of language usage patterns also facilitates the development of ‘locally’ relevant norms and thus presents alternatives to the normative varieties traditionally adopted. It examines the effects of multicompetence and unpacks the grammar of Japanese English. The book is of interest to researchers, educators, and students concerned with issues related to World Englishes, English as a lingua franca, English language teaching, and multilingualism, this text is vital to studies in global English language use.
Researchers and educators routinely call for longitudinal research on language learning and teaching. The present volume explores the connection between longitudinal study and advanced language capacities, two under-researched areas, and proposes an agenda for future research. Five chapters probe theoretical and methodological reflections about the longitudinal study of advanced L2 capacities, followed by eight chapters that report on empirical longitudinal investigations spanning descriptive, quasi-experimental, qualitative, and quantitative longitudinal methodologies. In addition, the co-editors offer a detailed introduction to the volume and a coda chapter in which they explore what it would take to design systematic research programs for the longitudinal investigation of advanced L2 capacities. The scholars in this volume collectively make the argument that second language acquisition research will be the richer, theoretically and empirically, if a trajectory toward advancedness is part of its conceptualization right from the beginning and, in reverse, that advancedness is a particularly interesting acquisitional level at which to probe contemporary theories associated with the longitudinal study of language development. Acknowledging that advancedness is increasingly important in our multicultural societies and globalized world, the central question explored in the present collection is: How does learning over time evolve toward advanced capacities in a second language?
This book defines Chinese middle constructions as generic constructions, with their highest syntactically saturated argument always understood as an arbitrary one. This working definition sets “middle construction” apart from “middle voice” in that it can be instantiated by various constructions in Chinese. By scrutinizing these constructions in the framework of Generative Syntax, the book concludes that their formation takes place at the lexical level, without resorting to any syntactic mechanisms and thus that Chinese falls into the category of “lexical middle languages”, which are in contrast to “syntactic middle languages”.
This volume bridges the gap between theory and practice by bringing together well-known and new authors to discuss a topic of mutual interest to second language researchers and teachers alike: input. Reader-friendly chapters offer a range of existing and new perspectives on input in morphology, syntax, phonetics and phonology.
This open access volume reveals the hidden power of the script we read in and how it shapes and drives our minds, ways of thinking, and cultures. Expanding on the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (i.e., the idea that language affects the way we think), this volume proposes the “Script Relativity Hypothesis” (i.e., the idea that the script in which we read affects the way we think) by offering a unique perspective on the effect of script (alphabets, morphosyllabaries, or multi-scripts) on our attention, perception, and problem-solving. Once we become literate, fundamental changes occur in our brain circuitry to accommodate the new demand for resources. The powerful effects of literacy have been demonstrated by research on literate versus illiterate individuals, as well as cross-scriptal transfer, indicating that literate brain networks function differently, depending on the script being read. This book identifies the locus of differences between the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, and between the East and the West, as the neural underpinnings of literacy. To support the “Script Relativity Hypothesis”, it reviews a vast corpus of empirical studies, including anthropological accounts of human civilization, social psychology, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, applied linguistics, second language studies, and cross-cultural communication. It also discusses the impact of reading from screens in the digital age, as well as the impact of bi-script or multi-script use, which is a growing trend around the globe. As a result, our minds, ways of thinking, and cultures are now growing closer together, not farther apart.