PATHWAYS OF THE BRAIN: THE NEUROCOGNITIVE BASIS OF LANGUAGE.Sydney M. Lamb.Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1999. Pp. xii + 416. $95.00 cloth, $34.95 paper.

2001 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoltán Dörnyei
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Background Knowledge ◽  
General Analysis ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Research Directions ◽  
Second Languages ◽  
The Past ◽  
Psychological Theories ◽  
Linguistic System ◽  
The Brain

The past decade has seen an increasing interest within the second language (L2) field in drawing on psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic-neurobiological, and cognitive psychological theories when explaining various aspects of L2 acquisition and use (e.g., Schmidt, 1995; Schuman, 1997; Skehan, 1998). Although Sydney Lamb's account of the neurocognitive basis of language does not focus specifically on second languages, its general analysis of how the brain's linguistic system operates and develops provides highly relevant background knowledge to these recent L2 research directions.

Insights into the neural mechanisms of becoming bilingual: A brief synthesis of second language research with artificial linguistic systems

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kara Morgan-Short
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Test Tube ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
System Research ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Grammar Learning ◽  
Linguistic System ◽  
Language Research ◽  
Neural Processes

AbstractArtificial linguistic systems can offer researchers test tube-like models of second language (L2) acquisition through which specific questions can be examined under tightly controlled conditions. This paper examines what research with artificial linguistic systems has revealed about the neural mechanisms involved in L2 grammar learning. It first considers the validity of meaningful and non-meaningful artificial linguistic systems. Then it contextualizes and synthesizes neural artificial linguistic system research related to questions about age of exposure to the L2, type of exposure, and online L2 learning mechanisms. Overall, using artificial linguistic systems seems to be an effective and productive way of developing knowledge about L2 neural processes and correlates. With further validation, artificial linguistic system paradigms may prove an important tool more generally in understanding how individuals learn new linguistic systems as they become bilingual.

Acquisition without evidence: English infinitives and poverty of stimulus in adult second language acquisition

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-443
Author(s):  
Jeanne Heil ◽  
Luis López
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
First Language ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Full Spectrum ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Linguistic System ◽  
Poverty Of Stimulus

This article provides a Poverty of Stimulus argument for the participation of a dedicated linguistic module in second language acquisition. We study the second language (L2) acquisition of a subset of English infinitive complements that exhibit the following properties: (a) they present an intricate web of grammatical constraints while (b) they are highly infrequent in corpora, (c) they lack visible features that would make them salient, and (d) they are communicatively superfluous. We report on an experiment testing the knowledge of some infinitival constructions by near-native adult first language (L1) Spanish / L2 English speakers. Learners demonstrated a linguistic system that includes contrasts based on subtle restrictions in the L2, including aspect restrictions in Raising to Object. These results provide evidence that frequency and other cognitive or environmental factors are insufficient to account for the acquisition of the full spectrum of English infinitivals. This leads us to the conclusion that a domain-specific linguistic faculty is required.

scholarly journals Brain and Language: an overview of neuroimaging studies of bilingual language processing

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-99
Author(s):  
Augusto Buchweitz
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Procedural Knowledge ◽  
Brain Activation ◽  
Second Languages ◽  
Language Studies ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Neuroimaging Techniques

Six articles combining the study of bilinguals and neuroimaging techniques are discussed. The objective is to seek for contributions from neuroimaging studies for the understanding of what goes on in the bilingual brain that processes two languages, and of what goes on, comparatively, in terms of brain activation of each language. Studies show that highly proficient bilinguals activate the same areas in the brain for both the first and second languages. This indicates that the second language becomes part of the speaker's procedural knowledge.

Language acquisition, pidgins and creoles

1981 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henning Wode
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
The Past ◽  
Processing Strategies ◽  
Linguistic Structures ◽  
The Way

Why are pidgin utterances structured linguistically the way they are? Why, as has often been noted, do the linguistic structures of different pidgins tend to be more similar to each other than to the structure of the original languages involved in the specific pidgin? This has been noted as all the more surprising since these similarities also occur in cases where totally unrelated languages are involved, so that borrowing must be excluded; or where historical explanations cannot apply because there was no contact in the past at all. It will be suggested here that these similarities result from universal linguo-cognitive processing strategies which man employs in learning languages. Some of these strategies are universal in the sense that they apply in all acquisitional types so that pidgins have some properties which recur in all types of acquisition. Other strategies are more restricted in their applicability, for example, to the various types of second language (L2) acquisition.

Conversational Analysis in L2 Acquisition and Teaching

1988 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 72-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Scarcella
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Significant Influence ◽  
Structural Organization ◽  
Conversational Analysis ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
The Past ◽  
Lecture Notes ◽  
Ordinary Conversation

Over the past ten years, conversational analysis “CA” has come to wield a significant influence on second language “L2” acquisition and teaching. It originally developed out of a school of sociology called ethnomethodology, develped by Garginkel (1967). Following the work of Garfinkel, Sacks and his colleagues, Schegloff and Jefferson, establised CA, the study of the structural organization of ordinary conversation,. Sack' lecture notes (1964–1972), which comprise appeoximately 2,000 pages, continue to provide a foundation for contemporary CA. In explaining why he developed a framework for CA, Sacks states:

scholarly journals On determining developmental stages in natural second language acquisition

1981 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jürgen M. Meisel ◽  
Harald Clahsen ◽  
Manfred Pienemann
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Developmental Stages ◽  
Target Language ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Source Language ◽  
The Past ◽  
Linguistic Structures

Research on Second Language (L2) Acquisition, over the past ten years, has undergone substantial changes by shifting its focus of interest away from an analysis of linguistic structures alone, concentrating more on the learner himself or, rather, on the process of learning. It had become obvious that one of the major shortcomings in contrastive studies as well as in the usual kind of error analysis is that they lack thorough investigation of factors which determine the kind of approach a learner may take to acquire a second language. This again implies that it is more fruitful to study the process of learning itself instead of merely analysing its outputs. It is by now widely accepted that the learner takes an active part in the learning process and does not merely get trapped in structural gaps which linguists may find when comparing the source language (the learner's L1) and the target language (L2).

scholarly journals A Review of Theories in L2 Socialization and Cognitive Approaches to Second Language Acquisition

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. p109
Author(s):  
Lili Wang
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Scientific Discovery ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Acquisition Process ◽  
The Past ◽  
L2 Processing

In the past 20 years, there is a shifting trend in the second language acquisition (SLA) field departing from the traditional “logical science” (Zuengler & Miller, 2006) to a context-oriented perspective for its robust power in exploring social factors beyond individual internal cognition in L2 processing research. While context-oriented researchers claim the formal linguistic-focused research decontextualizes L2 learning from its environment and thus is problematic to comprehensively explain the L2 acquisition process, some scholars taking formal linguistic perspectives resist such critique and contend that social conditions are neither sufficient nor “necessary for scientific discovery” (Zuengler & Miller, 2006, p. 15). Within this paper, I will interrogate what differentiates the cognitive paradigm from L2 socialization paradigm in terms of second language acquisition.

The acquisition of the syntax of negation in French and German: contrasting first and second language development

1997 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jürgen M. Meisel
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Second Languages ◽  
Second Language Development ◽  
L1 Data ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
L2 Development ◽  
L1 And L2

The acquisition of negation is perhaps the best-studied syntactic phenomenon in early interlanguage research,and many of these publications concluded that first (L1) and second language (L2) development had much more in common than had previously been assumed. In the present paper, the problem of whether the same underlying principles and mechanisms guide L1 and L2 acquisition will be re-examined from the perspective of more recent grammatical theory. The empirical basis consists of longitudinal case-studies of the acquisition of French and German as first and second languages. The L2 learners' first language is Spanish. In L1 data one finds a rapid, uniform and almost error-free course of development across languages exhibiting quite different morphosyntactic means of expressing negation. This is explained in terms of Parameter Theory, primarily referring to functional categories determining the placement of finite verbal elements. L2 acquisition, on the other hand, is characterized by considerable variability, not only crosslinguistically, but also across learners and even within individuals. This can be accounted for by assuming different strategies of language use. More importantly, different kinds of linguistic knowledge are drawn upon in L1 as opposed to L2. It is claimed that adult L2 learners, rather than using structure-dependent operations constrained by Universal Grammar (UG), rely primarily on linear sequencing strategies which apply to surface strings.

An exploration of target L2 morphemes in the oral production of young EFL learners in Croatia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelena O'Reilly ◽  
Eva Jakupčević
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Simple Construction ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Oral Production ◽  
The Past ◽  
Base Form ◽  
Production Study ◽  
Efl Students

Although the second language (L2) acquisition of morphology by late L2 learners has been a popular research area over the past decades, comparatively little is known about the acquisition and development of morphology in children who learn English as a foreign language (EFL). Therefore, the current study presents the findings from a longitudinal oral production study with 9/10-year-old L1 Croatian EFL students who were followed up at the age of 11/12. Our results are largely in line with the limited research so far in this area: young EFL learners have few issues using the be copula and, eventually, the irregular past simple forms, but had considerable problems with accurately supplying the 3rd person singular -s at both data collection points. We also observed a be + base form structure, especially at the earlier stage, which appears to be an emergent past simple construction.

Neuro-Clinical Signatures of Language Impairments: A Theoretical Framework for Function-to-structure Mapping in Clinics

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (9) ◽  
pp. 800-811 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ferath Kherif ◽  
Sandrine Muller
Keyword(s):  
Brain Mapping ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Language Impairments ◽  
Structure Mapping ◽  
Language Functions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Language Recovery ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Bow Tie

In the past decades, neuroscientists and clinicians have collected a considerable amount of data and drastically increased our knowledge about the mapping of language in the brain. The emerging picture from the accumulated knowledge is that there are complex and combinatorial relationships between language functions and anatomical brain regions. Understanding the underlying principles of this complex mapping is of paramount importance for the identification of the brain signature of language and Neuro-Clinical signatures that explain language impairments and predict language recovery after stroke. We review recent attempts to addresses this question of language-brain mapping. We introduce the different concepts of mapping (from diffeomorphic one-to-one mapping to many-to-many mapping). We build those different forms of mapping to derive a theoretical framework where the current principles of brain architectures including redundancy, degeneracy, pluri-potentiality and bow-tie network are described.

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