Acquisition of cumulative conditioning effects on words: Spanish-speaking children’s [subject pronoun + verb] usage

Child language acquisition research has provided ample evidence of lexical frequency effects. This corpus-based analysis introduces a novel frequency measure shown to significantly constrain adult language variation, but heretofore unexplored in child language acquisition research. Among adults, frequent occurrence of a form in a particular discourse context that conditions usage accumulates in memory over time and shapes the lexical representation of that form. This study contributes to the body of research on frequency effects in child language acquisition by testing whether such cumulative conditioning effects are also found among children, and, if so, at what age such effects appear. Specifically, the study investigates the influence of a distributional frequency measure (each verb form’s likelihood of use in a switch vs same-reference discourse context) on variable subject personal pronoun (SPP) expression ( N = 2227) in Spanish (e.g. yo voy ~ voy, both meaning ‘I go’) in the speech of 65 monolingual children in two age cohorts. Results reveal sensitivity to the contextual conditioning of discourse continuity (switch reference) among both the younger (6- and 7-year-olds) and older (8- and 9-year-olds) children in support of previous research. In addition, each verb’s likelihood of use in a switch-reference context significantly predicted the SPP use among the older children, but not the younger ones, suggesting that the cumulative effect of a probabilistic pattern takes time to emerge during childhood. The lexically specific accumulation in memory of contextual conditioning effects supports exemplar models of child language acquisition: each instance of use in discourse contributes to the lexical representation of that form and, over time, plays a role in the creation of morphosyntactic patterns during language development.

Crowning, rotating, and emanating hierophanies with elevatio aspect in wayside shrines

My aim in this paper is to investigate the variants of directionality implied in visual hieratic texts as religious markers in the sacrosphere, which are substantially expressed in the form of a wayside shrine/cross. The methodological underpinnings for this project rely on the proposed semiotactics (cf. Haładewicz-Grzelak, Małgorzata. 2012. Dynamic modeling of visual texts: A relational model. Semiotica 190(1/4). 211–251): the investigative perspective modeled after phonotactics – a branch of phonology investigating the restrictions on and the possibilities of phoneme combinations in languages (cf. Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, Katarzyna & Daria Zielińska. 2011. Universal phonotactic and morphonotactic preferences in second language acquisition. In Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, Magdalena Wrembel & Małgorzata Kul (eds.), Achievements and perspectives in SLA of speech: New sounds 2010, 53–64. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang). The study draws on digital documentation of wayside shrines, crosses, and sacrality markers on houses collected by the author in various European countries (2009–2021), focusing in particular on the material collected in the area of present Slovakia, Ukraine, Austria, Slovenia, and the region of the Beskid Mountains in Poland. It shows how bodily hexis is inscribed into the phenomenology of a wayside shrine through particular types of hierophanic dynamics. The study also focuses on the aspect of headedness and markedness in the nano-structure of a sign, surfacing as directionality in the conceptualization of the religious sphere by particular communities.

Is there a rural penalty in language acquisition? Evidence from Germany’s refugee allocation policy

Emerging evidence has highlighted the important role of local contexts on integration trajectories of asylum seekers and refugees. Germany’s policy of randomly allocating asylum seekers across Germany may advantage some and disadvantage others in terms of opportunities for equal participation in society. This study explores the question whether asylum seekers that have been allocated to rural areas experience disadvantages in terms of language acquisition compared to those allocated to urban areas. We derive testable assumptions using a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) which are then tested using large-N survey data (IAB-BAMF-SOEP refugee survey). We find that living in a rural area has no negative total effect on language skills. Further the findings suggest that the ‘null effect’ is the result of two processes which offset each other: while asylum seekers in rural areas have slightly lower access for formal, federally organized language courses, they have more regular exposure to German speakers.

Cognition, complexity and context as other minds: a tribute to T. Givón

Linguistics is made up of great individuals. Throughout its not so long history as compared with other sciences, linguistics boasts many remarkable contributors who paved the way for human language study and thus led us into exploring the rising, development and evolution not only of natural languages, but also that of our own species. This book is a tribute to one of those great contributors to linguistics, T. Givón. As he argues for an evolutionary approach to communication and language, Givón has covered various research fields in linguistics such as morphosyntax, semantics, pragmatics, discourse and text, second language acquisition, pidgins and creoles, language universals, grammaticalization, and cognitive science.

Book Review: Researching second language acquisition in the study abroad learning environment: An introduction for student researchers

Researching Second Language Acquisition in the Study Abroad Learning Environment: An Introduction for Student Researchers (Isabelli-García and Isabelli, 2020) presents an overview of some of the major topics relevant to research on study abroad. This book is intended to be a basic primer for advanced students and beginner professional researchers and serves to provide general orientation on various aspects ranging from language and interactional systems to research gaps in the topic area. The book gives a relatively thorough presentation on some of the scholarly perspectives on study abroad that can be used as a guidebook for anyone who is interested in conducting academic research in the area. While there are some shortcomings, the book does an excellent job of synthesizing some of the major scholarly themes that are relevant to study abroad. Consequently, this is a useful book not only for novel researchers but also for faculty or staff who are interested in organizing university study abroad programs and would like a more thorough background.

Indigenous Languages Learning Through Serious Games Based on Second Language Acquisition Theories

When new educational games are developed for teaching languages, a set of ideas or intuitions about how students can gain more knowledge are used; however, few of them are based on a solid theory or substantiated with linguistic research. This chapter presents a brief review about second language acquisition theories; describes the importance of recovering, maintaining, and transmitting indigenous languages; and analyzes efforts made for enhancing bilingual education. Serious games are presented as an alternative for learning indigenous languages, and guidelines to develop serious games implementing second language acquisition theories are proposed. Finally, a discussion about challenges and future trends in recovering, maintaining, and transmitting indigenous languages is presented.