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From the ancient Mediterranean world to the present day, our conceptions of what is universal in language have interacted with our experiences of language learning. This book tells two stories: the story of how scholars in the west have conceived of the fact that human languages share important ...

From the ancient Mediterranean world to the present day, our conceptions of what is universal in language have interacted with our experiences of language learning. This book tells two stories: the story of how scholars in the west have conceived of the fact that human languages share important properties despite their obvious differences, and the story of how westerners have understood the nature of second or foreign language learning.In narrating these two stories, the author argues that modern second language acquisition theory needs to reassess what counts as its own past. The book addresses Greek contributions to the prehistory of universal grammar, Roman bilingualism, the emergence of the first foreign language grammars in the early Middle Ages, and the Medieval speculative grammarians efforts to define the essentials of human language. The author shows how after the renaissance expanded people's awareness of language differences, scholars returned to the questions of universals in the context of second language learning, including in the 1660 Port-Royal grammar which Chomsky notoriously celebrated in Cartesian Linguistics . The book then looks at how Post-Saussurean European linguistics and American structuralism up to modern generative grammar have each differently conceived of universals and language learning. Universal Grammar in Second Language Acquisition is a remarkable contribution to the history of linguistics and will be essential reading for students and scholars of linguistics, specialists in second language acquisition and language teacher-educators.

This authoritative textbook is an overview and analysis of current second language acquisition research, conducted within the generative linguistic framework. It argues for a role for Universal Grammar in second language acquisition. Theories as to the role of Universal Grammar and the extent of ...

This authoritative textbook is an overview and analysis of current second language acquisition research, conducted within the generative linguistic framework. It argues for a role for Universal Grammar in second language acquisition. Theories as to the role of Universal Grammar and the extent of language transfer are presented along with relevant empirical research. Properties of early developmental stage grammars are examined, as well as the nature of the final outcome of the acquisition process.

This wide-ranging collection of essays provides penetrating insight into a variety of views on grammatical theory from a number of leading linguists. Contributors such as John Anderson and Jim Miller address, in different ways, the semantic basis for syntactic relations. John Alyons develops a theme ...

This wide-ranging collection of essays provides penetrating insight into a variety of views on grammatical theory from a number of leading linguists. Contributors such as John Anderson and Jim Miller address, in different ways, the semantic basis for syntactic relations. John Alyons develops a theme underlying his work on "notional grammar"--the relationship between ontology and language. Steve Pulman's work on prepositional relatives in English, and Andrew Radford's essay on exclamative particles in modern spoken French, provide a detailed study of particular constructions in one language. The volume also contains a wealth of original work by leading figures in Universal Grammar such as Bernard Comrie on reference tracking systems, Bob Dixon on grammatical relations, Greville Corbett on gender systems, and John Hawkins on the explanation of Language Universals.

The Romance Languages document remarkable variations in subject word order in different constructions, and have various restrictions in their occurrence. No consensus has emerged on what the paramaters are for such variations. This volume does not attempt to create a consensus, but tries to ...

The Romance Languages document remarkable variations in subject word order in different constructions, and have various restrictions in their occurrence. No consensus has emerged on what the paramaters are for such variations. This volume does not attempt to create a consensus, but tries to represent and bring into dialogue the different sides of the debate.