Argues that important insights about language use are gained through examination of quantitative linguistic data. Discusses corpus-based research and examines common lexical verbs across registers, aspect across registers, and co-occurrence. (Author/VWL)

Provides an overview of primary education with multilingualism or multilingual education in South Africa. Taking the country's new language-in-education policy as a starting point, this article explores the rationale for the promotion of multilingualism in education and reviews work in progress with reference to teacher education, school-based…

Reexamines the morphology/functional category debate in light of empirical data drawn from a longitudinal study of two intermediate learners of French as a second language (L2). Argues that inflectional deficits--which appear as both nonfinite verbs and as other morphological errors in the interlanguage data--support neither a codependence of…

Provides a general overview of two books--"The Second Time Around: Minimalism and Second Language Acquisition" and "Second Language Syntax: A Generative Introduction--and shows how the respond to key issues in second language acquisition, including the process of second language acquisition, access to universal grammar, the role of…

Explores possibilities for the study of divergent aspects of discursive practices by focusing on the notion of voice and considers implications for second language writing research and instruction. Examines recent critiques of the notion of voice that emphasize its strong association with the ideology of individualism. Presents evidence of voice…

Reviews Barbara J. King's detailed observations of free-ranging baboons in Amboseli, Kenya; these observations contain a mass of recent research and report studies of divergent theories in primatology and paleontology. King's studies supply direct evidence about primate behavior that conveys information and show how natural information transfer is…

Reports on the results of four experiments that show that people can recognize ironic meanings that were not intended, and that processing unintended irony can be done easily precisely because speakers' utterances, unbeknownst to them, create ironic situations. Discusses implications for psycholinguistic theories of irony comprehension and for…

This review article analyzes the results of several representative English morpheme-order studies conducted in the 1970s in light of current functional-category theory. Comparative analysis found significant discoveries related to category-specific development of functional projections in first language acquisition and cross-categorical…

Examines the use of addressee honorifics (the "masu" form) and their nonhonorific counterpart (the plain form) at home and in classroom interactions at elementary schools in Japan from the perspective of language socialization. Finds that both at home and school the "masu" and plain forms are used as indices of the mode of…

Follows up on previous research attempting to identify the focus of attention in listening of children at different ages and from different language backgrounds. Findings indicated stronger influence of prosody for children regardless of age or native language. (Author/VWL)

Following a review of the language teaching practices of the past 50 years, reassess ten second language acquisition (SLA) research generalizations in light of the considerable amount of classroom-based SLA research that has been carried out since 1985, especially that which has addressed pedagogical concerns in primary and secondary school…

Presents model describing adult learning of morphosyntax in a novel language where frequency and regularity are factorially combined. Accuracy and latency data show frequency effects for both regular/irregular forms early in acquisition process; as learning progresses, frequency effect on regular items diminishes but remains for irregular items.…

An analysis of Standard Average European, a European linguistic area, looks at 11 of its features (definite, indefinite articles, have-perfect, participial passive, antiaccusative prominence, nominative experiencers, dative external possessors, negation/negative pronouns, particle comparatives, A-and-B conjunction, relative clauses, verb fronting…

To determine whether research results in second language acquisition (SLA) is having an actual affect on students, reviews developments in the treatment of second language (L2) reading, revisits recommendations stemming from these developments, evaluates evidence of these recommendations, and evaluates evidence of recommendations in recently…

Finds Bloom and Tinker's description and measurement of active, integrated, and situated children to be a credible scientifically rigorous paradigm for language acquisition research. Highlights their use of the naturalistic, observational method to understand the changing patterns of integration and use of multifaceted abilities in child language…