The field of second language (L2) writing has moved beyond the false dichotomies between process- and genre-based pedagogies perpetuated in the 1980s and 1990s, but there has still been little research on how the two are actually reconciled in the classroom. Consequently, L2 writing instructors are left with an incomplete picture, unsure how to…

The induction problems facing language learners have played a central role in debates about the types of learning biases that exist in the human brain. Many linguists have argued that some of the learning biases necessary to solve these language induction problems must be both innate and language-specific (i.e., the Universal Grammar (UG)…

This paper introduces the goals of the research project on which this special issue of "Linguistics and Education" is based. A case is made for considering contemporary education as saturated by and dependent on oral and written language, and on beliefs and practices that relate knowledge, talk, reading and writing. The project is directed at a…

I present evidence from Navajo and English that weaker, gradient versions of morpheme-internal phonotactic constraints, such as the ban on geminate consonants in English, hold even across prosodic word boundaries. I argue that these lexical biases are the result of a MAXIMUM ENTROPY phonotactic learning algorithm that maximizes the probability of…

There has been considerable research in Chinese as a second language (L2) in recent years, particularly in its morphological and syntactic aspects. This article reviews research in these aspects with reference to the broader discipline of second language acquisition (SLA) and suggests that L2 Chinese research has contributed to SLA through…

We applaud Stoel-Gammon's (this issue) call for a more comprehensive account of the relationship between lexicon and phonology, and we strongly endorse her suggestions for future research. However, we think that it will not be enough simply to integrate findings and methods from the adult-centered and child-centered literatures. Both of these…

This article addresses age-related attainment effects in second language acquisition, posing the question of whether such effects are to be explained in terms of a Critical Period with a predictable and abrupt offset point or in terms of the impact of a wider range of factors. It attempts to explore this question by focusing on four discussion…

This paper mainly explores the impacts of presenting new words in semantically-related (SR) sets on vocabulary learning. 38 students from two classes of Grade 2 in Taiyuan Foreign Language School (Senior High School Section) participate in the whole process. The same vocabulary items unknown to all students are taught to them in 4 lessons. The…

This paper addresses the phenomenon of Language Maintenance and Language Shift through a qualitative study of Tamil language in the family domain in Singapore. The influence of Singapore's bilingual policy and the institutional support offered for maintenance of Tamil language provide the context in which the central research problem of the status…

The acquisition of linguistic structures that require "perspective-taking" at the level of "message generation" is challenging. We investigate use of "progressive aspect" in L2 event encoding, using a sentence priming paradigm. We focus on Dutch, in which use of progressive aspect is optional. The progressive consists…

The Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) is a private, nonprofit organization with over 50 years' experience in the application of research on language and culture to educational and societal concerns. CAL carries out its mission to improve communication through better understanding of language and culture by engaging in a variety of projects in…

This article discusses the impact of lexical range on the learners' ability to communicate in English when taught as a foreign language in bilingual schools, and emphasizes the importance of explicit vocabulary instruction. It draws on data from classroom observation, lexis-retrieval tasks, written and spoken performance in bilingual…

Landau (2000) distinguishes between P(artial) C(ontrol) and E(xhaustive) C(ontrol): PC predicates like hope admit a subset relation between controller and controllee (e.g., "Kim hoped to gather at noon." [controllee = Kim and contextually salient others]); EC predicates like "try" do not (*"Kim tried to gather at…

This dissertation offers a detailed account of the phonology, morphophonology and elements of the morphosyntax of Kubeo, a language from the Eastern Tukanoan family, spoken in the Northwest Amazon. The dissertation is itself an experiment of how language documentation and empowering of the native speaker community can be combined with academic…

Semantic categories across languages appear to reflect both universal conceptual tendencies and linguistic convention. To accommodate this pattern of constrained variation, many theories assume the existence of a universal conceptual space and explain cross-language variation in category extension as language-specific partitions of that space.…