This is a very practical and accessible book that offers a comprehensive overview of research methodology in applied linguistics by describing the various stages of qualitative and quantitative investigations, from collecting the data to reporting the results. It also discusses 'mixed methods research', that is, the various combinations of qualitative and quantitative methodologies.

Research Methods in Applied Linguistics

Child psychiatrists, pediatricians, and other child clinicians need to have a solid understanding of child language development. There are at least four important reasons that make this necessary. First, slowing, arrest, and deviation of language development are highly associated with, and complicate the course of, child psychopathology. Second, language competence plays a crucial role in emotional and mood regulation, evaluation, and therapy. Third, language deficits are the most frequent underpinning of the learning disorders, ubiquitous in our clinical populations. Fourth, clinicians should not confuse the rich linguistic and dialectal diversity of our clinical populations with abnormalities in child language development. The challenge for the clinician becomes, then, how to get immersed in the captivating field of child language acquisition without getting overwhelmed by its conceptual and empirical complexity. In the past 50 years and since the seminal works of Roger Brown, Jerome Bruner, and Catherine Snow, child language researchers (often known as developmental psycholinguists) have produced a remarkable body of knowledge. Linguists such as Chomsky and philosophers such as Grice have strongly influenced the science of child language. One of the major tenets of Chomskian linguistics (known as generative grammar) is that children’s capacity to acquire language is “hardwired” with “universal grammar”—an innate language acquisition device (LAD), a language “instinct”—at its core. This view is in part supported by the assertion that the linguistic input that children receive is relatively dismal and of poor quality relative to the high quantity and quality of output that they manage to produce after age 2 and that only an advanced, innate capacity to decode and organize linguistic input can enable them to “get from here (prelinguistic infant) to there (linguistic child).” In “Constructing a Language,” Tomasello presents a contrasting theory of how the child acquires language: It is not a universal grammar that allows for language development. Rather, human cognition universals of communicative needs and vocal-auditory processing result in some language universals, such as nouns and verbs as expressions of reference and predication (p. 19). The author proposes that two sets of cognitive skills resulting from biological/phylogenetic adaptations are fundamental to the ontogenetic origins of language. These sets of inherited cognitive skills are intentionreading on the one hand and pattern-finding, on the other. Intention-reading skills encompass the prelinguistic infant’s capacities to share attention to outside events with other persons, establishing joint attentional frames, to understand other people’s communicative intentions, and to imitate the adult’s communicative intentions (an intersubjective form of imitation that requires symbolic understanding and perspective-taking). Pattern-finding skills include the ability of infants as young as 7 months old to analyze concepts and percepts (most relevant here, auditory or speech percepts) and create concrete or abstract categories that contain analogous items. Tomasello, a most prominent developmental scientist with research foci on child language acquisition and on social cognition and social learning in children and primates, succinctly and clearly introduces the major points of his theory and his views on the origins of language in the initial chapters. In subsequent chapters, he delves into the details by covering most language acquisition domains, namely, word (lexical) learning, syntax, and morphology and conversation, narrative, and extended discourse. Although one of the remaining domains (pragmatics) is at the core of his theory and permeates the text throughout, the relative paucity of passages explicitly devoted to discussing acquisition and proBOOK REVIEWS

Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition

Language is arguably the most distinctive characteristic of the human species; we are not just creatures that walk upright or that use tools or even that know. We are creatures that talk, Homo loquens. Because language is at the center of our humanity, it is a matter of central importance and interest to us. People like to talk about talk; they are interested in the way they use language; they know, at least subliminally, that language is important. Because linguists are people who are supposed to know something serious, important, and real about language, they have a special obligation to pass on what they know to the general public. Steven Pinker makes an effort to inform nonlinguists about the mysteries of linguistic theories and facts. Whether or not one agrees with Pinker’s theoretical stances, one must applaud his clarity of exposition, his skill at argumentation, and his perceptions of the wider implications of linguistic matters. Words and Rules is an extended exposition of certain propositions, some fairly basic and some engagingly speculative. Specifically, the book proposes and cites evidence for a series of oppositions involving linguistic and mental structure:

Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language:

This review article presents evidence for the claim that frequency effects are pervasive in children's first language acquisition, and hence constitute a phenomenon that any successful account must explain. The article is organized around four key domains of research: children's acquisition of single words, inflectional morphology, simple syntactic constructions, and more advanced constructions. In presenting this evidence, we develop five theses. (i) There exist different types of frequency effect, from effects at the level of concrete lexical strings to effects at the level of abstract cues to thematic-role assignment, as well as effects of both token and type, and absolute and relative, frequency. High-frequency forms are (ii) early acquired and (iii) prevent errors in contexts where they are the target, but also (iv) cause errors in contexts in which a competing lower-frequency form is the target. (v) Frequency effects interact with other factors (e.g. serial position, utterance length), and the patterning of these interactions is generally informative with regard to the nature of the learning mechanism. We conclude by arguing that any successful account of language acquisition, from whatever theoretical standpoint, must be frequency sensitive to the extent that it can explain the effects documented in this review, and outline some types of account that do and do not meet this criterion.

/pdf/the-ubiquity-of-frequency-effects-in-first-language-352f4878te.pdf

The ubiquity of frequency effects in first language acquisition

CROFT, W.: Radical Construction Grammar. Syntactic Theory in Typological Perspective

In the "blocking-and-retrieval-failure" account of overregularization (OR; G. F. Marcus, 1995; G. F. Marcus et al., 1992), the claim that a symbolic rule generates regular inflection is founded on ...

A dense corpus study of past tense and plural overregularization in english

In this study, we test a number of predictions concerning children’s knowledge of the transitive Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) construction between two and three years on one child (Thomas) for whom we have densely collected data. The data show that the earliest SVO utterances reflect earlier use of those same verbs, and that verbs acquired before 2;7 show an earlier move towards adultlike levels of use in the SVO construction and in object argument complexity than later acquired verbs. There is not a close relation with the input in the types of subject and object referents used, nor a close adherence to Preferred Argument Structure (PAS) before 2;7, but both early and late acquired verbs show a simultaneous move towards PAS patterns in selection of referent type at 2;9. The event semantics underpinning early transitive utterances do not straightforwardly fit prototype (high or inalienable) notions of transitivity, but rather may reflect sensitivity to animacy and intentionality in a way that mir rors the input. We conclude that children’s knowledge of the transitive construction continues to undergo significant development between 2;0 and 3;0, reflecting the gradual abstraction and integration of the SVO and VO constructions, verb semantics, discourse pragmatics, and the interactions between these factors. These factors are considered in the context of a prototype for the transitive construction.

The acquisition of the active transitive construction in English: A detailed case study

In this study, we test a number of predictions concerning children?s knowledge ofthe transitive Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) construction between two and threeyears on one child (Thomas) for whom we have densely collected data. The datashow that the earliest SVO utterances reflect earlier use of those same verbs,and that verbs acquired before 2;7 show an earlier move towards adult-like levelsof use in the SVO construction and in object argument complexity than lateracquired verbs. There is not a close relation with the input in the types of subjectand object referents used, nor a close adherence to Preferred ArgumentStructure (PAS) before 2;7, but both early and late acquired verbs show asimultaneous move towards PAS patterns in selection of referent type at 2;9. Theevent semantics underpinning early transitive utterances do not straightforwardlyfit prototype (high or inalienable) notions of transitivity, but rather may reflectsensitivity to animacy and intentionality in a way that mirrors the input. Weconclude that children?s knowledge of the transitive construction continues toundergo significant development between 2;0 and 3;0, reflecting the gradualabstraction and integration of the SVO and VO constructions, verb semantics,discourse pragmatics, and the interactions between these factors. These factorsare considered in the context of a prototype for the transitive construction.

The acquisition of the active transitive construction in English: A detailed case study.

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A dense corpus study of past tense and plural overregularization in english

The acquisition of the active transitive construction in English: A detailed case study

The acquisition of the active transitive construction in English: A detailed case study.