This book provides a pioneering introduction to heritage languages and their speakers, written by one of the founders of this new field Using examples from a wide range of languages, it covers all the main components of grammar, including phonetics and phonology, morphology and morphosyntax, semantics and pragmatics, and shows easy familiarity with approaches ranging from formal grammar to typology, from sociolinguistics to child language acquisition and other relevant aspects of psycholinguistics The book offers analysis of resilient and vulnerable domains in heritage languages, with a special emphasis on recurrent structural properties that occur across multiple heritage languages It is explicit about instances where, based on our current knowledge, we are unable to reach a clear decision on a particular claim or analytical point, and therefore provides a much-needed resource for future research

Heritage Languages and their Speakers

Three case-studies, using longitudinal records of children's spontaneous speech, illustrate what happens when a child's syntax changes. The first, examining acquisition of English verb-particle constructions, shows a near-total absence of commission errors. The second, examining acquisition of prepositional questions in English or Spanish, shows that children (i) may go as long as 9 months producing both direct-object questions and declaratives with prepositional phrases, before first attempting a prepositional question; and (ii) at some point, abrubtly begin producing prepositional questions that are correctly formed for the target language. The third case study shows that in children acquiring English, the onset of verb-particle constructions occurs almost exactly when that child begins using novel noun-noun compounds. After a discussion of the implications for the nature of syntactic knowledge, and for the mechanisms by which it is acquired, two examples are presented of as-yet untested acquisitional predictions of parametric proposals in the syntax literature.

/pdf/a-parametric-approach-to-the-acquisition-of-syntax-2yvynr4ujk.pdf

A parametric approach to the acquisition of syntax.

Profiling L2 students’ writing self-efficacy and its relationship with their writing strategies for self-regulated learning

Writing requires substantial cognitive processing; when writing, cognitive load emerges due to the limited working memory. Research has investigated cognitive load as an explanatory concept in L2 writing, although there are a few instruments for measuring. Accordingly, the present study aims to develop and validate the EFL Argumentative Writing Cognitive Load Scale. Initially, stimulated recall from 13 undergraduates' cognitive load during a writing task was used to generate a pool of scale items. Subsequently, 685 undergraduate students participated, with 300 at the scale development stage and 385 at the validation stage. The final version of the scale contains 39 items assessing six dimensions: argumentation, organization, language expression, word spelling, introduction and conclusion writing and post-writing monitoring. Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses showed that the scale's psychometric properties are acceptable. The scale enables writing researchers and teachers to better understand L2 learners' writing process and deploy targeted intervention strategies to optimize writing cognitive load. 

A measure of EFL argumentative writing cognitive load: Scale development and validation

Based on Kellogg's writing model, Skehan's Limited Attentional Capacity Model (LACM), and Robinson's Cognition Hypothesis, our study investigated the effects of cognitive task complexity on syntactic complexity, lexical complexity, accuracy, fluency, and functional adequacy in Chinese L2 students' argumentative writing, when students were under an online planning condition. Sixty-eight participants from a Chinese university were recruited to complete two writing tasks with task complexity varied in terms of [+ argument elements]. The findings showed that increasing task complexity led to decreased subordination in terms of clauses per T-unit and dependent clauses per clause, increased phrasal elaboration in terms of coordinate phrases per clause, and no changes in mean length of T-unit, T-units per sentence, mean length of clause, and complex nominals per clause. Neither significant differences in accuracy nor fluency were found as a function of increasing task complexity. Detrimental effects on functional adequacy in content, organization, and overall scores were identified with the increases in task complexity. The trade-offs between syntactic and lexical complexity and between syntactic complexity and functional adequacy support the basic principle of Skehan's LACM that human's information processing capacity is limited and Kellogg's claim that learners have a limited central executive capacity in writing. Implications of the results of this research are discussed.

Effects of cognitive task complexity and online planning on second language learners' argumentative writing.

A multidimensional approach to assessing the effects of task complexity on L2 students’ argumentative writing

When again modifies an English goal-PP construction, the sentence is ambiguous between a repetitive and a restitutive reading. Interestingly, languages vary in whether their counterpart to English ...

There and back again: An acquisition study

Studies on negative questions in early child English have found that children produce negative questions (1) in a fashion different from adults. In particular, it has been reported that children produce a large number of negative questions with two auxiliaries (henceforth 2Aux) in elicited production (EP) studies (Guasti et al., 1995; Hiramatsu, 2003; Ambridge & Rowland, 2009). However, as will be seen below, 2Aux sentences are largely restricted to elicited production. Children make far fewer 2Aux errors in spontaneous production (SP) (Stromswold, 1990), and they treat them as unacceptable in grammaticality judgment (GJ) tasks (Hiramatsu, 2003). These findings raise the following questions: What is the source of children s elicited 2Aux errors? How do we explain the asymmetries between EP, SP and GJ?

www.lingref.com/cpp/galana/4/paper2602.pdf

Children's 2Aux NegativeQuestions: Elicited Production versus Spontaneous Speech

Scholars have underscored the importance of raising students’ awareness and understanding of stance-taking in academic writing. However, studies on the effects of the pedagogical intervention are just a few. To strengthen this line of inquiry, this paper reports on an intervention study with explicit instruction of stance metalanguage based on the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) Engagement framework and its effects on EFL students’ perceptions of stance as well as on their beliefs about academic writing. A treatment group (n = 26) and a comparison group (n = 24) were involved. An eight-week writing intervention was provided in the treatment group, while the comparison group received regular curriculum-based instruction. Data from multiple sources were collected prior to and after the writing intervention, including two five-point Likert-scale questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and reflective journals, to examine possible changes in students’ self-reported perceptions of stance and writing beliefs. Results showed that the intervention was effective in enhancing students’ stance awareness and transactional writing beliefs. Qualitative results further revealed that while the comparison group retained a preference for tentative stance after the writing instruction, intending to avoid potential challenges from readers, the treatment group exhibited a shift in preference for assertive stance valuing the strengths of claims. The treatment group further exhibited an inclination to adopt a wider range of stance options for various rhetorical purposes. Pedagogical suggestions are discussed.

/pdf/effects-of-teacher-explicit-instruction-in-stance-taking-on-ja9su3k4.pdf

Effects of teacher explicit instruction in stance-taking on students’ perceptions of stance and on their academic writing beliefs

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