Search results for "Developmental linguistics"

Figurative language and multicultural education: metaphors of language acquisition and retention

2015

Linguistics has long recognised that figurative language in the form of metaphorical expressions structures and communicates attitudes towards the ideas and concepts being expressed and that multilingual students also employ linguistic figures frequently in their writing. In this study, multilingual students use figurative language to both critique and describe experiences related to language acquisition and retention. Faced with the task of using three or more languages, the L3 English language students studied often turn to metaphor to describe the relationships between their languages and the different contexts in which they use the linguistic resources available to them. The following a…

Relationship Between the Linguistic Environments and Early Bilingual Language Development of Hearing Children in Deaf-parented Families

2013

We explored variation in the linguistic environments of hearing children of Deaf parents and how it was associated with their early bilingual language development. For that purpose we followed up the children's productive vocabulary (measured with the MCDI; MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory) and syntactic complexity (measured with the MLU10; mean length of the 10 longest utterances the child produced during videorecorded play sessions) in both Finnish Sign Language and spoken Finnish between the ages of 12 and 30 months. Additionally, we developed new methodology for describing the linguistic environments of the children (N = 10). Large variation was uncovered in both the amount…

Language Learning Methodology for Adults: A Study of Linguistic Transfer

2014

Abstract The purpose of the present research is to bring together the evidence on transfer in adult L2 and L3 language acquisition and investigate the use and the relationship between languages in contact. The role of linguistic transfer ( Odlin, 1989 ) i.e. the imposition of previously learned patterns onto a new learning situation, has a facilitation or inhibition effect on the learner's progress in mastering a new language (L2 or L3). Our findings reveal that the cross-linguistic influence occurs both from the direction of the L2 to the L3 and from the L3 to the L2 ( Odlin, 2003 , Jarvis and Pavlenko, 2008 ). In the case of our participants, in the acquisition of L2 as the foreign langua…

Continuity in early language development

1996

From a bodily-based format of knowledge to symbols. The evolution of human language

2013

Although ontogeny cannot recapitulate phylogeny, a two-level model of the acquisition of language will be here proposed and its implication for the evolution of the faculty of language will be discussed. It is here proposed that the identification of the cognitive requirements of language during ontogeny could help us in the task of identifying the phylogenetic achievements that concurred, at some point, to the acquisition of language during phylogeny. In this model speaking will be considered as a complex ability that arises in two different steps. The first step of competence widely relies on a bodily-based format of knowledge. The second step relies on more abstract meta-representations …

Awareness of second language inflectional morphology: A case study on Finnish as a second language

2007

The Finnish language has a very extensive inflectional morphology, whereas Vietnamese, as an isolating language, has no inflection at all. Therefore, the major challenge encountered by Vietnamese immigrants learning Finnish is to develop awareness of the existence, function and use of inflection. This paper examines how this process manifests itself in native-non-native speaker (NS-NNS) conversations during the initial stages of second language acquisition. All the negotiation sequences including overt signals of problems in understanding were subjected to a closer analysis, and the linguistic modifications performed to solve the problems were analysed on the level of both interaction and g…

Partial repetitions as other-initiations of repair in second language talk: Re-establishing understanding and doing learning

2014

Abstract This conversation analytical paper examines other-initiated repair sequences in everyday interactions between first and second language speakers of Finnish. More specifically, it focuses on sequences that are initiated by a second language speaker by repeating a part of the trouble source turn and shows that the repetitions are recurrently treated as actions indicating specific language-related problems of understanding. The analysis suggests that the linguistic asymmetry in second language interactions is a resource that is drawn upon in situations in which other resources for action formation and recognition are not sufficient. In addition, the analysis illustrates why and how ce…