Second Language Acquisition

This textbook approaches second language acquisition from the perspective of generative linguistics. Roumyana Slabakova reviews and discusses paradigms and findings from the last thirty years of research in the field, focussing in particular on how the second or additional language is represented in the mind and how it is used in communication. The adoption and analysis of a specific model of acquisition, the Bottleneck Hypothesis, provides a unifying perspective. The book assumes some non-technical knowledge of linguistics, but important concepts are clearly introduced and defined throughout, making it a valuable resource not only for undergraduate and graduate students of linguistics, but also for researchers in cognitive science and language teachers.

1 - Language architecture
2 - Language variation
3 - The psychological reality of language in use
4 - The Critical Period Hypothesis
5 - First language acquisition with two first languages
6 - Child second language, multilingual and heritage language acquisition, and language attrition
7 - Acquisition of (functional) morphology
8 - Acquisition of syntax
9 - Acquisition of the mental lexicon
10 - Acquisition of the syntax-semantics interface
11 - Acquisition of the syntax-discourse and semantics-pragmatics interfaces
12 - L2 processing
13 - The Bottleneck Hypothesis and its implications for the second language classroom

Roumyana Slabakova is Professor and Chair of Applied Linguistics at the University of Southampton, UK, where she is Director of the Centre for Linguistics, Language Education and Acquisition Research (CLLEAR). Her research interests are in the second language acquisition of meaning, more specifically phrasal-semantic, discourse, and pragmatic meanings, as well as generative linguistics research applied to language teaching. Her publications include Telicity in the Second Language (Benjamins 2001) and Meaning in the Second Language (Mouton de Gruyter 2008). She is the founding co-editor of the journal Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism and also co-edits the journal Second Language Research.