Linguistic tones play an important role in expressing lexical and grammatical meaning in tone languages. A small change in the pitch of a word can result in an entirely different meaning. A logical question for those who document tone languages is whether or not singers preserve linguistic tone when singing and if so, to what degree? I begin by…

The purpose of this state-of-the-art review is to provide a general overview of recent research on time distribution and second language (L2) learning with special implications for classroom settings. Several studies have been performed to examine how to best distribute the hours of L2 practice to maximize learning by comparing conditions that…

A decade ago, Hornberger & Johnson proposed that the ethnography of language planning and policy (ELPP) offers a useful way to understand how people create, interpret, and at times resist language policy and planning (LPP). They envisioned ethnographic investigation of layered LPP ideological and implementational spaces, taking up Hornberger's…

The extensive literature on subject expression in Spanish makes for rich comparisons between generative (formal) and usage-based (functional) approaches to language acquisition. This article explores how the problem of subject expression has been conceptualized within each research tradition, as well as unanswered questions that both approaches…

Keyword analysis is one of the most widely used methods in corpus linguistics. The method is used to generate keywords which provide an indication of concepts in texts or a corpus. Keyword analysis tools commonly produce resulting keywords presented as a list which rather poorly indicates what the corpus is about since it typically requires…

Bilinguals often outperform monolinguals on executive function tasks, including tasks that tap cognitive flexibility, conflict monitoring, and task-switching abilities. Some have suggested that bilinguals also have greater working memory capacity than comparable monolinguals, but evidence for this suggestion is mixed. We therefore conducted a…

Elicited imitation (EI) has been widely used to examine second language (L2) proficiency and development and was an especially popular method in the 1970s and early 1980s. However, as the field embraced more communicative approaches to both instruction and assessment, the use of EI diminished, and the construct-related validity of EI scores as a…

In critical period hypothesis (CPH) research, native speaker (NS) norm groups have often been used to determine whether nonnative speakers (NNSs) were able to score within the NS range of scores. One goal of this article is to investigate what NS samples were used in previous CPH research. The literature review shows that NS control groups tend to…

This paper investigates uses of corpora in language learning ("data-driven learning") through analysis of a 600K-word corpus of empirical research papers in the field. The corpus can tell us much--the authors and the countries the studies are conducted in, the types of publication, and so on. The corpus investigation itself starts with…

Notes the parallels between N. Chomsky and M. Halle's "The Sound Pattern of English" and A. N. Whitehead and B. Russell's "Principia Mathematica." Uses these parallels to distinguish "formalist" v "substance-based" generative phonology. Suggests that a modification of the "formalist" program is ultimately more satisfactory than the…

Explores four major areas of differences between first- and second-language acquisition (completeness, equipotentiality, previous knowledge, and fossilization) and argues that the theory of Universal Grammar plays a much smaller role in explaining the second-language acquisition process than current research claims. (Author/CB)

Examines the production of yes/no questions by native speakers of English and speakers of Singapore English, a non-native regional variety. The findings suggest that what constitutes target-like use remains ill-defined as long as native speaker behavior is assumed, or intuited, rather than documented. (40 references) (GLR)

Research on second language acquisition (SLA) and research on foreign language learning (FLL), often regarded as different and separate fields of inquiry, are compared in a brief review of literature. Perceptions about the scopes and characteristics of the research are examined. Concerns about the relationship between SLA research and theory and…

Models of similarity have traditionally assumed that the similarity relation is symmetrical. However, when reversed, similarity statements frequently have different properties from those of the original. Previous attempts to account for the asymmetry of similarity have focused only on literal comparisons, resulting in a tendency to underestimate…

A discussion of whether there has been any progress in the discipline of historical linguistics focuses on the theories and recent publications of David Lightfoot and Roger Lass. The author's approaches to language change and language study are examined and compared. (MSE)