Syntactic complexity has long been used to gauge language learners' performance, proficiency, and development, offering language teachers valid recommendations for syllabus design and materials development. Progress in syntactic complexity research foreshadows the imperative of measuring syntactic features at a high level of granularity, which…

"Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics (CLP)" and its namesake field have accomplished a great deal in the last quarter of a century. The success of the journal parallels the growth and vitality of the field it represents. The markers of journal achievement are several, including increased number of journal pages published annually; greater diversity…

Recent work has taken different approaches in attempting to use linguistics to identify the authors of documents by the style of their writing. Traditionally, linguists have sought to identify similarities and differences in a host of features, including spelling, syntax, word usage and others, and to draw inferences regarding authorship based on…

Defines the characteristics of a "teaching grammar" (a text that aims to provide teachers of English as a foreign language with the linguistic information that they require for effective teaching) and contrasts such grammars with purely theoretical or linguistic grammars. Uses the passive voice in English to illustrate the contrasts.…

This book presents a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the development of modern Chinese from the late 19th century up to the 1990s, concentrating on three major aspects: modern spoken Chinese, modern written Chinese, and the modern Chinese writing system. It describes and analyzes in detail, from historical and sociolinguistic perspectives,…

An intensive case study in learning a second foreign language, which is part of an applied linguistics course for teachers/teacher trainees offered at the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa) is described. Attention is directed to: case study rationale and objectives; student orientation and preparation; and areas of focus and the…

The interlanguage hypothesis stresses that errors are a normal part of the language learning process. At the same time, in the view of many, the teacher has a responsibility to provide short cuts for the learner through appropriate corrective feedback. Conventionally, this has been taken to imply correction of expression by requiring repetition of…