This book adopts as conceptual focus the technical mode of experience, exploring this characteristic mode of design as the angle from which the discipline of applied linguistics takes its cue. What makes applied linguistic concept formation possible? A number of elementary concepts and ideas are so basic to the discipline that they can neither be…

Over the past 40 years, Jim Cummins has proposed a number of highly influential theoretical concepts, including the threshold and interdependence hypotheses and the distinction between conversational fluency and academic language proficiency. In this book, he provides a personal account of how these ideas developed and he examines the credibility…

This established text--now revised and updated--reveals how spoken language skills are acquired and how they affect children's later reading and writing achievement. With a unique focus on the needs of educators, the book examines the foundations of language in the developing brain. It explores the relationship of language processes to core…

This book, written for both seasoned and novice researchers, presents a theory of what is called Basic and Higher Language Cognition (BLC and HLC), a theory aimed at making some fundamental issues concerning first and second language learning and bilingualism (more) empirical. The first part of the book provides background for and explication of…

Multilingual Aspects of Speech Sound Disorders in Children explores both multilingual and multicultural aspects of children with speech sound disorders. The 30 chapters have been written by 44 authors from 16 different countries about 112 languages and dialects. The book is designed to translate research into clinical practice. It is divided into…

This book explores the social construction of age in the context of EFL in Mexico. It is the first book to address the age factor in SLA from a social perspective. Based on research carried out at a public university in Mexico, it investigates how adults of different ages experience learning a new language and how they enact their age identities…

The nature of language change over time is examined, and an evolutionary theory of language is proposed. The text, intended for laymen, students, and experts alike, first addresses the reasons and mechanisms by which language changes, and attempts to identify a relationship between the essence of language, reasons for change, and the genesis of…

The book, designed as a textbook for introductory study of semantics within college-level linguistics, focuses on the study of meaning as it is systematically encoded in the vocabulary and grammar of natural languages. The term "semantics" is presumed here to include pragmatics. An introductory section explains fundamental theoretical and…

A study of child language development that takes a combined developmental and functional view of language acquisition is reported. It has three parts. The first outlines a variety of functional approaches in linguistics, links linguistic theory with what is known about children's emerging conceptual and social development, particularly in the…

Selected papers from a symposium that was a component of the National Institute of Education's Assessment of Language Proficiency of Bilingual Persons Project are presented. The project's objectives were to pursue basic research on the nature of language proficiency and its measurement and to provide teachers with current knowledge of language…

Second language acquisition has an identity problem. It is a young field struggling to emerge from the parent fields of education and applied linguistics. In this book, the author proposes a way to help second language acquisition develop a systematic and coherent focus using the philosophy of science as the lens. The structure of the book allows…

The book is a typological study of grammatical roles, such as agent, patient, beneficiary, and of grammatical relations, such as subject (direct) and indirect object. In addition it is concerned with the devices, such as the passive, that alter the identities in such roles and relations. Its objective is to suggest a consistent and reasonably…

A revisionist account of the development of ideas about semantics in modern theories of language is presented, focusing on the rift between Noam Chomsky and Generative Semanticists about the concept of deep structure, or the role of meaning in grammar. The discussion re-appraises the paradigm that has dominated American linguistics since the…

An intensive discussion of the immediate phonetic correction approach in second language instruction looks at the rationale for phonetic correction, describes the immediate method, and refines it into seven specific methods. The first chapter, on phonetic correction in general, examines the past and present reasons for using the technique, its…

The study examines origins of the usage patterns of "be" forms (conjugated and invariant forms of the copula) in Black English as they developed over a period of about 30 years. The corpus studied consists of selected interviews from a collection of recordings about Hoodoo, conjuration, witchcraft, and rootwork made by a white priest with almost…