The Department of Linguistics at University of Victoria (UVic) in Canada has a long-standing tradition of empirical approaches to the study of theoretical and applied linguistics. As part of the Faculty of Humanities, the department caters to students with a wide range of backgrounds and interests, and provides crucial language teaching support in…

The vocabulary research of the 1980s and 1990s brought a breath of fresh air into the language classroom. Teachers in many remote EFL locations had long suspected that vocabulary was their learners' main challenge, but there was little research evidence to confirm this or say what to do about it. Then, suddenly, work by Nation, Laufer, Meara,…

This article explores the role of transfer and Universal Grammar (UG) in second language (L2) phonology by investigating the L2 acquisition of stress/prominence in footless languages, such as Turkish and French, which have fixed word- and phrase-final prominence respectively. It is proposed that once the prosodic constituent Foot is projected in a…

This article proposes that second language learners can use indirect positive evidence (IPE) to acquire a phonological grammar that is a subset of their L1 grammar. IPE is evidence from errors in the learner's L1 made by native speakers of the learner's L2. It has been assumed that subset grammars may be acquired using direct or indirect negative…

This dissertation addresses a number of issues about the grammar of Eastern Canadian Inuktitut. Inuktitut is a dialect within the Inuit dialect continuum which is a group of languages/dialects within the Eskimo-Aleut language family. (Eastern Canadian Inuktitut has an ISO 693-3 language code of "ike".) Typologically, it is an ergative…

In this study we compared the effects of two types of form-focused instruction (FFI) on second language (L2) learning and their potential contributions to the development of different types of L2 knowledge. Both types of instruction were pre-emptive in nature, that is planned and teacher generated. In Integrated FFI attention to form was embedded…

Implicit and explicit knowledge of the second language (L2) are two central constructs in the field of second language acquisition (SLA). In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in obtaining valid and reliable measures of L2 learners' implicit and explicit knowledge (e.g., Bowles, 2011; R. Ellis, 2005). The purpose of the present study…

The authors of "Phrase-final prepositions in Quebec French: An empirical study of contact, code-switching and resistance to convergence", Poplack, Zentz & Dion (2011, this issue), henceforth cited as PZD, make a strong case for showing that, in spite of surface similarities, preposition stranding in Canadian French relative clauses…

Most research on language awareness in a second language (L2) has been carried out with adult learners. This research presents data showing that pedagogical techniques can be devised enabling children as young as 8 to develop metalinguistic awareness of their emerging L2 system. Building on existing work by Canadian researchers, this…

This article gives a preliminary analysis of the "Survey of Canadian English," which was conducted across Canada in 1972. The article deals with various problems with a view to facilitating a more exhaustive evaluation of the data stored at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. (Text is in German.) (Author/CFM)

A study of the spoken French of 120 residents of Montreal. The researchers were interested in the linguistic and social factors influencing the use of "avoir" and "etre." Results show that this usage corresponds to a tendancy to regularize conjugations. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

A discussion of language data suggesting that young bilinguals and monolinguals exhibit a similar sequence of acquisition of standard use of English prepositions and French auxiliaries. Two error analysis studies are summarized, results of them are applied to the Franco-Ontarian and Quebec sociolinguistic contexts, and implications are discussed.…

Three papers in linguistics, all in French, are presented. "La delocutivite lexicale en francais standard: esquisse d'un modele derivationnel" ("Lexical Delocutivity in Standard French: Sketch of a Derivational Model"), by Marc Bonhomme, examines the process by which certain expressions become neologisms. "La terminologie…

The first complete descriptive grammar of Lillooet, an interior Salish language spoken in British Columbia (Canada), uses the structuralist method to provide a detailed analysis of the language's sound system, word structure, and syntax, and to explain their functions and positions within Lillooet's overall linguistic structure. The account is…

The French gender usage of grade two and grade five Franco-Ontarian children was compared with that of English-speaking children enrolled in French immersion programs, and monolingual French-speaking children in Quebec. While some of the Franco-Ontarian children are similar to the Quebec children with respect to the gender "rules" they…