In this article I put forth the core argument that Second Language Acquisition (SLA) needs to account for the psychological and emotional dimensions of second language (L2) learning, but that a number of epistemological and methodological difficulties must be surmounted before this new research program can be a reality. To illustrate my arguments,…

Several recent studies from our laboratory have shown that 14-month-old infants have difficulty learning to associate two phonetically similar new words to two different objects when tested in the Switch task. Because the infants can discriminate the same phonetic detail that they fail to use in the associative word-learning situation, we have…

Recent studies have suggested that cultures vary in subtle ways in the talk about talk that children hear and learn to produce. Twenty-two three-year-old children and their families in respectively Oslo, Norway and Cambridge, Massachusetts were observed during mealtime with the aim of identifying talk-focused talk. The analysis distinguished talk…

Adult Spanish second language (L2) learners of English and native speakers of English participated in an English perception task designed to investigate their ability to use L2 acoustic-phonetic cues, e.g., aspiration, to segment the stream of speech into words. Subjects listened to a phrase and indicated whether they heard, e.g., "keep sparking…

Recent research on Chinese orthography is reviewed in a discussion of the relationship between orthographic symbols and reading processes. Specifically, these issues are addressed with relation to research findings: the difficulty of learning Chinese logographs, particularly with regard to learning disabilities and biliteracy; whether reading in…

The debate over whether primates can be taught visual language is examined, and evidence of use of nonverbal language in primate studies is compared with the language criteria of a number of linguistic researchers. Background information on language, visual language (including sign language), and the parameters of the studies is offered, including…

The grammatical phenomenon in Japanese known as Ga-No conversion is examined. In this phenomenon, the nominative particle "ga" can be converted to genitive particle "no" in embedded sentences with a nominal head such as a relative clause or complementary clause. A pragmatic constraint to this conversion that has not previously been explored is…

The linguistic situation of Yoruba is described briefly and the origins of Arabic influence on the language are examined. It is noted that Arabic influences Yoruba mainly through Hausa, and four basic conditions results from adaptation of Arabic phonemes in Yoruba: (1) the consonant, which does not exist in Yoruba, is dropped without replacement;…

Analysis of the Korean verb "na-ka-ta" ("to get out, exit") focuses on why an expression such as "kyengkicang-ey na-ka-ta" ("someone goes out/in to the sports arena") is acceptable only in the context that the person's entering the arena is for the purpose of a contest, while it becomes semantically…

A discussion of Bolanci (also Bole or Bolewa), a West Chadic language spoken in northeastern Nigeria, focuses on one component of the system of complementation, the form "na." This form has an inherent semantic capable of influencing the meaning of sentences in which it is embedded, specifically, when present in a complex sentence,…

A study examined traditional Hindi songs typically sung by women during north Indian weddings, using pragmatic and semantic analysis. Some historical and cultural background for the practice of women's singing at weddings is offered. It is suggested that gender roles are defined and regulated through the language of this speech event, and that…

The work of connectionist researchers is examined in order to understand better the implications for modeling second language learning processes. Connectionism is a biologically-oriented framework for understanding complex behavior, and provides a modeling tool (computer simulation) that behaves and learns without rules being explicitly wired into…

While little attention has been given in historiography to the language of historical narrative, and the role language plays in portraying history, the discipline of linguistics, and particularly the subdisciplines of discourse analysis and functional linguistics, have given increasing attention to the discourse of history. Recently, a group of…

This discussion of the development of oral proficiency in a second language first examines relevant research and then suggests guidelines for designing classroom techniques for teaching oral proficiency. Research in cognitive psychology is reviewed, focusing on information processing theory and forgetting theory. Research discussed in the area of…

The student placement test in English as a Second Language used for the Eurocentres schools in the United Kingdom differs from traditional placement tests in that it is a vocabulary test and does not attempt to measure other aspects of learner knowledge of English. The test attempts to measure absolute size of the learner's English vocabulary. The…