Second language acquisition: Grammar construction or piecemeal learning?

Second Language Acquisition and Universal Grammar

published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Chapter 16. Construction grammar and first language acquisition

The role of Universal Grammar in second language acquisition

This paper discusses the question of whether Universal Grammar is relevant to the study of second language acquisition—in particular second language phonology. It will be shown that the notion of Universal Grammar has been hard to define coherently, which makes it difficult to implement it in second language acquisition research. One framework which offers a possibly explicit definition of Univ...

A Study of Chomsky’s Universal Grammar in Second Language Acquisition

Universal Grammar (UG) proposed by Chomsky (1986) has gained a large popularity in linguistics study. The paper firstly illustrates the background and major contents of UG and second language acquisition (SLA). Then it addresses the three hypotheses of UG in SLA, which center on whether adult language learners have access to the principles and parameters of UG in constructing the grammar of a s...

Modelling semantic acquisition in second language learning

Using methods of statistical analysis, we investigate how semantic knowledge is acquired in English as a second language and evaluate the pace of development across a number of predicate types and content word combinations, as well as across the levels of language proficiency and native languages. Our exploratory study helps identify the most problematic areas for language learners with differe...