- Email: [email protected]
Adult language acquisition: Cross-linguistic perspectives. Volume 2. The results
Reviews I Lingua 96 (1995) 63-74
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units that were not considered in Quirk et al. This necessity to adapt Quirk’s analysis is not surprising since semantic definitions go in the direction of the particular, and the more extensive the analysis, the more divisions and subdivisions will be discovered. Since lexical nuances are notoriously difficult to classify unequivocally and comprehensively, Meyer’s contention that he has covered “not just some linguistic characteristics of apposition but all of them” might be too bold. In Chapter 4 the pragmatic characteristics of apposition are dealt with. Meyer states that pragmatically, apposition is a relation in which the second unit must supply new or partially new information about the first unit and further that the distribution of apposition is determined by the fact that not all semantic classes of apposition and the syntactic forms used to realise them are equally suited to the genres identified in the corpora (fiction, press, learned writing and conversation). To give an example, the semantic class of appellation occurred more frequently in the press genre than in the learned genre because this kind of apposition satisfies a communicative need of press reportage: to identify and name. Meyer further established that overall there is little difference in the occurrence of appositions in British and American English but that there is considerable variation in their use in spoken and written English (only 27% occurred in the spoken samples). For this he offers a pragmatic explanation: appositions are communicatively less important in speech than in writing because “they are most necessary in genres in which discourse participants possess a low amount of shared knowledge”, and usually conversation takes place between individuals possessing a high amount of shared personal knowledge. Meyer’s discussion of the pragmatics of apposition makes for interesting reading and is well illustrated. Chapter 5 is very short and illustrates that certain syntactic and semantic characteristics of apposition are more dominant than others, that apposition is a gradable relation and that it “is a very frequently occurring grammatical relation” in comparison with modification, complementation and coordination which occurred less frequently. The impression left by this book is one of confusion due to the bewildering number of characteristics attributed to apposition which are all worked out in detail. Moreover these characteristics do not really delimit apposition, as Meyer himself admits. To my .mind he, therefore, has not made good his claim that the relation of apposition is realized by constructions having specific (my emphasis) syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic characteristics distinguishing it from other categories and has by no means said the last word on apposition in English.
Clive Perdue (ed.), Adult Language Acquisition: Cross-linguistic Perspectives. Volume 1. Field Methods. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. xv + 253 pp. 35.00/$ 59.95 (hb.). Clive Perdue (ed.), Adult Language Acquisition: Cross-linguistic Perspectives. Volume 2. The Results. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. xiii + 284 pp. 35.00/$ 59.95 (hb.).
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Reviewed by Eduardo D. Faingold, Dept. of Linguistics, SUNY at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794-4376, USA. Volumes 1 and 2 of Adult Language Acquisition: Cross-linguistic Perspectives present, respectively, the methodology and the results of the European Science Foundation (ESF) research project on second language acquisition by immigrant speakers of Punjabi, Italian, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, and Finnish acquiring Dutch, English, French, German, and Swedish in a naturalistic environment. The project aimed to study the rate of success of the second language acquisition process in (mostly young) adults. The study contains longitudinal naturalistic case studies that allow a comparison of both the acquisition of the same target language by speakers of different source languages (e.g. Italian and Turkish immigrants learning German) and of different target languages by speakers of the same source language (e.g. Spanish-speaking Latin Americans in France and Sweden). Every first, as well as second, language acquisition and language learning scholar would profit from reading this work, since, in at least five respects, the researchers in this project go well beyond many other current (theoretical, as well as empirical) studies of second language acquisition, as follows: (a) the large number of languages studies simultaneously (six source languages and six target languages [see above]), (b) the highly structured and closely supervised organization of co-ordinated longitudinal case studies in a wide variety of linguistic environments (e.g. four Italians leaming English, four Italians learning German, four Turks learning German, four Turks learning Dutch, and so on, studied by six research teams based in England, Germany, Holland, France, and Sweden), (c) the wide range, as well as the highly interesting types, of linguistic phenomena studied, (d) the variety of multicausal linguistic and non-linguistic explanatory factors uncovered, and last, but certainly not least, (e) the unusually firm empirical methodology lacking in many current (theoretical) studies of second acquisition (see, e.g., Eubank, 1991; Ferguson and Huebner, 1991). A most striking feature of Adult Language Acquisition is its carefully designed methodology for data collection and analysis, which povides this project with a very firm empirical basis and lends it a high degree of reliability in the results, conclusions, and explanations. For example, the subjects were contacted soon after their arrival in the respective country, and their progress was closely monitored, as well as taped- and video-recorded, regulary for two and a half years. During (near) monthly sessions, the learners participated in a wide range of activities especially designed to elicit data relevant for the different research areas studied in Volume 2. In order to assess the effects of the observation of the acquisition process of these speakers (Labov’s well-known observer’s paradox) the authors conducted a control study collecting data from learners of Dutch, French, Swedish, etc. who did not interact with the investigators. The researchers spent three years collecting data and piloting and an almost equal amount of time devoted to a systematic transcription and analysis of the data, and the writing of the research reports. Another striking feature of this work is its broad-based view of language acquisition and language development, including many observations on processes of first language acquisition, as well as some (unfortunately few) comments on processes of pidginization and creolization.
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Adult Language Acquisition. Volume 1. Field Methods contains eight chapters, followed by three appendices, references, the ESF project’s complete bibliography, an author index, and a subject index, as follows: Chapter 1, ‘Aims of the ESF project’ (pp. 1-13) states in a very clear fashion the aims and the research areas covered by the project, and mentions the linguistic and non-linguistic factors determining naturalistic second language acquisition processes (e.g. the speaker’s biological dispositions, communicative needs and attitudes, and the degree of exposure to the target language). Chapter 2, ‘Previous longitudinal studies’ (pp. 14-38) compares the aims and approach of the ESF project to those of earlier work in second language acquisition and presents a comprehensive assessment of the empirical and (some of) the theoretical literature on the adult acquisition of English, German, and Dutch; it notes, quite rightly, the lack of cross-linguistic studies and the lack of studies offering multicausal (i.e. combined extrinsic, intrinsic, pragmatic, text, time, syntactic, etc.) explanations in the literature, as well as a large number of methodological problems affecting certain previous studies, such as overinterpretation and unfounded extrapolation of results. Chapter 3, ‘Who are the adult immigrants’ (pp. 39-51) explains how the aims of the study combined with an assessment of the literature in Chapter 1 and 2 led to a careful selection of almost-ideal informants. The authors show convincingly how the compromises which were necessary (e.g. including subjects with children of school age as well as subjects who had some formal learning of the target language) did not affect the possibility of making systematic crosslinguistic comparisons. Chapter 4, ‘Research areas: Some communicative tasks for the learner’ (pp. 527 1) explains how the learner’s linguistic repertoire is put to use in discourse activity; it delineates the development of certain grammatical means for combining words and constituents and for referring to time and space, as well as the interaction of the latter with pragmatic and communicational skills affecting exchanges of information in a naturalistic adult acquisition situation. Chapter 4 shows, quite consistently, how the study of cross-linguistic developments of this type could provide good proof of the reality of the notion ‘communicational need’, as well as a systematic analysis of the lack of certain structures from a contrastive (linguistic) point of view. Chapter 5, ‘Research design’ (pp. 72-92) describes this project’s highly planned and controlled design (e.g. the use of native speakers as researchers for all languages, piloting of data collection techniques, subject and language pairing, etc.), producing systematic comparisons and generalizations of the speaker’s performance of several linguistic tasks repeated over time. This chapter further discusses the advantages as well as the problems of the longitudinal method and emphasizes the need for conducting extensive pilot studies to uncover research questions and valid data, as well as the need to control for the effect of observation (Labov’s (1972) observer’s paradox). Chapter 6, ‘Data collection techniques’ (pp. 93-107) describes the empirical basis for the comparative, cross-linguistic analysis of the project, which is organized in a self-contained collection cycle. Approximately every six weeks the experimenters met the subjects and the latter were questioned on recent events in their lives and
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their opinions on various subjects of conversation: the learners were also persuaded to take part in a variety of especially designed activities to elicit linguistic structures and communicational situations (e.g. role play, guided tour, film retelling, stage directions, etc.). Chapter 7, ‘Transcription storage and retrieval of data’ (pp. 108-130) summarizes the wide number of transcription and storage procedures considered in this project and offers a short but interesting discussion of the advantages and problems encountered with several computer-assisted techniques of storage and analysis (e.g. ASCII, CHILDES, SLBD, KWAL, KWIC, and other computer programs especially written for the ESF project). Chapter 8, ‘Measuring language acquisition’ (pp. 131-185) is the last and longest chapter of Volume 1. The seven authors in this chapter take the word as the basic measurement unit and provide a quantitative assessment of subject proficiency in terms of MLU (Allwood), richness and variety in the lexicon (Broeder, Extra and Van Hout), socio-biographical factors (Van Hout and Stromquist), supplemented by a control study especially designed to assess the effects of contact between the subjects and the researchers (Edwards and Levelt); the latter show - and this will raise some eyebrows - that the linguistic effects of participation in the projects are almost zero. Appendices A, B, and C give, respectively, a list of the scholars who participated in the project (pp. 186188), short but well-written biographies of the subjects (pp. 189-210), and a representative sample transcription for each of the target languages (p. 21 l-225). There follow the references cited in the volume (pp. 226-232) and a very helpful bibliography containing references to most published (as well as some unpublished) papers of the ESF project (including many citations that I was unaware of) (pp. 233-246), followed by a two-page author index (pp. 247-248) and an unfortunately skimpy subject index (pp. 249-253). Adult Language Acquisition. Volume 2. The Results is divided in three parts (containing eight chapters), followed by an appendix (a copy of appendix A in Volume 1) (pp. 273-275), an author index (pp. 276-278), and a subject index (pp. 279-284), as follows: Part 1, ‘Production’, including (i) ‘Utterance structure’ by Wolfgang Klein and Clive Perdue (pp. 3-40), (ii) ‘Word formation processes in talking about entities’ by Peter Broeder, Guus Extra, Roeland van Hout, and Kaarlo Voionma (pp. 41-72), (iii) ‘The acquisition of temporality’ by Wolfgang Klein, Rainer Dietrich, and Colette Noyau (pp. 73-118) and (iv) ‘Reference to space in learner’s varieties’ by Mary Carroll and Angelika Becker (pp. 119-149). Part 2, ‘Interaction’, including (i) ‘Ways of achieving understanding’ by Katharina Bremer, Peter Broeder, Celia Roberts, Margaret Simonot, and Martie-Therese Vasseur (pp. 153-195) and (iii) ‘Feedback in second language acquisition’ by Jens Allwood (pp. 196-235). Part 3, ‘Synthesis’, including (i) ‘Adult language acquisition: A view from child language’ by Dan Slobin (pp. 239-252) and (ii) ‘Concluding remarks’ by Clive Perdue and Wolfgang Klein (pp. 253-272). In Part 1, Klein and Perdue focus on commonly acquired features of utterance structure by learners of diverse language backgrounds learning a variety of lan-
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guages (see above) and reveal an emerging picture of creative learners who draw on some of the input material to construct their own language system (rather than replicating item by item the various structures of the model language). The learner’s system is being constantly challenged by new input and by his or her awareness of linguistic inadequacy. The way in which learners confront these challenges varies according to each particular speaker and language involved. The authors conclude, most surprisingly, that naturalistic adult language acquisition is qualitatively different from first language acquisition and second language learning in the classroom, since children become undistinguishable from their social and linguistic environment, while classroom learing is usually piecemeal learning of individual structures as presented by the teacher. In contrast, second language learners in a naturalistic environment who want to become undistinguishable from their adopted communities, the authors note, are very rare. However, the ESF project did not follow learners long enough to determine if at least some of them acquire native-like or nearnative competence in any of the target languages. Note also that Klein and Perdue’s conclusions are not incompatible with other linguistic models (e.g. Krashen and Terrel’s (1983) natural/communicative approach to second language learning and textbook construction widely used at American universities for foreign language teaching; see below). Further, certain developmental patterns in second language acquisition are similar to other developmental situations such as first language acquisition, as well as pidginization, creolization, and historical change (see Slobin’s article in this volume; see also Faingold, 1994, in press). Broeder at al.‘s detailed paper breaks new ground in the study of cross-linguistic word formation processes of Germanic languages (English, German, Dutch). The authors show convincingly that derivation processes follow composition processes in adult language acquisition, while adult learners make a creative and innovative use of a variety of target- and source-language related compositional means. Most interestingly, the authors note that a “similar order of acquisition of compositional before derivational word formation devices, and - to a great extent - a similar innovative use of early compounds have been observed in children learning a first language (cf. Clark 1981, 1983) and in processes of pidginization and creolization (see Mtihlhlusler 1986). These similarities are striking . ..” (p. 71). But this observation comes as no surprise to the linguist working on the dynamic-developmental paradigm pioneered by C.J. Bailey (e.g. 1973, 1982, 1992, in press), since similarities among all developmental areas of linguistic research (pidgins, creoles, koines, language acquisition and language pathology, historical change, etc.) are a well-known phenomenon (see, further, Faingold, 1994, in press, forthcoming, and references cited therein). Klein et al.‘s and Carroll and Becker’s papers concentrate, respectively, on the acquisition of time and space reference, and shed light on three basic aspects of the acquisition of these two fundamental categories of human experience and cognition: (i) the expression of time and space at a given stage of acquisition, (ii) how learners proceed from one stage of the language to another. Both papers show convincingly, using both intra- and inter-subject comparisons, that the acquisition of time and space is a highly systematic process, and that this systematicity follows general cog-
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nitive and organizational principles. It is not surprising that here too the organization as well as the order of developments in the acquisition of location closely parallels those found in first language acquisition (see Johnston and Slobin, 1979) since, as the authors note, “the adult learner is learning to ‘think for speaking’ once again in the new language” (p. 140). In Part 2, Bremer et al. treat understanding as an active and interactive process that is negotiated constantly, in a dynamic process of collaboration, between all the participants in the communicative situation (rather than the solipsistic activity of the learner). The authors offer a detailed picture of the complexity and the asymmetry (as well as hardship and stress) that affects the communication between immigrants and the host countries. However, I remain unconvinced of one of the main points made in this chapter - that the learner’s acquisition of a second language in European countries is seriously hampered by experiences of racism and discrimination of ethnic minorities in Europe. The authors find “remarkable . . . that adult ethnic minority workers achieve the level of understanding that they do, given the cluster of factors operating against them . . . ” (p. 189). But one could make exactly the same remarks - and perhaps even more loudly - about many cases of first language acquisition, not to speak of the emergence of creole languages among slaves in the Caribbean plantations and elsewhere. I have found Allwood’s paper rather dense in style and hard to read to the uninitiated reader, with a number of unexplained and hurriedly explained technical terms (e.g. feedback in cybernetics, linguistic feedback, backchanelling, etc.). I will not offer any observations regarding the content of this chapter, since I do not command the literature or the technical concepts employed by the author. Slobin’s paper in Part 3 is an invited contribution by a leading scholar in child language and linguistic development. This paper argues for an integrative perspective to the study of language development in children and adults. It provides a very interesting, though rather short, analysis of certain parallels (as well as differences) in developmental patterns of first and second language acquisition, and discusses briefly the role of multicausal explanation (e.g. biology, society, cognition, typology, markedness, and input) in language development. This is one of the most interesting chapters of Adult Language Acquisition, though I must admit I am somewhat biased, since I have been engaged in a similar (integrative) approach to linguistic research for nearly a decade. Perdue and Klein’s concluding remarks take up three questions raised in Volume 1: (i) the characteristics of communication between native and non-native speakers, (ii) the general structure of second language acquisition (including the order, speed, and success in the acquisition of specific linguistic structures), and (iii) the factors on which acquisition depends (e.g. communicative, cross-linguistic, extrinsic, factors, as well as limitations on the learner’s acquisition of new materials). They focus on patterns of second language acquisition uncovered by these questions vis-a-vis some general tendencies (and mechanisms) in the development of linguistic systems (e.g. simplicity, transparency, grammaticalization, creolization, language change, etc.), and suggest some lines for future research in second language acquisition (e.g. to study further the notion of ‘critical rule’, different learner types, etc.). Finally, the
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authors criticize the general attitude of theoretical (generative) linguistics towards second language acquisition research - that “. . . feels in a position to tell the acquisition researcher what language is, how it is structured, and how it functions . . . ” (p. 266). Adult Language Acquisition is written in a scholarly but lively style. The typescript was produced with a high degree of editorial care: I have found only two typos - on p. 3 of Volume 1 and on p. 155 of Volume 2. This book is of relevance to the study of general linguistics, since it makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of language structure, its functions, and its emergence. It can be recommended as essential reading not only to first and second language acquisition and language learning scholars but also to applied linguists and teachers interested in Krashen’s ‘natural approach’ (see, e.g. Krashen and Terrel, 1983). Adult Language Acquisition can be easily integrated into other learning models such as Krashen’s since they share certain basic assumptions regarding the leaming process, which apply as well to text-book construction (see, e.g., Terre1 et al., 1990) including: (i) the gradual emergence of speech (oral comprehension precedes speech production), (ii) early speech is characterized by errors which do not need to become permanent, and last, but most importantly, (iii) a second language is learned best when the learner interacts with native speakers of the target language in a natural environment. A detailed critical evaluation of the applied and pedagogical (as well as linguistic) implications of this work is impossible here. Finally, the second language acquisition scholar working within a theoretical framework would also profit from reading it, since, as Perdue and Klein note in their concluding remarks, a “theory of second language acquisition . . . does not drop from the sky. If we want to understand how people learn a second language . . . we have to look on how they concretely go about it” (p. 267).
References Bailey, C.J.N., Variation and linguistic theory. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Bailey, C.J.N., 1982. On the yin and yang nature of language. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma. Bailey, C.J.N., 1992. Variation in the data: Can linguistics ever become a science? Hawaii: Orchid Land Publications. Bailey, C.J.N., in press. Essays on time-based linguistic analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clark, E., 1981. Lexical innovations: How children learn to create new words. In: W. Deutsch (ed.), The child’s construction of language, 299-328. London: Academic Press. Clark, E., 1983. Convention and contrast in acquiring the lexicon. In: Th. Seiler, W. Wannenmacher (eds.), Concept development and the development of word meaning, 67-89. Berlin: Springer. Eubank, L. (eds.), 1991. Point counterpoint. Universal Grammar in the second language. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Faingold, ED., 1994. The development of mood in Spanish: A study of first language acquisition and second language learning. Paper presented at the 1st Lisbon Meeting on Child Language. University of Lisbon, Portugal. June 14-18, 1994. Faingold, E.D., in press. The emergence of the article system in language acquisition, creolization, and history: A universal hierarchy of natural morphological markedness. In: H. Pishwa, K. Maroldt (eds.), The development of morphological systematicity: A cross-linguistic perspective. Ttibingen: Gunter Nat-r.
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Faingold, E.D., forthcoming. Child language, creolization, and historical change. Spanish in contact with Portuguese. Ttibingen: Gunter Narr. Ferguson, C. and T. Huebner (eds.). 1991. Crosscurrents in second language acquisition and linguistic theories. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Johnston, J.R. and D.I. Slobin, 1979. The development of locative expressions in English, Italian, SerboCroatian, and Turkish. Journal of Child Language 6, 529-546. Krashen, SD. and T.D. Terrel, 1983. The natural approach: Language acquisition in the classroom. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Labov, W., 1972. Language in the inner city. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvannia Press. Mtihlhlusler, P., 1986. Pidgin and creole linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. Terrel, T.D., M. Andrade, J. Egasse and E.M. Mutioz, 1990. DOS Mundos - A communicative approach. New York: MC Graw-Hill.
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units that were not considered in Quirk et al. This necessity to adapt Quirk’s analysis is not surprising since semantic definitions go in the direction of the particular, and the more extensive the analysis, the more divisions and subdivisions will be discovered. Since lexical nuances are notoriously difficult to classify unequivocally and comprehensively, Meyer’s contention that he has covered “not just some linguistic characteristics of apposition but all of them” might be too bold. In Chapter 4 the pragmatic characteristics of apposition are dealt with. Meyer states that pragmatically, apposition is a relation in which the second unit must supply new or partially new information about the first unit and further that the distribution of apposition is determined by the fact that not all semantic classes of apposition and the syntactic forms used to realise them are equally suited to the genres identified in the corpora (fiction, press, learned writing and conversation). To give an example, the semantic class of appellation occurred more frequently in the press genre than in the learned genre because this kind of apposition satisfies a communicative need of press reportage: to identify and name. Meyer further established that overall there is little difference in the occurrence of appositions in British and American English but that there is considerable variation in their use in spoken and written English (only 27% occurred in the spoken samples). For this he offers a pragmatic explanation: appositions are communicatively less important in speech than in writing because “they are most necessary in genres in which discourse participants possess a low amount of shared knowledge”, and usually conversation takes place between individuals possessing a high amount of shared personal knowledge. Meyer’s discussion of the pragmatics of apposition makes for interesting reading and is well illustrated. Chapter 5 is very short and illustrates that certain syntactic and semantic characteristics of apposition are more dominant than others, that apposition is a gradable relation and that it “is a very frequently occurring grammatical relation” in comparison with modification, complementation and coordination which occurred less frequently. The impression left by this book is one of confusion due to the bewildering number of characteristics attributed to apposition which are all worked out in detail. Moreover these characteristics do not really delimit apposition, as Meyer himself admits. To my .mind he, therefore, has not made good his claim that the relation of apposition is realized by constructions having specific (my emphasis) syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic characteristics distinguishing it from other categories and has by no means said the last word on apposition in English.
Clive Perdue (ed.), Adult Language Acquisition: Cross-linguistic Perspectives. Volume 1. Field Methods. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. xv + 253 pp. 35.00/$ 59.95 (hb.). Clive Perdue (ed.), Adult Language Acquisition: Cross-linguistic Perspectives. Volume 2. The Results. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. xiii + 284 pp. 35.00/$ 59.95 (hb.).
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Reviewed by Eduardo D. Faingold, Dept. of Linguistics, SUNY at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794-4376, USA. Volumes 1 and 2 of Adult Language Acquisition: Cross-linguistic Perspectives present, respectively, the methodology and the results of the European Science Foundation (ESF) research project on second language acquisition by immigrant speakers of Punjabi, Italian, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, and Finnish acquiring Dutch, English, French, German, and Swedish in a naturalistic environment. The project aimed to study the rate of success of the second language acquisition process in (mostly young) adults. The study contains longitudinal naturalistic case studies that allow a comparison of both the acquisition of the same target language by speakers of different source languages (e.g. Italian and Turkish immigrants learning German) and of different target languages by speakers of the same source language (e.g. Spanish-speaking Latin Americans in France and Sweden). Every first, as well as second, language acquisition and language learning scholar would profit from reading this work, since, in at least five respects, the researchers in this project go well beyond many other current (theoretical, as well as empirical) studies of second language acquisition, as follows: (a) the large number of languages studies simultaneously (six source languages and six target languages [see above]), (b) the highly structured and closely supervised organization of co-ordinated longitudinal case studies in a wide variety of linguistic environments (e.g. four Italians leaming English, four Italians learning German, four Turks learning German, four Turks learning Dutch, and so on, studied by six research teams based in England, Germany, Holland, France, and Sweden), (c) the wide range, as well as the highly interesting types, of linguistic phenomena studied, (d) the variety of multicausal linguistic and non-linguistic explanatory factors uncovered, and last, but certainly not least, (e) the unusually firm empirical methodology lacking in many current (theoretical) studies of second acquisition (see, e.g., Eubank, 1991; Ferguson and Huebner, 1991). A most striking feature of Adult Language Acquisition is its carefully designed methodology for data collection and analysis, which povides this project with a very firm empirical basis and lends it a high degree of reliability in the results, conclusions, and explanations. For example, the subjects were contacted soon after their arrival in the respective country, and their progress was closely monitored, as well as taped- and video-recorded, regulary for two and a half years. During (near) monthly sessions, the learners participated in a wide range of activities especially designed to elicit data relevant for the different research areas studied in Volume 2. In order to assess the effects of the observation of the acquisition process of these speakers (Labov’s well-known observer’s paradox) the authors conducted a control study collecting data from learners of Dutch, French, Swedish, etc. who did not interact with the investigators. The researchers spent three years collecting data and piloting and an almost equal amount of time devoted to a systematic transcription and analysis of the data, and the writing of the research reports. Another striking feature of this work is its broad-based view of language acquisition and language development, including many observations on processes of first language acquisition, as well as some (unfortunately few) comments on processes of pidginization and creolization.
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Adult Language Acquisition. Volume 1. Field Methods contains eight chapters, followed by three appendices, references, the ESF project’s complete bibliography, an author index, and a subject index, as follows: Chapter 1, ‘Aims of the ESF project’ (pp. 1-13) states in a very clear fashion the aims and the research areas covered by the project, and mentions the linguistic and non-linguistic factors determining naturalistic second language acquisition processes (e.g. the speaker’s biological dispositions, communicative needs and attitudes, and the degree of exposure to the target language). Chapter 2, ‘Previous longitudinal studies’ (pp. 14-38) compares the aims and approach of the ESF project to those of earlier work in second language acquisition and presents a comprehensive assessment of the empirical and (some of) the theoretical literature on the adult acquisition of English, German, and Dutch; it notes, quite rightly, the lack of cross-linguistic studies and the lack of studies offering multicausal (i.e. combined extrinsic, intrinsic, pragmatic, text, time, syntactic, etc.) explanations in the literature, as well as a large number of methodological problems affecting certain previous studies, such as overinterpretation and unfounded extrapolation of results. Chapter 3, ‘Who are the adult immigrants’ (pp. 39-51) explains how the aims of the study combined with an assessment of the literature in Chapter 1 and 2 led to a careful selection of almost-ideal informants. The authors show convincingly how the compromises which were necessary (e.g. including subjects with children of school age as well as subjects who had some formal learning of the target language) did not affect the possibility of making systematic crosslinguistic comparisons. Chapter 4, ‘Research areas: Some communicative tasks for the learner’ (pp. 527 1) explains how the learner’s linguistic repertoire is put to use in discourse activity; it delineates the development of certain grammatical means for combining words and constituents and for referring to time and space, as well as the interaction of the latter with pragmatic and communicational skills affecting exchanges of information in a naturalistic adult acquisition situation. Chapter 4 shows, quite consistently, how the study of cross-linguistic developments of this type could provide good proof of the reality of the notion ‘communicational need’, as well as a systematic analysis of the lack of certain structures from a contrastive (linguistic) point of view. Chapter 5, ‘Research design’ (pp. 72-92) describes this project’s highly planned and controlled design (e.g. the use of native speakers as researchers for all languages, piloting of data collection techniques, subject and language pairing, etc.), producing systematic comparisons and generalizations of the speaker’s performance of several linguistic tasks repeated over time. This chapter further discusses the advantages as well as the problems of the longitudinal method and emphasizes the need for conducting extensive pilot studies to uncover research questions and valid data, as well as the need to control for the effect of observation (Labov’s (1972) observer’s paradox). Chapter 6, ‘Data collection techniques’ (pp. 93-107) describes the empirical basis for the comparative, cross-linguistic analysis of the project, which is organized in a self-contained collection cycle. Approximately every six weeks the experimenters met the subjects and the latter were questioned on recent events in their lives and
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their opinions on various subjects of conversation: the learners were also persuaded to take part in a variety of especially designed activities to elicit linguistic structures and communicational situations (e.g. role play, guided tour, film retelling, stage directions, etc.). Chapter 7, ‘Transcription storage and retrieval of data’ (pp. 108-130) summarizes the wide number of transcription and storage procedures considered in this project and offers a short but interesting discussion of the advantages and problems encountered with several computer-assisted techniques of storage and analysis (e.g. ASCII, CHILDES, SLBD, KWAL, KWIC, and other computer programs especially written for the ESF project). Chapter 8, ‘Measuring language acquisition’ (pp. 131-185) is the last and longest chapter of Volume 1. The seven authors in this chapter take the word as the basic measurement unit and provide a quantitative assessment of subject proficiency in terms of MLU (Allwood), richness and variety in the lexicon (Broeder, Extra and Van Hout), socio-biographical factors (Van Hout and Stromquist), supplemented by a control study especially designed to assess the effects of contact between the subjects and the researchers (Edwards and Levelt); the latter show - and this will raise some eyebrows - that the linguistic effects of participation in the projects are almost zero. Appendices A, B, and C give, respectively, a list of the scholars who participated in the project (pp. 186188), short but well-written biographies of the subjects (pp. 189-210), and a representative sample transcription for each of the target languages (p. 21 l-225). There follow the references cited in the volume (pp. 226-232) and a very helpful bibliography containing references to most published (as well as some unpublished) papers of the ESF project (including many citations that I was unaware of) (pp. 233-246), followed by a two-page author index (pp. 247-248) and an unfortunately skimpy subject index (pp. 249-253). Adult Language Acquisition. Volume 2. The Results is divided in three parts (containing eight chapters), followed by an appendix (a copy of appendix A in Volume 1) (pp. 273-275), an author index (pp. 276-278), and a subject index (pp. 279-284), as follows: Part 1, ‘Production’, including (i) ‘Utterance structure’ by Wolfgang Klein and Clive Perdue (pp. 3-40), (ii) ‘Word formation processes in talking about entities’ by Peter Broeder, Guus Extra, Roeland van Hout, and Kaarlo Voionma (pp. 41-72), (iii) ‘The acquisition of temporality’ by Wolfgang Klein, Rainer Dietrich, and Colette Noyau (pp. 73-118) and (iv) ‘Reference to space in learner’s varieties’ by Mary Carroll and Angelika Becker (pp. 119-149). Part 2, ‘Interaction’, including (i) ‘Ways of achieving understanding’ by Katharina Bremer, Peter Broeder, Celia Roberts, Margaret Simonot, and Martie-Therese Vasseur (pp. 153-195) and (iii) ‘Feedback in second language acquisition’ by Jens Allwood (pp. 196-235). Part 3, ‘Synthesis’, including (i) ‘Adult language acquisition: A view from child language’ by Dan Slobin (pp. 239-252) and (ii) ‘Concluding remarks’ by Clive Perdue and Wolfgang Klein (pp. 253-272). In Part 1, Klein and Perdue focus on commonly acquired features of utterance structure by learners of diverse language backgrounds learning a variety of lan-
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guages (see above) and reveal an emerging picture of creative learners who draw on some of the input material to construct their own language system (rather than replicating item by item the various structures of the model language). The learner’s system is being constantly challenged by new input and by his or her awareness of linguistic inadequacy. The way in which learners confront these challenges varies according to each particular speaker and language involved. The authors conclude, most surprisingly, that naturalistic adult language acquisition is qualitatively different from first language acquisition and second language learning in the classroom, since children become undistinguishable from their social and linguistic environment, while classroom learing is usually piecemeal learning of individual structures as presented by the teacher. In contrast, second language learners in a naturalistic environment who want to become undistinguishable from their adopted communities, the authors note, are very rare. However, the ESF project did not follow learners long enough to determine if at least some of them acquire native-like or nearnative competence in any of the target languages. Note also that Klein and Perdue’s conclusions are not incompatible with other linguistic models (e.g. Krashen and Terrel’s (1983) natural/communicative approach to second language learning and textbook construction widely used at American universities for foreign language teaching; see below). Further, certain developmental patterns in second language acquisition are similar to other developmental situations such as first language acquisition, as well as pidginization, creolization, and historical change (see Slobin’s article in this volume; see also Faingold, 1994, in press). Broeder at al.‘s detailed paper breaks new ground in the study of cross-linguistic word formation processes of Germanic languages (English, German, Dutch). The authors show convincingly that derivation processes follow composition processes in adult language acquisition, while adult learners make a creative and innovative use of a variety of target- and source-language related compositional means. Most interestingly, the authors note that a “similar order of acquisition of compositional before derivational word formation devices, and - to a great extent - a similar innovative use of early compounds have been observed in children learning a first language (cf. Clark 1981, 1983) and in processes of pidginization and creolization (see Mtihlhlusler 1986). These similarities are striking . ..” (p. 71). But this observation comes as no surprise to the linguist working on the dynamic-developmental paradigm pioneered by C.J. Bailey (e.g. 1973, 1982, 1992, in press), since similarities among all developmental areas of linguistic research (pidgins, creoles, koines, language acquisition and language pathology, historical change, etc.) are a well-known phenomenon (see, further, Faingold, 1994, in press, forthcoming, and references cited therein). Klein et al.‘s and Carroll and Becker’s papers concentrate, respectively, on the acquisition of time and space reference, and shed light on three basic aspects of the acquisition of these two fundamental categories of human experience and cognition: (i) the expression of time and space at a given stage of acquisition, (ii) how learners proceed from one stage of the language to another. Both papers show convincingly, using both intra- and inter-subject comparisons, that the acquisition of time and space is a highly systematic process, and that this systematicity follows general cog-
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nitive and organizational principles. It is not surprising that here too the organization as well as the order of developments in the acquisition of location closely parallels those found in first language acquisition (see Johnston and Slobin, 1979) since, as the authors note, “the adult learner is learning to ‘think for speaking’ once again in the new language” (p. 140). In Part 2, Bremer et al. treat understanding as an active and interactive process that is negotiated constantly, in a dynamic process of collaboration, between all the participants in the communicative situation (rather than the solipsistic activity of the learner). The authors offer a detailed picture of the complexity and the asymmetry (as well as hardship and stress) that affects the communication between immigrants and the host countries. However, I remain unconvinced of one of the main points made in this chapter - that the learner’s acquisition of a second language in European countries is seriously hampered by experiences of racism and discrimination of ethnic minorities in Europe. The authors find “remarkable . . . that adult ethnic minority workers achieve the level of understanding that they do, given the cluster of factors operating against them . . . ” (p. 189). But one could make exactly the same remarks - and perhaps even more loudly - about many cases of first language acquisition, not to speak of the emergence of creole languages among slaves in the Caribbean plantations and elsewhere. I have found Allwood’s paper rather dense in style and hard to read to the uninitiated reader, with a number of unexplained and hurriedly explained technical terms (e.g. feedback in cybernetics, linguistic feedback, backchanelling, etc.). I will not offer any observations regarding the content of this chapter, since I do not command the literature or the technical concepts employed by the author. Slobin’s paper in Part 3 is an invited contribution by a leading scholar in child language and linguistic development. This paper argues for an integrative perspective to the study of language development in children and adults. It provides a very interesting, though rather short, analysis of certain parallels (as well as differences) in developmental patterns of first and second language acquisition, and discusses briefly the role of multicausal explanation (e.g. biology, society, cognition, typology, markedness, and input) in language development. This is one of the most interesting chapters of Adult Language Acquisition, though I must admit I am somewhat biased, since I have been engaged in a similar (integrative) approach to linguistic research for nearly a decade. Perdue and Klein’s concluding remarks take up three questions raised in Volume 1: (i) the characteristics of communication between native and non-native speakers, (ii) the general structure of second language acquisition (including the order, speed, and success in the acquisition of specific linguistic structures), and (iii) the factors on which acquisition depends (e.g. communicative, cross-linguistic, extrinsic, factors, as well as limitations on the learner’s acquisition of new materials). They focus on patterns of second language acquisition uncovered by these questions vis-a-vis some general tendencies (and mechanisms) in the development of linguistic systems (e.g. simplicity, transparency, grammaticalization, creolization, language change, etc.), and suggest some lines for future research in second language acquisition (e.g. to study further the notion of ‘critical rule’, different learner types, etc.). Finally, the
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authors criticize the general attitude of theoretical (generative) linguistics towards second language acquisition research - that “. . . feels in a position to tell the acquisition researcher what language is, how it is structured, and how it functions . . . ” (p. 266). Adult Language Acquisition is written in a scholarly but lively style. The typescript was produced with a high degree of editorial care: I have found only two typos - on p. 3 of Volume 1 and on p. 155 of Volume 2. This book is of relevance to the study of general linguistics, since it makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of language structure, its functions, and its emergence. It can be recommended as essential reading not only to first and second language acquisition and language learning scholars but also to applied linguists and teachers interested in Krashen’s ‘natural approach’ (see, e.g. Krashen and Terrel, 1983). Adult Language Acquisition can be easily integrated into other learning models such as Krashen’s since they share certain basic assumptions regarding the leaming process, which apply as well to text-book construction (see, e.g., Terre1 et al., 1990) including: (i) the gradual emergence of speech (oral comprehension precedes speech production), (ii) early speech is characterized by errors which do not need to become permanent, and last, but most importantly, (iii) a second language is learned best when the learner interacts with native speakers of the target language in a natural environment. A detailed critical evaluation of the applied and pedagogical (as well as linguistic) implications of this work is impossible here. Finally, the second language acquisition scholar working within a theoretical framework would also profit from reading it, since, as Perdue and Klein note in their concluding remarks, a “theory of second language acquisition . . . does not drop from the sky. If we want to understand how people learn a second language . . . we have to look on how they concretely go about it” (p. 267).
References Bailey, C.J.N., Variation and linguistic theory. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Bailey, C.J.N., 1982. On the yin and yang nature of language. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma. Bailey, C.J.N., 1992. Variation in the data: Can linguistics ever become a science? Hawaii: Orchid Land Publications. Bailey, C.J.N., in press. Essays on time-based linguistic analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clark, E., 1981. Lexical innovations: How children learn to create new words. In: W. Deutsch (ed.), The child’s construction of language, 299-328. London: Academic Press. Clark, E., 1983. Convention and contrast in acquiring the lexicon. In: Th. Seiler, W. Wannenmacher (eds.), Concept development and the development of word meaning, 67-89. Berlin: Springer. Eubank, L. (eds.), 1991. Point counterpoint. Universal Grammar in the second language. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Faingold, ED., 1994. The development of mood in Spanish: A study of first language acquisition and second language learning. Paper presented at the 1st Lisbon Meeting on Child Language. University of Lisbon, Portugal. June 14-18, 1994. Faingold, E.D., in press. The emergence of the article system in language acquisition, creolization, and history: A universal hierarchy of natural morphological markedness. In: H. Pishwa, K. Maroldt (eds.), The development of morphological systematicity: A cross-linguistic perspective. Ttibingen: Gunter Nat-r.
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Faingold, E.D., forthcoming. Child language, creolization, and historical change. Spanish in contact with Portuguese. Ttibingen: Gunter Narr. Ferguson, C. and T. Huebner (eds.). 1991. Crosscurrents in second language acquisition and linguistic theories. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Johnston, J.R. and D.I. Slobin, 1979. The development of locative expressions in English, Italian, SerboCroatian, and Turkish. Journal of Child Language 6, 529-546. Krashen, SD. and T.D. Terrel, 1983. The natural approach: Language acquisition in the classroom. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Labov, W., 1972. Language in the inner city. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvannia Press. Mtihlhlusler, P., 1986. Pidgin and creole linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. Terrel, T.D., M. Andrade, J. Egasse and E.M. Mutioz, 1990. DOS Mundos - A communicative approach. New York: MC Graw-Hill.