ADULT LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: CROSS-LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVES
This report will focus on Vol. II of Adult Language Acquisition: Cross-Linguistic Perspectives. This book covers the results of an international research study (whose design and purpose is covered in Vol. I) on immigrant adult second language acquisition. The book summarizes the results in three main sections: Production; Interaction; Synthesis. The production section of the book is broken down into four sections, including utterance structure, word formation processes in talking about entities, the acquisition of temporality, and reference to space in learner varieties (Purdue vii-viii). Ways those acquiring a second language achieve understanding and the importance of feedback in second language acquisition are the focus of the second section of the book. The final section examines adult language acquisition from a child language study point of view and gives concluding remarks encompassing a variety of aspects, including theoretical applications in light of the results of this study.
In part one of the book, production is covered. The first chapter deals with utterance structure. By utterance structure the authors refer to syntax or the ways in which learners put their words together. Every language has syntactic descriptions such as the subject immediately precedes the finite verb. However, many people would think if this is the case that many learner varieties are merely a jumbled collection of words that they randomly put together. However, the current study expresses that “There is a limited set of organizational principles of different kinds which are present in all learner varieties, including the borderline case of fully-fledged languages. The actual structure of an utterance in a learner variety is determined by an interaction of these principles,” (Purdue 4).
The study’s results allow for five conclusions to be drawn regarding utteran...