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Information Highlighting in Advanced Learner English
The syntax–pragmatics interface in second language acquisition
This book presents the first detailed and comprehensive study of information highlighting in advanced learner language, echoing the increasing interest in questions of near-native competence in SLA research and contributing to the description of advanced interlanguages. It examines the production and comprehension of specific means of information highlighting in English by native speakers and German learners of English as a foreign language, presenting triangulated experimental and learner corpus data as corroborating evidence. The study focuses on learners’ use of discourse-pragmatically motivated variations of the basic word order such as inversion, preposing, and it- and wh-clefts, an underexplored field in SLA research to date.
The book also provides a critical re-assessment of the study of pragmatics within SLA. It has largely been neglected to date that L2 pragmatic knowledge includes more than the sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic abilities for understanding and performing speech acts. Thus, the book argues for an extension of the scope of inquiry in interlanguage pragmatics beyond the cross-cultural investigation of speech acts. It also discusses pedagogical implications for foreign language teaching and will be of interest to applied linguists and SLA researchers, language teachers and curriculum designers.
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 186] 2009. xviii, 293 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 27 March 2009
Published online on 27 March 2009
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
- Abbreviations | pp. ix–x
- List of tables | pp. xi–xiv
- List of figures | pp. xv–xvi
- Preface | pp. xvii–xviii
- Chapter 1. Introduction | pp. 1–8
- Chapter 2. Information highlighting in English | pp. 9–58
- Chapter 3. Information structure and information highlighting in English and German: A comparative perspective | pp. 59–78
- Chapter 4. Pragmatics and information highlighting in SLA research | pp. 79–114
- Chapter 5. Research design | pp. 115–134
- Chapter 6. Experimental study | pp. 135–180
- Chapter 7. Learner-corpus study | pp. 181–206
- Chapter 8. Discussion and conclusion | pp. 207–220
- Appendices | pp. 237–290
- Index | pp. 291–293
“Marcus Callies provides SLA researchers with a well-implemented study of the ability of German learners of English to produce pragmatically marked instances of focus and emphasis along with a comparison of how native English speakers express empahasis and focus through lexico-grammatical and syntactic means. Given the lack of research in the area of advanced learners, this study is a superb example of how advanced learner language can be analyzed not only through an experimental study but also in conjunction with written English corpora. This book will be of great interest to syntax specialists and applied linguists.”
C. Blake Shedd, University of Mississippi, on Linguist List 21.4063 (2011)
“The research on developing bilingualism now shows a very large number of investigations of pragmatics and even more of syntax. Far fewer are the studies that bring these two areas together, and far fewer still are those that do so as well as Marcus Callies has done in this book.”
Terence Odlin, Professor of English Linguistics, Ohio State University, USA
“The questions that Dr. Callies addresses in this book are among the most persistent and troublesome in second language studies: In what ways is the second language knowledge of very advanced learners similar to or different from native speaker knowledge? And how does a learner balance syntactic and discursive resources in achieving information focus in a new language? In this comprehensive and careful study of advanced German learners of English, Dr. Callies has provided answers to both those questions. The results of this careful and well-written study will be of great interest to linguists, second language acquisition researchers, language teachers, and writers of foreign language textbooks.”
Richard F Young, Professor of English Linguistics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Cited by (28)
Cited by 28 other publications
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Götz, Sandra & Kathrin Kircili
Kircili, Kathrin
Slioussar, Natalia & Maria Harchevnik
Arslangul, Arnaud
Mahyuni, Muhammad Fadjri & Nur Ahmadi
Starren, Marianne
2023. Language-specific principles of discourse conceptualization in L2 English. Language, Interaction and Acquisition 14:1 ► pp. 106 ff.
Udaya, Muthyala & Chada Ramamuni Reddy
Udaya, Muthyala & Chada Ramamuni Reddy
Jiang, Shan & Huiping Zhang
Chen, Jidong, Bhuvana Narasimhan, Angel Chan, Wenchun Yang & Shu Yang
Larsson, Tove, Marcus Callies, Hilde Hasselgård, Natalia Judith Laso, Sanne van Vuuren, Isabel Verdaguer & Magali Paquot
2020. Adverb placement in EFL academic writing. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 25:2 ► pp. 156 ff.
Lozano, Cristóbal & Marcus Callies
Mendikoetxea, Amaya & Cristóbal Lozano
Pérez-Guerra, Javier
Leuckert, Sven
Patterson, Clare, Yulia Esaulova & Claudia Felser
van Hilten, Myrte & Sanne van Vuuren
Werner, Valentin
Yildiz, Yasemin
Yao, Xinyue
2016. Cleft constructions in Hong Kong English. English World-Wide. A Journal of Varieties of English 37:2 ► pp. 197 ff.
Götz, Sandra
2015. Tense and aspect errors in spoken learner English. In Learner Corpora in Language Testing and Assessment [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 70], ► pp. 191 ff.
Zerbian, Sabine
2015. Syntactic and prosodic focus marking in contact varieties of South African English. English World-Wide. A Journal of Varieties of English 36:2 ► pp. 228 ff.
Hasselgård, Hilde
2014. It-clefts in English L1 and L2 academic writing. In Corpus Interrogation and Grammatical Patterns [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 63], ► pp. 295 ff.
Wei, Jing
Cheatham, Gregory A. & Yeonsun Ellie Ro
[no author supplied]
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