The correct use of English verb argument structure is crucial for foreign learners of the English language. Based on an experimental study recruiting 162 Chinese English learners at different proficiency levels, this book suggests that the acquisition of English transitivity alternation follows as a consequence of the cognitive processing of language input, which is induced by the nature of task requirements in different learning conditions and influenced by individual differences in language learning aptitude and proficiency level. Readers of this book will have a deeper understanding of all these variables involved and will learn that pedagogical issues should be considered in a more thorough, comprehensive manner to explore better solutions for English learning and teaching.

In the past decades, quotation theories have developed roughly along three lines—quotation types, meaning effects, and theoretical orientations toward the semantics/pragmatics distinction. Currently, whether the quoted expression is truth-conditionally relevant to the quotational sentence, and if there is a truth-conditional impact, whether it is generated via semantic or pragmatic processes, have become the central concerns of quotation studies. In this book, quotation is clearly defined for the first time as a constituent embedded within yet distinctive from the quotational sentence. Also, as the first monograph to address the semantics/pragmatics boundary dispute over quotation, it argues that the semantic content of quotation amounts to its contribution to the intuitive truth-conditional content of the quotational utterance via two modes of presentation, which are incarnated in the functioning of quotation marks and manifested as use and mention. The use/mention-based analysis in this book can shed light on the semantic theorizing of other metalinguistic phenomena, while the semantics/pragmatics perspective will provide methodological implications for other relevant studies. The new conception of quotation and thought-provoking analysis on use/mention, truth-conditional pragmatics, and the semantics/pragmatics boundary in this book will appeal to scholars and students in philosophy of language and linguistics. It will also serve as a clear guide to the current state of quotation studies and how to formulate a semantic theory of quotation.

Polarity phenomena are pervasively observed in natural languages. Previous studies on Chinese polarity items are mainly in line with the non-veridicality approach. This book, however, employs the downward-entailing hypothesis as its analytical foundation, and argues that downward entailment is the only licensor for different kinds of Chinese polarity items, and non-veridicality is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition and thus offers inferior explanatory power compared with the former. To begin with, it lays the groundwork for this research by presenting a brief introduction to polarity phenomena and reviewing the existing relevant theories. Then it addresses the status of the commonly used element dou in Chinese. Specifically, it applies the tripartite structural frame to the studies of dou, and examines the role of dou in licensing the polarity items. Moreover, it investigates the properties and behavior of dou with respect to modality. Based on the analysis above, it observes that non-interrogative wh-indeterminates in Chinese can be licensed in the restriction domain of a necessity operator. Also, the non-uniformity of three Chinese polarity items, i.e., shenme, na-CL, and renhe, is scrutinized within the downward-entailing framework. This book will appeal to scholars, teachers and students in the field of linguistics, especially in the areas of formal semantics and generative grammar. Researchers and engineers in cloud computing and big data who are seeking help from linguistic contributions to meaning and logic will also benefit from it.

This book investigates the acquisition of English transitivity alternation by Chinese English learners. It suggests that the acquisition of English transitivity alternation follows as a consequence of the cognitive processing of language input, which is induced by the nature of task requirements in different learning conditions and influenced by individual differences in language learning aptitude and proficiency level.

This handbook provides innovative and comprehensive coverage of research on the second language acquisition (SLA) of morphosyntax, semantics, and the interface between the two. Organized by grammatical topic, the chapters are written by experts from formal and functional perspectives in the SLA of morphosyntax and semantics, providing in-depth yet accessible coverage of these areas. All chapters highlight the theoretical underpinnings of much work in SLA and their links to theoretical syntax and semantics; making comparisons to other populations, including child language acquirers, bilinguals, and heritage speakers (links to first language acquisition and bilingualism); dedicating a portion of each chapter to the research methods used to investigate the linguistic phenomenon in question (links to psycholinguistics and experimental linguistics); and, where relevant, including intervention studies on the phenomenon in question (links to applied linguistics). The volume will be indispensable to SLA researchers and students who work on any aspect of the SLA of morphosyntax or semantics. With its coverage of a variety of methodologies and comparisons to other populations (such as child language acquirers, early bilinguals, heritage speakers, and monolingual adults), the handbook is expected to also be of much interest to linguists who work in psycholinguistics, first language acquisition, and bilingualism.

Bringing together a comprehensive collection of newly-commissioned articles, this Handbook covers the most recent developments across a range of sub-fields relevant to the study of second language Spanish. Provides a unique and much-needed collection of new research in this subject, compiled and written by experts in the field Offers a critical account of the most current, ground-breaking developments across key fields, each of which has seen innovative empirical research in the past decade Covers a broad range of issues including current theoretical approaches, alongside a variety of entries within such areas as the sound system, morphosyntax, individual and social factors, and instructed language learning Presents a variety of methodological approaches spanning the active areas of research in language acquisition

This volume brings together fourteen papers which explore the discourse-pragmatic, semantic, morphological and syntactic factors involved in English morphosyntactic alternations. The contributors to this volume deal with different types of "diathesis alternations" --broadly defined by Levin (English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation, 1993) as "alternations in the expressions of arguments, sometimes accompanied by changes of meaning" --i.e. transitivity alternations (such as the causative/inchoative alternation and the conative alternation), alternations involving arguments within the VP (such as the Swarm-alternation, and the dative or benefactive alternations), etc. The volume will also include some contributions dealing more generally with the issues of morphological relatedness and verb-specific alternations within functionalist, cognitive and/or constructionist frameworks. The book features a wide range of theoretical approaches, ranging from functionalist models such as Functional Discourse Grammar or the Cardiff Grammar version of Systemic Functional Linguistics to more cognitively-oriented approaches such as Goldberg's Construction Grammar or Fillmore's Frame Semantics. This attempt to describe morphosyntactic alternations within different contemporary theories¬¬ --derivational and non-derivational-- will hopefully contribute to a better understanding of the linguistic phenomena traditionally subsumed under the rubric of morphosyntactic alternation. The book will be of interest to experienced linguists and researchers of a functionalist, cognitivist or even functional-typological persuasion.