This collection brings together recent research on the influences between first and additional languages with a focus on the development of multilingual lexicons. Featuring work from an international group of scholars, the volume examines the complex dynamics underpinning vocabulary in second and third languages and the role first languages play within this process. The book is organized around three different facets of research in this area – lexical recognition, processing, and knowledge; the effects of first languages on second language reading and writing, collocations, and translation skills; and, vocabulary testing – drawing on examples from a variety of languages, including European languages, Arabic, and Japanese. Setting the stage for further research on the interplay between first languages and multilingual lexicons, this volume is key reading for students and researchers in applied linguistics, language learning and teaching, bilingualism, second language acquisition, and translation studies.

When people immigrate to another society, new interactions between languages arise. The children of immigrants are referred to as heritage speakers: they are bilinguals who inherited their first language (L1) from their parents. Yet, the second language (L2) of heritage speakers often becomes their dominant language, because it is the official language of the society they live in. Whereas most previous studies in linguistics involved the L1 of heritage speakers, the present doctoral thesis focused on the L2, by making a comparison between the Dutch of adult second-generation Turkish heritage speakers and the Dutch of Dutch L1 speakers. Specifically, the thesis examined whether a weaker heritage language affects the dominant L2. This central question was investigated by answering the following sub-questions: Which characteristics define typical heritage speakers and how can we describe their L1 and their L2?; How do Turkish heritage speakers (prosodically) mark focus while speaking in Dutch?; How do Turkish heritage speakers interpret focus while reading in Dutch?; and: How do Turkish heritage speakers process Turkish-Dutch cognates with varying word stress positions while listening in Turkish and Dutch? To answer these questions, various linguistic and psycholinguistic research techniques were used, such as acoustic analyses of speech, eye-tracking, reaction time measurements, and EEG. The thesis reports on a thrilling competition between the strength of the L1 versus the dominance of the L2, and demonstrates that the way in which Turkish heritage speakers in the Netherlands speak, read, and listen in their dominant L2 is affected by the weaker L1. These findings have theoretical consequences for models of bilingualism as well as more practical implications for the way in which immigrant children acquire their languages.

The practical guide to discovering the rules of our superconnected world through the science and sociology of networks. In Superconnect, Richard Koch and Greg Lockwood show that success is less about who you are than how you connect—a chance meeting with an old colleague leads to a swanky new job; two businessmen collaborate online and cofound a successful start-up; a friend introduces a promising entrepreneur to a millionaire looking to invest. But why do these lucky breaks always happen to other people? Personal and professional networks shape everything we do, but simply knowing that they exist won’t help you harness your connections for maximum success. With an eye toward business applications, Superconnect outlines the new rules of our densely linked society. At the core of the analysis are three simple network components—strong relationships, weak relationships, and hubs—that interact in surprising, counterintuitive ways. Understanding how these components mesh, and connecting unrelated people, is the way to achieve in today’s hyper-connected world.

Vol. 2 translated and with an introduction by Jane E. Knox and Carol B. Stevens.

This handbook deals with all aspects of contemporary language teaching and its history. Produced for language teaching professionals, it is also useful as a reference work for academic studies at postgraduate level.

This volume connects the latest research on language acquisition across the lifespan with the explanation of language change in specific sociohistorical settings. This conversation benefits from recent advances in two areas: on the one hand, the study of how learners of various ages and in various sociolinguistic contexts acquire language variation; on the other, historical sociolinguistics as the field that focuses on the study of historical patterns of language variation and change. The overarching rationale for this interdisciplinary dialogue is that all forms of language change start and spread as the result of individual acts of acquisition throughout the speakers’ lives. The thirteen chapters in this book are authored by an international group of both established and emerging scholars. They encompass theoretical overviews of specific research areas within the broader realm of the acquisition of language variation, as well as case studies applying these theoretical advances to the exploration of language change in a wide range of sociohistorical contexts in the Americas, Oceania, and Asia. This volume will be of interest to students and researchers in the area of language acquisition, language variation and language change, especially those working on interdisciplinary and crosslinguistic connections among these areas.

Over the past three decades studies investigating heritage speaker (HS) linguistic competencies have shown, time and again that, despite being L1 or 2L1 native speakers of their home language(s), HS outcomes display variation across a wide spectrum of differences as compared to each other, other types of bilinguals as well as their monolingual peers. Studies have traditionally used—mostly behavioral—methodologies rooted in adjacent established fields (e.g., L1 acquisition, adult L2 acquisition) offering, in addition to documenting and describing HS performance, important insights for linguistic theory and challenges related to (home/minority) language maintenance, contact, policy and more. A birds-eye view makes it clear that the methodologies one uses to tap into HSs’ linguistic knowledge areas, if not more, are important than the phenomena under investigation, especially in light of how their unique experiences with their heritage and other languages are present across a continuum.