Last update:
8 February 2010
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The Acquisition of SpanishMorphosyntactic development in monolingual and bilingual L1 acquisition and adult L2 acquisition
2004. xvi, 413 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Hardbound
– In stock
978 90 272 5296 8 / EUR 125.00 978 1 58811 604 8 / USD 188.00
Paperback
– In stock
e-Book
– Available from e-book platforms
This is the first book on the acquisition of Spanish that provides a state-of-the-art comprehensive overview of Spanish morphosyntactic development in monolingual and bilingual situations. Its content is organized around key grammatical themes that form the empirical base of research in generative grammar: nominal and verbal inflectional morphology, subject and object pronouns, complex structures involving movement (topicalizations, questions, relative clauses), and aspects of verb meaning that have consequences for syntax. The book argues that Universal Grammar constrains all instances of language acquisition and that there is a fundamental continuity between monolingual, bilingual, child and adult early grammatical systems. While stressing their similarities with respect to linguistic representations and processes, the book also considers important differences between these three acquisition situations with respect to the outcome of acquisition. It is also shown that many linguistic properties of Spanish are acquired earlier than in English and other languages. This book is a must read for those interested in the acquisition of Spanish from different theoretical perspectives as well as those working on the acquisition of other languages in different contexts.
Table of contents
“This is well written and is generally well informed, compendious, comprehensive and well referenced and, for this reason alone, worth publishing as a useful account of generative research done into the acquisition of Spanish.”
Andrew Radford, University of Essex
“The book admirably fills a gap in acquisition literature by bringing together Spanish data and theoretical discussion that have previously been dispersed and by opening a dialogue among the three instances of acquisition in Spanish and other languages.
“In The Acquisition of Spanish, Montrul delivers a thorough and far-reaching treatise on current morphosyntactic issues in the acquisition of Spanish as a first and second language. The end result is a manuscript that is at once a sourcebook and a model for state-of-the-art research. It is comprehensive, theoretically informed, and methodologically rigorous, a hallmark of Montrul's scholarship.”
“This volume constitutes a comprehensive and well-referenced text and is an excellent source on the current issues of the acquisition of Spanish. It should be of interest not only to researchers who study the acquisition of Spanish, but also to acquisitionists in general.”
“This book is an essential resource for all Hispanic linguistic collections. Montrul makes clear assertions and is able to support them. Although she highlights the similarities in L1, 2L1, and adult L2 acquisition in terms of linguistic representations and processes, she also thoughtfully considers the observable differences among them, especially in terms of differences in ultimate attainment. In doing so, this work sits at the cutting edge of contemporary research in generative L2 acquisition, which has attempted to address observable target-deviant aspects of L2 language while assuming adult UG-continuity. This work is a primary source for contemporary Hispanic linguistic research that will be cited for many years to come.”
“This is a valuable resource for researchers interested in first language acquisition, simultaneous bilingualism in early childhood, adult second language acquisition, and/or the acquisition of Spanish. Montrul enhances the value of the book further by providing readers with access to 'studies published in journals with limited international circulation, and studies conducted as part of doctoral dissertations, some of which are written in Spanish or Catalan.”
Subject classification |
Linguistics