Volume 12, Issue 2 - Special Issue: Usage-based contact linguistics; Guest Editors: Antje Endesfelder Quick and Anna Verschik

Usage-based studies trace children’s early language back to slot-and-frame patterns which dominate spontaneous language use. We apply the Traceback method to data from three bilingual children with English as one of their languages and Polish, German, or Finnish as the other to examine what these children’s code-switching has in common and how it differs in light of the genealogical distance between the languages used. Their bilingual constructions are derived from individual corpora of naturalistic interactions of each child respectively and traced back to monolingual language produced previously to establish whether they are unprocessed chunks or partially schematic units. Based on this, we propose a model of switching which helps us to distinguish between the qualitative aspects of bilingual use in these two types of combinations. Our results show that all three children filter out some mixing occurring in chunks before these give basis to longer units. Whatever bilingual combinations remain frozen in those units can be explained by phonological overlap of the children’s two languages, which is highest in the acquisition of English-German due to their genealogical proximity.

This article examines individual variation of contact features in the speech patterns of four L2 Basque speakers. The individual styles are examined through the concepts of individual entrenchment and community-wide conventionalization to bridge the gap between linguistic variation and change at the individual and social levels. All the informants speak Spanish as their L1. They have acquired Basque in classroom contexts, and they belong to the same macrosociolinguistic categories. Yet their patterns of using the language contact between standard Basque, vernacular Basque dialects and Spanish as a resource in creating individual speech styles differ considerably, reflecting their language attitudes and their personal experience. Nevertheless, there are conventionalized patterns that emerge out of this diversity: All speakers use the standard Basque as the base language, and none of them adopts of vernacular variety as a whole. The Spanish resources seem to be used mainly for pragmatic and stylistic functions, whereas the features of vernacular Basque that the speakers have adopted as part of their individual styles are high frequency elements of core grammar.

This paper investigates the role of input in the code-mixing (CM) of a German-English bilingual child between the age of 2;3 until 3;11. Supporting a usage-based approach to linguistic theory, multiword units are shown to play an important role in language acquisition scenarios, both in the input children receive as well as in their own early language production. The current study combines findings from Child-directed-speech (CDS) and children’s output to investigate whether utterance-initial, multiword units in the code-mixing of a German-English bilingual child can be traced back to patterns found in the input. The findings reveal that a large proportion of the child code-mixed (78%) and parental input (59%) data instantiate the selection of multiword units. Additionally, we found that many of the units used by the child (74%) correlate with units in the parental input suggesting that bilingual children construct their code-mixed utterances on the basis of both concrete lexical strings and partially schematic patterns they have heard before.

The article focuses on a comparison of English-Estonian code-copying in blogs and in vlogs. This paper applies a usage-based approach, combining a cognitive angle with the code-copying framework. The aim is to provide a holistic view on contact-induced language change by applying bottom-up analysis of naturalistic multilingual language use. In contact linguistic literature it has been observed that there is a preference for insertions vs. alternations depending on sociolinguistic setting (community type, generation, proficiency) and structural properties of the languages involved. Research on English-Estonian language contacts has shown that in blogs there is no clear preference for either. From a different point of view, it has been observed that lexical impact (global copying in the terms of code-copying framework) precedes semantic and structural impact (selective copying) but provide no explanation. Comparisons between blogs (750 entries and 275,263 words from 45 bloggers) and vlogs (5,5 hours, approximately 36,854 words from 5 vloggers) shows that global copies and alternations heavily prevail over other types of copying, yet the number of selective copies is somewhat higher in vlogs and of mixed copies in blogs. Selective copies are loan translations rather than structural changes. We assume that (1) prevalence of global copies and alternations depends on genre norms (blogs and vlogs are constructed as non-monolingual, highly individualized genres); (2) as selective copies are mostly loan translations, it implies the role of meaning and cognitive aspects: idioms and fixed expressions are figurative and cognitively prominent; combinational properties and grammatical meanings are abstract; so, the more abstract the meaning is, the more cognitive effort and time is required for entrenchment and conventionalization; (3) copying and alternation is denser in vlogs because the genre is oral and spontaneous vs. written, edited genre of blog.

The use of named languages is still prevalent in current contact linguistics research. In this paper, I argue that this cannot explain many contact situations and types of language knowledge. I propose a usage-based account of language instead which does not take linguistic systems for granted but construes them based on the single linguistic unit. A language is seen as a radially organized network of constructions, which are interlinked through co-use, which employ the same inventory of linguistic forms and which are appropriate in the same socio-pragmatic circumstances.

This paper studies the low frequency of English insertions in child-directed speech in eight Flemish families, which is striking considering the strong position of English in other domains in Flanders. Crossing usage-based approaches to language acquisition and language socialization research, we scrutinize our corpus of dinner table conversations that consist of over 25,000 utterances, complemented by sociolinguistic interviews with the caregivers of each family. After mining our corpus for English insertions, we present a quantitative exploration that reveals how less than 1% of the utterances per family contain English insertions. Assessing whether this result can be interpreted as parents’ attempts to socialize their children towards Dutch, and what this reveals about their language regards, we analyze selected fragments through multimodal discourse analysis. After discussing possible implications of these findings for the position of English in Flanders, we additionally discuss them against the theoretical background of developmental sociolinguistics, and against the methodological background of working with small samples and negative evidence in a usage-based approach (see e.g. negative entrenchment.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of technology-mediated TBLT (Task based language teaching) tasks where students must collaborate within an English as Foreign Language (EFL) course created to develop their English speaking abilities. A total of 25 students participated in this study and were assigned to groups of 4 to 6. Each group was asked to create seven five-minute video productions in English using their cell phone camera about topics assigned to them by the teacher over the course of one semester. The results of the pre-test and post-test indicated that the tasks were effective in improving students’ English speaking abilities. Class observations and students’ Facebook posts showed predominately positive perceptions towards the task of video making with their respective groups using technology tools. The bi-weekly video productions and the end-of-term survey revealed that the participants believe that technology-mediated TBLT in a collaborative learning environment was beneficial in increasing their English speaking abilities, which highlights the need to shift from teacher-centered activities to learner-centered activities within a collaborative learning environment.

This article provides an overview of the field of language learning strategies, focusing on definitional and conceptual issues as they relate to strategy use in formal education settings. The article first provides evidence of the conflation of language learning strategies with concepts related to self-directedness. It provides evidence via a corpus-based analysis of published papers over time to illustrate that the field has moved away from instructed settings and towards a view of learner agency and self-regulation. We argue that this is a dangerous trend for language education researchers, as current definitions minimize the role of the teacher and classroom contexts in influencing strategic behavior in their students. A conceptualization and subsequent definition that does not stigmatize or exclude learners who are not self-directed, for whatever reason(s), is crucial to advance the field. As a solution, we propose that self-regulation be defined as a dynamic characteristic of learning strategies in order to allow for other-regulated strategies in research. Theorizing the interplay of the self and strategies on a continuum helps to emphasize the dynamic processes of strategic development, and the roles teachers and students in instructed settings can play in this process.