Workshop on impact of internal and external factors in child second language acquisition

[Sharon Unsworth]

This workshop is part of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the German
Linguistics Society (DGfS 2010) at the Humboldt University, Berlin,
from 23-26 February, 2010. It aims to bring together researchers
conducting studies with second language (L2) children in order to
generate a discussion on the impact of internal and external factors
in comprehension, production, and processing in child L2 acquisition.

Call for Papers

We invite papers investigating the impact of internal and/or external
factors on child L2 acquisition of morphology, syntax, and semantics
using a variety of tasks including production, comprehension, and on-
line processing.

A considerable amount of research has investigated the impact of
internal and external factors in adult second language (L2)
acquisition including e.g., transfer effects from the L1 and effects
of age of onset (internal) and the effects of instructed vs.
naturalistic exposure (external) (White, 2003). Research on child L2
acquisition is relatively limited compared to adult L2 acquisition,
but in the last five years a growing number of studies has started to
investigate child L2 acquisition, both in comparison to adult L2
acquisition (e.g., Blom, Polisenska, & Weerman, 2006; Schwartz, 2003;
Unsworth, 2005) and to children with Specific Language Impairment
(SLI) (e.g., Paradis, 2005; 2008; Paradis & Crago, 2003). Most studies
have focused on language production, (e.g., Thoma & Tracy 2006), with
a limited number investigating comprehension (Grueter, 2005; Schulz &
Wenzel 2008), and on-line processing (Marinis, 2007; 2008). This
workshop aims to bring together researchers conducting studies with L2
children from different perspectives in order to generate a discussion
on the impact of internal and external factors in comprehension,
production, and processing in child L2 acquisition.

The following research questions will be addressed:
-- How do the properties of the L1 and the L2 interact in child L2
acquisition?
-- Are transfer effects limited to production or do they also appear
in comprehension and processing strategies?
-- How does age of onset, years of exposure, quantity and quality of
input affect child L2 acquisition and how do these factors interact
with the age of the learners?
-- Are child L2 acquisition of morphology, syntax, and semantics
affected in the same way by these internal and external factors?
-- Can individual variation in children be explained on the basis of
external factors?

This workshop is relevant for researchers working on L2 acquisition in
typically-developing children and children with SLI. We hope it will
provide a rich forum to address the impact of internal and external
factors in L2 acquisition in a systematic way.

Abstract submission guidelines:
-- Abstracts are for 20-minute talks (plus 10 minutes for discussion).
-- Abstracts should be one A4 page max. (Times New Roman, 12pt, single-
spaced, one-inch-margins), including tables, figures and references.
-- Abstracts must be in pdf format.
-- Abstracts should contain the title of the talk, but not the
authors.
-- Abstracts should be submitted by e-mail. Names, affiliations and
contact details of the authors and the title of the abstract should be
included in the body of the e-mail. Abstracts should be in the
attachment.

Please send abstracts to dgfs2010 at childbilingualism.org. The subject
line should include ''abstract submission''.

Important Dates:
Abstract submission deadline: September 6th, 2009.
Notification of acceptance: October 15, 2009.
Conference dates: February 23-26, 2009.

The workshop organizers:
Theodoros Marinis (t.marinis at reading.ac.uk)
Sharon Unsworth (s.unsworth at uu.nl)

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