Book Reviews by Boris Yelin
SUMMARY The proposed audience of Ejercicios de lexicología del español is a beginner Spanish ling... more SUMMARY The proposed audience of Ejercicios de lexicología del español is a beginner Spanish linguistics course. Though not offering original research, the main purpose is to make available a new way of learning and practicing lexicology. This book has six sections. They are General Concepts, Morphology, Word Formation, Grammatical Categories, Semantics and Lexicosemantic Relations. Though distinct, the sections tend to overlap considerably. The General Concepts section seeks to refute prescriptive ideas as well as introduce concepts, such as competence and performance, which drive many of the mechanisms of lexicology. The section also touches on sociolinguistic factors that affect attitudes toward prescriptivism, as well as performance across registers. Lastly, it further defines some general terms, most importantly what certain concepts, such as lexicology, do not entail. In the Morphology section, beyond explaining the types of morphemes in Spanish and their combinations, the author introduces morphological analysis; he uses the analysis as a springboard to effectively describe word formation and why analysis must take a specific order. The Word Formation section explores how words change syntactic categories with affixes as well as looking at the types of combinations. Also, there is a brief, welcome mention of how register and sociolinguistic factors play into word formation. The section on Grammatical Categories explains not only what they are but also what morphosyntactic constraints they exhibit. The section on Semantics is a rich section that dissects semantic function, semantic change, and the often confusing distinction for beginning students between reference, sense, and extension. The concluding section, Lexico-Semantic Relations, is probably the lightest section, touching on homonyms, hyponyms/hypernyms, synonyms and antonyms, which are arguably the most intuitive notions of the book for a beginner, but still a valuable addition. At the end of every section, there are annotated bibliographies of the subsections. These are useful for immediate reference to research which influenced the author's arguments or which he refuted. The entire bibliography is also provided at the end of the book. The sources cited are immediately familiar to those in the field of Hispanic linguistics and include seminal works (e.g. Bosque and Gutiérrez-Rexach, 2009). Additionally, the question index is rather helpful because one can easily find related exercises that are spread out among the chapters. However, since many of the questions cannot be answered as an open question without a set of options, the utility of the question index is limited.
SUMMARY The proposed audience of " From Words to Grammar, " by Roger Berry, is undergraduate stud... more SUMMARY The proposed audience of " From Words to Grammar, " by Roger Berry, is undergraduate students of English and trainee teachers on postgraduate courses. It aims to teach syntax in a bottom-up fashion, where lexical items are the topic of discussion, and English syntax is discovered by analyzing word usage. It is an exercise book that contains many examples of authentic corpus text with short explanations of the grammar. Essentially, the student internalizes the concepts through practice. The book begins with an introduction explaining the conventions of the book, including information about concordance lines (taken from the British National Corpus), which highlight the word in question. Otherwise, the main text consists of twelve chapters.
SUMMARY The proposed audience of " Second Language Acquisition: A Theoretical Introduction to Rea... more SUMMARY The proposed audience of " Second Language Acquisition: A Theoretical Introduction to Real World Applications, " by Allesandro Benati and Tanja Angelovska, is undergraduate students and trainee teachers. The goal of the book is to bridge the gap between theoretical and experimental work that has been done in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and its pedagogical implications. Besides the preface, which briefly outlines the goals and structure of the text. The book is divided into six chapters: Introduction to second language acquisition, Similarities and differences between first and second language acquisition, How learners process information in second language acquisition, How the internal system develops in second language acquisition, How learners learn to communicate in a second language, and What we know about SLA. There is also a short, but useful glossary of important terms used throughout the text. Each chapter begins with an overview of what will be covered, which is a helpful roadmap for the reader. The first chapter introduces and defines the concept of SLA, briefly describes the subfields of linguistics, and provides succinct summaries of the most influential theories in SLA, concluding with a model for SLA. The second chapter highlights the different factors affecting first language acquisition versus SLA, highlighting the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis versus the Fundamental Similarities Hypothesis; the chapter also discusses the well-known Critical Period Hypothesis, which looks at age as an influential factor. The third chapter focuses on what occurs in the learning process with a strong emphasis on individual differences. The fourth chapter explains what the interlanguage of learners looks like. The fifth chapter examines conversation and socialization as a means to foster SLA toward the end goal of communicative competence. The final chapter is essentially an overview of the past material with a larger portion devoted to the pedagogical implications, i.e. what theories and strategies we need to utilize in the classroom. Each chapter concludes with real-world applications and a reference list. EVALUATION As promised, this book provides an overview of SLA that is beginner-friendly. This is in contrast to other introductory texts that focus more on analyzing theories and their originating studies (e.g. VanPatten & Williams, 2015). What this allows for is gaining a general understanding that can aid teachers in thinking through both the rationale underpinning what they do in the classroom and the progression of the field
Papers by Boris Yelin
Hispania, 2017
This article explores the use of two epistemic adverbs in Argentine Spanish, quizás and capaz. Wh... more This article explores the use of two epistemic adverbs in Argentine Spanish, quizás and capaz. While scholars have noted the existence of capaz as an epistemic adverb, it had not been systematically studied prior to this investigation. To examine the epistemic stance of the adverbs, 117 participants completed an experimental sentence completion task in which mood selection (i.e., percentage subjunctive use) was measured. The dependent variables considered were situational certainty and temporal reference, as well as adverb. Situational certainty (certain, not certain) and temporal reference (future, present, past) were communicated in written discourse scenarios that preceded the sentence to be completed, and the certain or not certain status was verified through a norming procedure. Through a mixed model analysis, findings indicated that temporal reference was the only significant dependent variable. Mood selection was significantly different in contexts with future, present, and past temporal reference. Future temporal reference was associated with the greatest subjunctive use and past with the least subjunctive use. The findings were similar for sentences with capaz and quizás, indicating a similar epistemic stance based on current data.
Bi- and Multilingualism from Various Perspectives of Applied Linguistics
Hispania, 2018
Mientras el campo de World Englishes está bien desarrollado, el estudio del español está principa... more Mientras el campo de World Englishes está bien desarrollado, el estudio del español está principalmente limitado a los estudios dialectales/sociolingüísticos sin investigar las consecuencias del español como lengua global.1 Por eso, el concepto de ‘españoles mundiales’ se basa en el paradigma de tres contextos de uso (interior, exterior y en expansión), que tienen poblaciones y usos de español distintos (Kachru 1985). Este ensayo pretende establecer el círculo exterior para el español, enfocándose en los factores sociolingüísticos de Guinea Ecuatorial y el Sahara Occidental para ayudar a legitimar las variedades al margen del mundo hispanófono (como las de África).
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Book Reviews by Boris Yelin
Papers by Boris Yelin