Subject: review of perez - leroux & glass ( ed ) contemporary perspectives . . .

ana teresa perez-leroux and william r glass , editors . 1997 . _ contemporary perspectives on the acquisition of spanish _ . volume 1 : developing grammars edited by perez - leroux and glass , 217 + xi pp ( isbn 1-57473 - 016 - 9 ) ; volume 2 : production , processing , and comprehension edited by glass and perez - leroux , 166 + xi pp ( isbn 1-57473 - 017 - 7 ) . cascadilla press , somerville , ma . ( set : isbn 1-57473 - 015 - 0 ) lc : pc4074 . 85 . c66 1997 . reviewed by h . stephen straight , < sstraigh @ binghamton . edu > this two-volume work contains nineteen papers ( seventeen in english , two in spanish ) by an international set of 31 authors ( including eighteen at us universities and five each at universities in spain & canada ) , ranging in length from fifteen to 34 pages . they comprise revised versions of papers delivered at a conference held at pennsylvania state university in october 1995 . with separate sections on child and adult language acquisition ( 5 papers each ) and on second language production ( 5 papers ) and comprehension and input processing ( 4 papers ) , this work provides exactly the current and wide-ranging overview of issues suggested by its title . prominent senior scholars ( such as james p lantolf , james f lee , juana liceras , susana lopez - ornat , barbara lust , and bill vanpatten ) lend the work a rightful air of authority , while numerous junior contributors ( including a dozen phd candidates ) provide a welcome promise of more good work to come . highlights include lopez - ornat 's fascinating case study of the role of spanish - specific morphological patterning in l1 emergence of nominal and verbal forms and functions ( 1 : 3-20 ) , virginia c mueller gathercole & cecilia montes 's paradigm-challenging study of the emergence in bi - and monolingual children of grammaticality judgments regarding the opposing que / * that complementizer patterns in wh-extracted embedded clauses ( 1 : 75-95 ) , christina sanz 's finely nuanced account of the changing role of controlled versus automatized processes in l2 production as a function of performance task variables ( 2 : 41-56 ) , jeffrey reeder 's remarkable findings regarding the dissociation of phonetic perceptual skill and pronunciation accuracy in both beginning and advanced second language learners ( 2 : 77-90 ) , and bill vanpatten 's authoritative overview of his path-breaking research on input processing in second language learning and teaching ( 2 : 93-108 ) . specialist readers will appreciate the currency , range , and depth of the studies presented here . they will also appreciate their overall quality , rare in a collection of conference papers . both volumes contain a comprehensive index of mentioned authors and topics , while notes and full lists of references appear as they should at the end of each paper . advanced students will find the expositions quite uniformly accessible and clear , and the findings well presented and thoroughly discussed . the editors and anonymous reviewers did their jobs well . non - specialist readers will however find these volumes rather heavy going . although all of the papers successfully avoid jargon-mongering , even papers with enticing titles like " the function of language play in the acquisition of l2 spanish " ( james p lantolf , 2 : 3-24 ) contain theoretical discussion of great erudition and the analysis of empirical data of considerable complexity . ( lantolf 's 75 - item list of references includes works by vera john - steiner , alexei leontiev , david olson , lev vygotsky , and other important authors usually neglected in l2 research . ) although few readers will find all of the papers of interest , every paper makes a contribution to our understanding of its topic , and taken together these volumes contain something worth the close attention of every conceivable reader in linguistics , developmental and experimental psycholinguistics , and second language theory and pedagogy . given the longstanding facts of 1 ) the prominence of spanish as a national language in the new world , 2 ) the preeminence of spanish as the first language of bilinguals in the us , and 3 ) the ubiquity ( and , more recently , the predominance ) of spanish and english as the languages studied in schools and colleges throughout the americas , spanish language acquisition and spanish - english child and adult bilingualism ought to be among the most common and well-supported areas of basic and applied psycholinguistic research . without going into the cultural , economic , and political factors that have held back such research , and that have pushed the study of spanish - english bilingualism almost entirely into the politically charged domain of ( mostly spanish - subtractive ) " bilingual education " , we can be grateful to p&g for bringing together an impressive array of high-quality studies that should stimulate many to pay more attention to these widely available sources of data on critical issues in l1 and l2 acquisition theory and in the psycholinguistics ( as opposed to the sociolinguistics ) of bilingualism . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ h stephen straight ( phd chicago 1972 ) , professor of anthropology and of linguistics , directs the programs in linguistics and in languages across the curriculum at binghamton university ( suny ) , where he has taught since 1970 . his research includes study of yucatec maya l1 acquisition , comparative sociolinguistics , translation theory , l2 pedagogy , multilingual education , and the role of the reception-expression dialectic in models of language and cognitive processes .
