122052 PS PS Linguistics (2017S)

This course takes an interdisciplinary account of the broad and complex topic of second language acquisition (SLA). The relevance of the topic lies in society itself as the "knowledge of more than one language in the same mind" - also referred to as "the linguistic idea of multi-competence" (Cook 1991, 2016) - describes the life and reality of numerous people nowadays. The course is meant to enable a better understanding of the mechanisms and influences underlying the state of living with two (or more) languages. Students will develop an understanding of how second languages are learned and will be introduced to some of the key questions in SLA research: Which neurological, cognitive and sociopsychological aspects influence a learner's success in acquiring a second language (L2)? Can all subsystems (e.g. morphosyntax & pronunciation) be acquired with the same ease/difficulty? Why do so many L2 users sounds foreign/speak with a foreign accent? How close to native speakers' way of using a language can we really get? Is it true that the early bird catches the worm more easily and does "the sooner the better" really hold true, when a foreign accent is to be avoided (Peltzer-Karpf, 2003)? Are children better at learning foreign languages in any case and how do they differ from adults in this respect? This way students will gain knowledge on how additional languages are acquired, how language competence is developed and maintained, but also the opposite will be of interest: attrition (how, when and why competence in a language can be lost).
Furthermore, we will also link the aforementioned to cross-cultural communication: The fact that "le langage a un côté individuel et un côté social, et l'on ne peut concevoir l'un sans l'autre" (de Saussure 1916: 24) will accompany us throughout the whole term - a fact which definitely has to be taken into consideration when attempting to approach the issue of SLA in an adequate way. Not only do researchers have to bear in mind that language is always changing in an individual as well as in the context of a community, but in the case of L2 (or LX) users, on who the focus is laid here, these changes are even more complex: The languages are not to be regarded as isolated from each other and so are the changes. They are in constant interplay making it a unique state of being (cf. Cook 2006).