The multilingual turn in second language acquisition (SLA) research signals an epistemic reorientation of the field (Ortega, 2014). It manifests the move away from the monolingual bias that measures learner language with the idealized competence of native speakers as the yardstick. In so doing, the focus has shifted to disentangling the cognitive, linguistic, and psycholinguistic mechanism...
Posted 8 months ago
Second language development can be viewed as a complex and dynamic process in which learners follow non-linear trajectories and develop their language over a period of time (Larsen-Freeman, 2006). Intrinsic to the view of Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST), a system is composed of hierarchical, interdependent subcomponents (learner, learner language, and environment) in dynamic relation...
Posted 8 months ago
Nearly overnight, we found ourselves adapting to a new normal: constantly worrying about loved ones, balancing life-at-home, and teaching and learning in “Brady Bunch” boxes. At first, I must admit, it was alarming. We all thought it: If cameras and videos are off, are the students even there? And more importantly, are students learning?
This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about one of our students who has disclosed to my CT (Cooperating Teacher) that she has been living on her own for the past two semesters and works full time to support herself. Due to her work schedule, she goes through periods of time when she is unable to attend classes, and other periods of time when she can. She asked my CT to reach out to her oth...
Posted 8 months ago
I see Y reading the comments her teacher left on her paper. She uses Google Translate to add perfectly spelled words clarifying a detail about her grandmother’s aspiration to become literate. At least this is how I imagine Y to have prepared her college essay. I have not met Y. But I am certain that she never expected her writing to be the focus of a teachers’ planning meeting. Posted 8 months ago
With or without cameras on, my students always feel out of reach to me. There is a screen--and a few boroughs, in some cases even states or countries--between us. I can’t tell how they’re feeling; I can’t watch their faces or their hands as they work on a piece for our writing class. The whole enterprise has started to feel epistolary. I am never sure if my recipient is going...
Posted 8 months ago
The few existing accounts of the semantics of ordinal numbers attribute to them all or almost all of the semantic properties of superlatives. This work discusses a construction problematic for existing theories of ordinals: the ordinal superlative construction (e.g. Joel climbed the third highest mountain). Existing theories give ordinals and superlatives such similar semantics that they s...
Posted 8 months ago
Xiang (2021) notes the following puzzle: plural wh-questions involving certain collective predicates are predicted to carry a uniqueness presupposition (Dayal 1996), yet intuitively they don’t (cf. Gentile & Schwarz 2020). She proposes that such questions have ‘higher-order readings’ (Spector 2007, 2008), and crucially that they have answers naming boolean conjunctions. I show that f...
Posted 8 months ago
This paper is an attempt at a synthesis of two superficially conflicting approaches to non-maximality: the issue-based approach (Malamud 2012, Križ 2015, Križ & Spector 2021 a.o.), which generates clear-cut truth conditions once the issue parameter has been fixed, and the strict/tolerant approach (Burnett 2017 a.o.), on which non-maximal construals involve vagueness. I argue that there a...
Posted 8 months ago
Some sentences with presupposition triggers can be felicitously uttered when their presuppositions are not entailed by the context, whereas others are infelicitous in such environments, a phenomenon known as Missing Accommodation / Informative Presupposition or varying Contextual Felicity Constraints (CFCs). Despite an abundance of recent quantitative work on presuppositions, this aspect o...
Posted 8 months ago
