LSTL 70: Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition: Issues from Arab Context

Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition: Issues from Arab Context is a scholarly edited volume that introduces generative approaches to language acquisition, unveiling important empirical issues from Arab context. It contains 9 chapters, updated and edited from 9 articles published in a number of peer-reviewed journals, rethinking theoretical issues, and bringing out empirical issues. In this sense, it could be the first book to tackle these issues, providing the field with valuable insights into theoretical and empirical issues in language acquisition phenomenon, difficulties encountered, and errors committed by L1 Arabic-speaking learners of English. It consists of two parts: Part I is theoretical in nature, providing theoretical foundations of how L1/L2 takes place, how Universal Grammar (UG) shapes it, the role language faculty plays in it, enabling learners to re-set the parameters, already set by L1, according to L2 given the L2 linguistic input the learner is exposed to, and more importantly, the linguistic and nonlinguistic factors affecting it. Part I appeals to linguists, language acquisition scholars and students, in its two spheres, viz. L1 and L2 acquisition. As for L1 acquisition, the generative approaches introduced, specifically Mentalism within the Principles and Parameters (P&P) and Minimalism approaches, provide substantial insights into how children acquire their L1 with relative ease at an early age, elaborating on how generative approaches account for this phenomenon, specifically in terms of the UG genetic and innate endowment every child is born with. Part II, however, tackles empirical issues, focusing on the acquisition of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and interfaces. It concerns linguists, language acquisition scholars, students, both pre- and post-graduates, and university policymakers, with the empirical insights into L2 acquisition, and the pedagogical implications it provides that can be implemented in Arab (and non-Arab) university classroom.