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  • The handbook of second language acquisition ed. by Catherine J. Doughty, Michael H. Long
  • Fred Eckman
The handbook of second language acquisition. Ed. by Catherine J. Doughty and Michael H. Long. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Pp. 888. ISBN 0631217541. $149.95 (Hb).

Catherine Doughty and Michael Long have undertaken a daunting task in attempting to compile a handbook for a field such as second language acquisition (SLA). Although editing such a volume for any academic discipline is a significant endeavor, the case can be made that the challenge is even greater for SLA, which is generally acknowledged to be a new area of scientific study. SLA theory has emerged as an independent discipline only within the last thirty years or so, with the establishment of its own theories, hypothetical constructs, and explanations. Undaunted, Doughty and Long have achieved an impressive success with the publication of The handbook of second language acquisition (henceforth The handbook).

The handbook is partitioned into seven sections. Part 1, ‘Overview’, outlines what the editors see as the scope of inquiry into SLA. They establish the context for the discussion by placing SLA research squarely within the boundaries of cognitive science, where facts about second language (L2) acquisition are explained in terms of constraints on the interlanguage (IL) grammars that learners internalize. The major implication of this setting for the ensuing discussion is that, with the necessary exception of five chapters, the remaining nineteen contributions address, from varying perspectives, the different kinds of constraints that are hypothesized to shape IL grammars.

Part 2, ‘Capacity and representation’, consists of five chapters dealing with various aspects of the role of domain-specificity in accounting for SLA representations. In Ch. 2, Lydia White takes a nativist stance in which she presents the case that has been made in the literature for the necessity of IL grammars being governed by domain-specific principles of universal grammar (UG). In Ch. 3, William O’Grady presents the argument, stemming largely from his own important work in syntactic theory (O’Grady 2005), that the nature of IL grammars follows from the fact that sentence structure is unified with sentence processing, and that the computational system in SLA is ‘underpowered’ relative to the system used for native languages. Nick C. Ellis, in Ch. 4, describes another alternative to domain-specificity, discussing the case for construction grammar (Goldberg 1995) and connectionism. The central claim is that general, associative learning mechanisms underlie all second language acquisition. The last two chapters of this part, Ch. 5 by Judith F. Kroll and Gretchen Sunderman and Ch. 6 by Antonella Sorace, focus, respectively, on cognitive processes in SLA and the question of ‘completion’, or near-nativeness, [End Page 644] in L2 learning. Kroll and Sunderman discuss how the context and timing of acquisition constrain the cognitive processes used in second language learning, and Sorace treats the question of whether near-nativeness, or nonnativeness, in SLA should be viewed as acquisition being either complete or incomplete.

Part 3 consists of four chapters on ‘Environments for SLA’. Chs. 7 and 8, by Karen Ann Watson-Gegeo and Sarah Nielsen and by Jeff Siegel, respectively, address the social and sociolinguistic context for SLA. Watson-Gegeo and Nielsen argue that linguistic and cultural knowledge, including the learning of an L2, are socially constructed, and thus understanding SLA involves comprehending the cultural, social, and political constraints associated with this learning. In Ch. 8, Siegel takes up the role that society plays in the acquisition, not only of a second language, but also of a second dialect. Ch. 9, by Susan M. Gass, describes the role of input and interaction in SLA, and confronts, among other issues, the necessity of both positive and negative evidence for L2 learning and the nature and importance of feedback in the second-language classroom. In Ch. 10, Doughty focuses on the question of whether instruction is effective in shaping IL grammars, a question whose answer might seem obvious to researchers outside the field of SLA, but one that, within the field itself, has been raised from...

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