Information Highlighting in Advanced Learner English

“Marcus Callies provides SLA researchers with a well-implemented study of the ability of German learners of English to produce pragmatically marked instances of focus and emphasis along with a comparison of how native English speakers express empahasis and focus through lexico-grammatical and syntactic means. Given the lack of research in the area of advanced learners, this study is a superb example of how advanced learner language can be analyzed not only through an experimental study but also in conjunction with written English corpora. This book will be of great interest to syntax specialists and applied linguists.”

“The research on developing bilingualism now shows a very large number of investigations of pragmatics and even more of syntax. Far fewer are the studies that bring these two areas together, and far fewer still are those that do so as well as Marcus Callies has done in this book.”

“The questions that Dr. Callies addresses in this book are among the most persistent and troublesome in second language studies: In what ways is the second language knowledge of very advanced learners similar to or different from native speaker knowledge? And how does a learner balance syntactic and discursive resources in achieving information focus in a new language? In this comprehensive and careful study of advanced German learners of English, Dr. Callies has provided answers to both those questions. The results of this careful and well-written study will be of great interest to linguists, second language acquisition researchers, language teachers, and writers of foreign language textbooks.”