Language Acquisition Beyond Parameters

“This volume is a wonderful tribute to Juana Liceras by her students and collaborators. It touches on several themes of Licera’s pioneering work in second language acquisition that are still at the forefront of language acquisition research, namely the relevance of the syntax/pragmatics interface to the study of the acquisition of null pronouns in L2, the L1/L2 acquisition of nominal features and word order in relative clauses, and issues related to monolingual and bilingual acquisition. This volume will prove useful for all scholars interested in the challenging questions of how the syntax and interpretation of intricate properties of natural language are acquired by early and late learners in language contact situations.”

“This collection of papers gives an excellent and inspiring overview of the impact of the last 30 years of research on theory guided Spanish language acquistion across different populations. The contributions show that Juana Liceras has been at the forefront of many new developments in language acquistion and theory: studies adressing both production and comprehension, based on experimental work and on large bilingual databases, from the acquisition of syntax by adult L2 learners to interface vulnerabilities across the lifespan. This volume does not only constitute an honour to Juana Liceras but also to the lively field of (bilingual) language acquistion of Spanish in a comparative perspective. It will no doubt become a classical read for all those interested in language acquisition and linguistic theory.”

“This tribute to Juana Liceras brings together a rich and interesting — sometimes provocative — set of essays and studies representing the various strands of research found in Licera’s long and fruitful career. With both established and less established scholarly voices, there is much in this volume for those of us researching the morpho-syntactic component of Spanish L2 grammars: everything from basic generative research to issues in interface (e.g., syntax-discourse, syntax- semantics). This book should be on the shelf of every scholar and serious student.”