Measured Language: Quantitative Approaches to Acquisition, Assessment, and Variation

Description

The metaphors and operationalizations of quantification serve as an important lingua franca for much linguistic research, allowing methods and constructs to bring togeteher seemingly disparate areas of linguistic investigation. The studies in this volume illustrate forms of measurement and quantitative analysis that are current in diverse areas of linguistic research, from language assessment to language change, from generative linguistics to psycholinguistic experimentalism, from longitudinal studies to classroom research. The contributors demonstrate that quantification enhances the scientific study of language dialectically, through the rigor of explicitly operationalizing a construct, developing a reliable way to measure it, and finally validating that measurement. The range and clarity of the studies in the volume ensure that even linguists who would not traditionally use quantitative methods will find it useful. The many studies of language learning will be particularly helpful to language teachers. Cover Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. The Ubiquitous Oral versus Literate Dimension: A Survey of Multidimensional Studies 2. When Ethnicity Isn’t Just about Ethnicity 3. Does Language Zipf Right Along? Investigating Robustness in the Latent Structure of Usage and Acquisition 4. Subjectivity and Efficiency in Language Assessment: Explorations of a Compensatory Rating Approach 5. Subgrouping in Nusa Tenggara: The Case of Bima-Sumba 6. Young Learners' Storytelling in Their First and Foreign Languages 7. Measuring Quechua to Spanish Cross-Linguistic Influence 8. Speedup versus Automatization: What Role Does Learner Proficiency Play? 9. Frequency Effects, Learning Conditions, and the Development of Implicit and Explicit Lexical Knowledge 10. The Differential Role of Language Analytic Ability in Two Distinct Learning Conditions 11. U-Shaped Development: Definition, Exploration, and Falsifiable Hypotheses 12. Using Simulated Speech to Assess Japanese Learner Oral Proficiency 13. Keys to College: Tracking English Language Proficiency and IELTS Test Scores in an International Undergraduate Conditional Admission Program in the United States 14. How Does Foreign Language Proficiency Change over Time? Results of Data Mining Official Test Records 15. The Development of Complexity in a Learner Corpus of German Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z