Phonology in Multilingual Grammars Representational Complexity and Linguistic Interfaces

This book explores questions about the nature of an interlanguage grammar, i.e. the grammar of a bilingual. John Archibald approaches these questions within a cognitive science perspective that draws upon abstract representational structures in demonstrating that phonological knowledge underlies the surface phonetic properties of L2 speech. Specifically, he proposes that interlanguage grammars are not 'impaired', 'fundamentally different', or 'shallow' (as some have argued); the phonological grammars are complex, hierarchically-structured, mental representations that are governed by the principles of linguistic theory, including those of Universal Grammar. The book outlines a model that addresses Plato's problem (learning in the absence of evidence) and Orwell's problem (resistance to learning in the face of abundant evidence). Furthermore, the study of grammatical interfaces--phonetics/phonology; phonology/morphology; phonology/syntax--reveals the necessary design conditions for an internally-consistent architecture for a comprehensive model of second language speech. The resulting empirically-motivated model is parsimonious in accounting for all aspects of L2 speech from phonological feature, to segment, to word, to sentence. The book concludes by discussing why phonology has been underrepresented in generative approaches to second language acquisition, and examining some of the implications of second language phonology for applied linguistics and language pedagogy.

John Archibald has been a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Victoria since 2010, following 19 years in the Linguistics Department at the University of Calgary. He specializes in the field of second language acquisition, particularly second language phonology. He is a member of the Royal Society of Canada, and has previously been President of the Canadian Linguistic Association and co-editor of Second Language Research and the TESL Canada Journal. His many publications include Contemporary Linguistic Analysis (8th edition, 2015; co-edited with William O'Grady) and over 50 articles and book chapters in journals such as Second Language Research, Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, and Studies in Second Language Acquisition.