Pragmatics, Grammar and Meaning in SLA

This Element is a comprehensive, state-of-the-science treatment of L2 acquisition with different language combinations. It presents observable and documented facts and discusses them critically from various theoretical perspectives, but mainly taking into consideration general human cognition in individual and social domains; its assumes a contrastive view of the generative paradigm, in focusing on purely linguistic aspects, complemented by the view of language adopted from the wider perspective on communication that Relevance Theory offers. Its concerns the acquisition of semantics and pragmatics, while exploring teaching and pedagogic practices to make this critical analysis more complete. The overall discussion decisively argues that the whole of available data robustly supports current generative theories such as Feature Reassembly Hypothesis. Furthermore, it examines the purported vulnerability of interface-conditioned properties and, using data mainly from a variety of languages, confirms that interface-conditioned semantic and pragmatic competence is acquired later.