Preliminary communication
L1 and L2 research — Croatian and English terms of the fields
Zrinka Jelaska
Abstract
The paper discusses terms for fields of language development research, e.g.
research in language acquisition / learning / development concerning the
first /mother language and second / foreign language. As pairs or groups
of these terms are synonyms in some cases and different terms in other
cases, the meaning relationship between them gets even more complicated
when Croatian terminology is included.
One reason for this is the fact that the fields of L1 and L2 acquisition, as
well as teaching and learning languages, are developing very fast and in-
clude various types of researchers: linguists, psycholinguists, sociolinguists,
psychologists, pedagogists, cognitive scientists, etc. Not all of them are in-
terdisciplinary and therefore do not face the need for a unified terminology.
For example: psycholinguists who deal with L2 development do not need
to consider the difference between second and foreign language, which is of
greatest concern of psycholinguists who deal with motivation, teaching and
learning (such as the influence of focus on form on language acquisition)
and sociolinguists who deal with attitude towards different languages, as
well as their status.
The field is getting more attention in Croatian society, and the terminology
should be systematic in order to be useful. As one reason for multiplication
of terms is polisemy, which is characteristic for some terms, Croatian terms
tend to distinguish hyponims from hypernyms. Therefore terms for acquisi-
tion (Cro. usvajanje) and learning (Cro. uˇcenje) get hypernym ovladavanje
(imperfective noun derived from verb which has the meaning features of En-
glish words conquering, mastering, ruling) to cover them both — when it
is not important or easy to distinguish one from the other, or when both
are included. Terms for second (Cro. drugi) and foreign (Cro. strani) lan-
guage get the hypernym ini (a rarely used word for other) to cover them both.
Keywords
acquisition; learning; L1; L2; development
Hrčak ID:
20658
URI
Publication date:
15.11.2007.
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