BOOK OF ABSTRACTS - EUROSLA

Mayo, G. & Hawkins, R.D. (eds.), 2009, Second Language Acquisition of Articles,
Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 49, John Benjamins
Publishing Company
Hakulinen, A. & Karlsson, F., 1979, Nykysuomen lauseoppia, SKS, Helsinki
Ionin, T., 2003, Article semantics in second language acquisition, Doctoral
dissertation, MIT. Distributed by MIT Working Papers in Linguistics.
Ionin, T., Ko, H., Wexler, P., 2004, ’Article semantics in L2-acquisition: the role of
specificity’. Language Acquisition 12, 3-69.
Ionin, T., Zubizarreta,M.L. , & Bautista Maldonado, S. , 2008, ‘L1-transfer of article
semantics in L2-acquisition’. 9th Generative Approaches to Second Language
Acquisition Conference (oral presentation). May, Iowa City, IA.
Ko, H., Ionin, T. and Wexler, K., 2006 'Adult L2-learners lack the maximality
presupposition, too!', in K.U. Deen, J. Nomura, B. Schulz & B.D. Schwartz
(eds) The Proceedings of the Inagural Conference on Generative Approaches
to Language Acquisition-North America, Honolulu, University of
Connecticut Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 4, 171-182
Lyons, C., 1999, Definiteness, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Schafer & de Villiers, 2000, Imagining Articles: What a and the can tell us about the
emergence of DP. In Proceedings of the Boston University Language
Development Conference, Somerville, Cascadilla press
Serratrice, L., Sorace, A., Filiaci, F., Baldo, M., 2009, ‘Bilingual children’s
sensitivity to specificity and genericity: Evidence from metalinguistic
awareness’. In Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 12 (2): 239-257,
Cambridge University Press.
Tryzna, M., 2009, 'Questioning the validity of the Article Choice Parameter and the
Fluctuation Hypothesis', in Second Language Acquisition of Articles, Language
Acquisition and Language Disorders 49, John Benjamins Publishing Company ,
67-86
White, L., & Genesee, 1996, How native is near-native? The issue of ultimate
attainment in adult second language acquisition. In Second Language Research,
12, 233-265.
Attitude and motivation facilitate foreign language retention: myth or
reality?
Teodora H. Mehotcheva
New Bulgarian University
In research on language attrition it has been generally accepted that attitude
and motivation are two of the most important factors to contribute to the
retention of a language, the same way they facilitate language acquisition
(Gardner, 1982). Nevertheless, there is very little empirical evidence
supporting this claim (Moorcroft & Gardner, 1987; Gardner, Lalonde,
Moorcroft, and Evers, 1987; and Waas, 1996) and it comes mainly from
studies measuring language proficiency on the basis of self-evaluation
reports.
This presentation gives a report on a project which explores the relationship
between these two factors and the processes of foreign language attrition.
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