Expertise

Research Interests:

  • Second language acquisition
  • Second language temporality and tense-mood-aspect systems
  • Interlanguage pragmatics

My research interests fall primarily into two main categories; the development of tense-mood-aspect systems in second language and the development of second language discourse and pragmatics. In my early research these seemed to be two distinct tracks, the first grammatical and the second pragmatic. As I continue to work in these areas, however, I have become increasingly aware of how linguistic development interacts with development in interlanguage pragmatics, and how discourse structure (particularly narrative structure) influences tense-aspect use.

My current work expands my research on tense-aspect to include the expression of the future and modality. My investigation of the interrelation of grammar and pragmatics has led to an ongoing study of formulaic sequences in pragmatics.


Research Interests: second language acquisition; discourse pragmatics; classroom oriented research

Communities
Language Studies, Cognitive Science
Degrees
PhD, University of Chicago, Linguistics, 1983
MA, California State University, Northridge, Linguistics, 1978
BA, California State University, Northridge, Linguistics, 1976
Keywords
social sciences economics linguistics or philology language acquisition psycholinguistics human learning and memory english as a second language--esl