Revisiting Grammatical versus Pragmatic Competence in Learning a Language

Pragmatic Aspects of Grammatical Constructions

1. Introduction. Constructions and Pragmatics What do constructional approaches to grammar have to contribute to linguistic pragmatics? A careful answer to this question would require prior specification of which approaches should properly be called 'constructional' and also what exactly is intended by 'linguistic pragmatics'. Conscientiously discharging these preparatory obligations could requ...

The Interface between Linguistic and Pragmatic Competence: The Case of Disagreement, Scolding, Requests, and Complaints

 Second language  learners often develop grammatical competence in the absence of concomitant pragmatic competence (Kasper & Roever, 2005) and the exact nature of the relationship between the two competences is still indistinct and in need of inquiries ( Bardovi-Harlig, 1999; Khatib & Ahmadisafa, 2011). This study is a partial attempt to address the lacuna and aims to see if any relationship ca...

Language learning and language culture in a changing world

To  communicate  effectively,  learners  have  to  become  proficient  in  both  the  language  and  the culture of the target language.  Being aware of socio-cultural frameworks does not mean that as an outcome of instruction learners have to become "native-like," but an awareness of L2 cultural norms can allow learners to make their own informed choices of how to become competent and astute l...

Language Learning Strategies: A Strategy-Based Approach to L2 Learning.Strategic Competence, and Test Validation

Grammatical Competence and Parsing Performance

Much psycholinguistic experimentation in recent years has been concerned with the nature of the human processes that give rise to the difficulties associated with sentences such as The author read the review smiled and Whilst he was writing the review flowed onto the page. The problem, of course, is that language is ambiguous, and these examples illustrate that in the face of local ambiguity, t...