engleski

Vocabulary acquisition in Croatian as a Second and Foreign Language

Vocabulary acquisition in a second language has been a focus of researchers for more than 25 years. A bibliography on vocabulary in a second language (Meara & Hilton, 2005) shows the broadness and complexity of the field (e.g. vocabulary structure, mental lexicon, strategies in vocabulary acquisition, vocabulary assessment, influence on vocabulary acquisition, etc). In spite of that fact, relatively little is known about the basic processes and rules that govern vocabulary acquisition in a second language ; it is not known how the L2 vocabulary is structured and how it grows ; there is still no unique and complete model or theory of vocabulary acquisition in a second language. One of the reasons is the complexity of vocabulary itself. Namely, vocabulary is much more than simple words, it contains idioms, collocations, multi-words units ; and it is connected with various language levels: phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Nation (2001) offers a model of word knowledge which consists of three different types of knowledge: of form, meaning, and usage, for both receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge. Although Nation’ s model was criticized for its poor applicability, i.e. a large battery of tests would be needed to assess the knowledge of only one word (Meara, 1996), the model ALSO shows its weakness in an application to a language structurally different from English. This paper deals with vocabulary knowledge/word knowledge in Croatian as a second language. It discusses the (in)applicability of Nation’ s model to a knowledge of words in Croatian. It will be shown how the language structure, its phonological, morphological and syntactical features, influence vocabulary acquisition (Cvikic, L & Bosnjak, M, 2004 ; Cvikic, 2005 ; Jelaska, 2005). In this paper the entwining of lexicon and grammar in vocabulary acquisition will be discussed as well.

Croatian as L2; second language acquisition; vocabulary acquisition; lexicon and grammar

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