Review Margarita Rigal Aragón “Dossier. Edgar Allan Poe” Barcarola. Revista de Creación Literaria Junio 2010, Nº 74/75

Para los amantes de la literatura universal, 2009 no fue un año cualquiera. Durante el mismo se celebró el bicentenario de los nacimientos de dos de los mayores genios del relato corto moderno: Edgar Allan Poe y Nikolai Gógol. Sus vidas, breves pero intensas, acabaron en trágicas circunstancias: en el caso del escritor americano, en 1849, en el más absoluto anonimato y quizás víctima de una intoxicación etílica. Gógol, que sobrevivió tres años a Poe, consumió sus días al borde de la locura y aquejado de un deterioro físico similar

Constructing a second language: some final thoughts

All the papers in this special section address issues central to cognitive linguistics research: usage-based models with their focus on frequency; multi-word units and the relationship between lexical and grammatical knowledge; and the nature of lexical meaning, especially construal or “thinking for speaking”. Cognitive Linguistics is thus clearly a useful paradigm for L2 research. The contributors also emphasise that many of the processes operating in L1 acquisition are relevant in L2A as well. In this paper, I discuss the opposite side of the coin: how cognitively-inspired L2 research can inform work on first language learning and theoretical linguistics, focussing in particular on three issues that have been extensively studied in an L2 context but neglected by the other language sciences: transfer of knowledge between constructions, the role of explicit learning, and individual differences in linguistic knowledg