Illustrates the advantages of laboratory research into second language acquisition (SLA) by describing two studies of acquisition of second language syntax. The first, conducted in Wales, addresses the question of whether human morphological abilities can be understood in terms of associative processes, and the second presents a bootstrapping…

Argues that much of language acquisition is sequence learning and that the resultant long-term knowledge base of language sequences serves as the database for grammar acquisition. The article also proposes mechanisms to analyze sequence information that result in knowledge of underlying grammar. (184 references) (Author/CK)