When we think of the debates surrounding linguistic transfer in L3 acquisition, one of the most prominent discussions concerns whether transfer occurs in a wholesale fashion or whether it is property-by-property. One such model is the Linguistic Proximity Model (LPM, Mykhaylyk et al., 2015; Westergaard et al., 2017; Westergaard, 2021), which…

This paper supports the view that language instruction should be evidence and principle-based. Key facts about second language acquisition will be presented highlighting the main implications for language instruction. A principled and evidence-based approach to language instruction is one which takes into consideration the following: (i) a clear…

In this commentary, the author defends the Multiple Grammars (MG) theory proposed by Luiz Amaral and Tom Roepe (A&R) in the present issue. Topics discussed include second language acquisition, the concept of developmental optionality, and the idea that structural decisions involve the lexical dimension. The author states that A&R's…

According to generative linguistic theory, certain principles underlying language structure are innately given, accounting for how children are able to acquire their mother tongues (L1s) despite a mismatch between the linguistic input and the complex unconscious mental representation of language that children achieve. This innate structure is…

The point of departure for this article is the contrast between the theoretical landscape within view of language teaching professionals in 1991 and that of today. I argue that the pragmatic goal of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) developers and researchers to create and evaluate learning opportunities pushes them to consider a variety…

A central question for psycholinguistics concerns the role of grammatical constraints in online sentence processing. Many current theories maintain that the language processing mechanism constructs a parse or parses that are grammatically consistent with the whole of the perceived input each time it processes a word. Several bottom-up, dynamical…