Discusses variation in interlanguage and suggests two hypotheses to explain such variation as multiple internal representations of a form and processing errors. Suggests that second language learners can initially represent new forms as prototype schemas, and that such non-discrete representations are a third source of variation in interlanguage.…

Overviews language transfer and a renewal of interest in contrastive analysis (CA) as a suitable testing ground for language transfer. Focuses on Iranian students' difficulty in learning the English definite article, "the." The CA reveals that in Persian, there is no single word corresponding exactly to the English definite article. (16…