Discusses the theoretical foundations of both basic approaches to contrastive analysis, the predictive, "a priori" version, and the explanatory, "a posteriori" version. Analyzes problems in both approaches, and states that explanatory investigations must be divorced from "classical" contrastive analysis and used with a more realistic methodology…

Results of a study of sound system acquisition of five-year-old students of English-as-a-second-language show that first- and second-language learners exhibit similar but not identical simplification processes, and that evidence for a common developmental sequence in acquisition of consonant sounds was limited. (MSE)