This article considers the implications of Sperber and Wilson's (1986/95) Relevance Theory for the acquisition of English "the" by second language (L2) learners whose first language (L1) does not have an article system. On the one hand, Relevance Theory provides an explicit characterization of the semantics of "the", which suggests ways of…

This document reports an investigation of the developmental changes in the use of certain syntactic structures by white, monolingual, middle class five- and seven-year-olds, and of the differences between the syntax of young children and that used in beginning reading textbooks. Approximately half of the publication presents the methods and…