If the basic operations hypothesis (EJ 184 227) is interpreted as a general principle governing acquisition of all movement rules, it may obscure the fact that children distinguish between unbounded and local rules. Error patterns support this distinction, lending credence to theories with separate status for the two rule types. (Author/RD)

Goodluck and Solan (EJ 205 641) presented alternative formulations about why errors predicted by basic operations fail to occur and suggested a refined hypothesis. Each aspect of their argument is addressed, and it is concluded that descriptive power, methodology and principles for restricting error predictions favor our original analysis. (RD)

Foreigner talk (FT) is the term used to characterize possible adjustments in the speech of a native speaker (NS) when he or she is in conversation with a non-native speaker (NNS). The paper examines conversations between 6 native speakers and 3 non-native speakers and characterizes the speech of the native-speakers involved. The data were…

The amount of time that should be spent on explicit teaching of language patterns and structure is an issue among second language teachers. Those who believe that language learning is a developmental process feel that there is no sense in teaching grammar and syntax explicitly since the learner can be expected to acquire these skills as he…

The language learner is activated by exposure to primary linguistic data in the target language, categorizes that data and deduces from it a system of rules or hypotheses. When the language acquisition process is successful, as is virtually always the case in first language acquisition, the learner's rule system corresponds to that of the speech…