Reports on research into the validity of the theory of interlanguage, based on evidence of interference of the native language in Dutch students of French. (AM)

Used an approach to the study of interlanguage that challenges prevailing models of second language acquisition (SLA) that assume that negotiation of meaning is the only causal variable in SLA. Examines two notions of language play as they have been presented in applied linguistics literature: ludic language play and language play as rehearsal in…

Addresses the difficulties second language learners have using articles properly by examining the metalinguistic knowledge of the English article system that learners employ when selecting articles in a given situation. Attempts to better understand the process of "making sense" of the English article system by learners who are at different stages…

Discusses two hypotheses on the distribution of emergent tense-aspect morphology in second language acquisition: aspect hypothesis and discourse hypothesis. Analyzes narrative structure and lexical aspectual class in a single corpus comprising narratives produced by adult learners of English as a Second Language at various proficiency levels.…

Examines the work of two scholars who have made the greatest contributions to the variabilist perspective on second-language acquisition, and discusses the acquisition models that each of these scholars has proposed. (50 references) (Author/VWL)

Characteristics of language production shared by interlanguage and agrammatism, a linguistic symptom of aphasia, are discussed, and it is proposed that the two constitute a reduced system within the language, derived from the language's conceptual system. (MSE)

Examined two phenomena in the acquisition of second-language syllable structure among Japanese students of English as a foreign language: (1) a preference for open syllables, as manifest in paragoge; and (2) a developmental process of final segment apocopation. Results suggest that paragogic epenthesis is conditioned by a syllable structure…

This article examined the aspect hypothesis, which asserts that verb inflections in early interlanguage systems function primarily as markers of lexical aspect independent of the target language. A study of interviews conducted with 26 Puerto Rican college students grouped into 4 proficiency levels found that the association of inflections with…

Challenges two trends that have emerged in English language teaching. One trend suggests that researchers attention should be focused on the learner rather than on the teacher. The other trend attempts to get rid of the native speaker versus nonnative speaker delineation among English teachers, offering various alternative terms and concepts. (18…

Reports on grammaticality judgments by early learners of a second language (Italian). The data, contrary to what might be assumed, point to no relationship between intuition and performance for L2 Learners. Data concerning advanced learners may prove to be more valid. (34 references) (LET)

Investigates whether intermediate Turkish-speaking and English-speaking learners of Spanish know which unaccusative verbs alternate in transitivity and which ones do not, and whether they find causative errors natural with intransitive verbs. Results confirm similar findings to those reported in English interlanguage and first-language acquisition…

Longitudinally investigated the development of interlanguage by two Korean speakers of English to better understand the second-language acquisition process. In particular it tested the aspect hypothesis that asserts that verb inflections in early interlanguage systems function primarily as markers of lexical aspect. (Author/VWL)

Presenting four types of evidence, this article argues that grammatical competence should not be a subcomponent of communicative competence in second-language instruction, but have a separate status. Focuses on the critical role of grammatical competence in the overall development of target-language proficiency. (Author/VWL)

Discusses the simplification of forms ending in obstruents by native speakers of Mandarin, in particular two effects that are not obviously motivated by either the native- or the target-language grammars: a tendency to devoice final voiced obstruents and a tendency to maximize the number of bisyllabic forms in the output. (Author/JL)

From the perspective of Fodor's (1983) theory of mental organization and Chomsky's (1995) Minimalist theory of grammar, considers constraints on the interpretation of French-type and English-type cardinality interrogatives in the task of sentence comprehension, as a function of a universal parsing algorithm and hypotheses embodied in a French-type…