This paper describes a preliminary study which focuses on the syllable structure of interlanguage and begins to identify some of the processes which shape that interlanguage. Adults learning English as a second language in a formal classroom situation were recorded as they described a series of pictures in English. Two subjects were native speakers of Cantonese, two were native speakers of Portuguese and two were native speakers of Korean. Their speech was transcribed and analyzed for syllable structure. The data support the following findings: (1) the syllable structure of the interlanguages examined was markedly different from that of the target language; (2) in the syllable structure of the interlanguages examined, both epenthesis and consonant deletion seemed to be used as strategies for syllable simplification, with the first-language background of the learner seeming to be related to a preference for one strategy over the other; (3) the dominant process influencing the syllable structure of the interlanguage phonologies appeared to be language transfer; (4) a preference for the open (consonant-vowel) syllable seemed to operate as a process independent of language transfer in influencing the syllable structure of the interlanguage phonologies; and (5) glottal stop insertion appeared only between words, possibly as a result of an attempt to produce lexical items as separate units in the speech stream. (Author)