Three stages of the developing second language of a 3;9-3;11 year-old English-speaking child in an Urdu speech milieu were examined and compared with findings that have been accumulated about the order and process of first language acquisition. The study showed that in the development of many syntactic and morphological features the child used strategies characteristic of mother-tongue learners; an exception, the development of the negative, was interpreted as evidence that knowledge already available to a second language learner from learning a first may contribute to an acceleration of progress in some details of acquisition. (Author)