Lexical semantics and contrastive lexical semantics can serve as a background discipline to describe and, to some extent, to explain errors in interlanguage. Two developments in lexical semantics that are relevant in this area are the description of sense-relationships and componential analysis. Contrastive lexical semantics involves mapping the…

Second language instruction in the U.S. and Europe is in difficulties. The choice of a second language is artibrary and the motivation dubious. In Europe and now also in the U.S., attention has turned to the planned interlanguage Esperanto, which offers a maximally regularized structure, is considered "easy" by learners, and has the…

This paper attempts to provide a framework within which the terminology used to talk about the learner's interlanguage may be defined so as to represent categories of types of interlanguage phenomena which are often discussed by teachers and researchers interested in second language acquisition. Several distinct types of "communication…

Research on error analysis indicates that the learner develops an ordered system of language which is frequently erroneous, but which represents a transitional stage in his progress towards mastery. A brief analysis of some textbooks provides information about the selection and presentation of material to the learner. (SW)

Investigates the role of topic-comment structure and the frequency of topic-prominence in the oral interlanguage of Chinese- Japanese-, Korean-, Arabic-, Farsi-, and Spanish-speaking adult students of English as a second language. Results indicate that second language learning is generally characterized by an early topic-comment stage, independent…

A case study investigating the effect of grammar instruction on formal accuracy in spontaneous and monitored second language performance indicated that formal instruction appeared to have very little effect on spontaneous production but was very beneficial for controlled performance. (CB)

Gives a short grammar of the Lisp computer language. Presents an introductory English parser (Simparse) as an example of how to write a parser in Lisp. Lists references for further explanation. Intended as preparation for teachers who may use computer-assisted language instruction in the future. (LMO)

A paradigm gap has prevented research on second language acquisition theory and indigenized varieties of English from making substantive contributions to each other. The varieties of English represent several significant sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic variables, the investigation of which will put second language acquisition theory on firmer…

Describes the "Competition Model" (Bates and MacWhinney, 1982) dealing with second-language sentence processing by bilinguals and research that has further developed theories dealing with the model. (CB)

Records an interview with Pit Corder, retired chair of Applied Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, in which he reflects on the implications for language teaching and learning of recent research into second language acquisition and language transfer, as well as on the status of applied linguistics in the mid-1980's. (Author/SED)

Describes a study in which English relative clauses were elicited from two groups of Italian learners: formal learners and informal learners. The results agreed with the order of acquisition predicted by the Accessibility Hierarchy (Keenan and Comrie, 1977, 1979). (Author/SED)

Discusses a test given to a group of elementary school students of English as a second language. The purpose of the test was to measure developmental errors, that is, errors which reflect a learner's competence at a given stage, and to illustrate some of the general characteristics of language acquisition. (SED)

This issue contains seven articles, including the following: "Dictionary, Systemicity, Motivation" (Tom Bartlett); "The Nature of the Initial State Zulu L2 Grammar and Subsequent Interlanguage Development" (Sibusisiwe Dube); "Translating the Folk" (Bryan Fletcher); "The Acquisition of the English Article System…

Describes the design of the International Corpus of Learner English, outlining the learner and task variables in the corpus of texts written by English-as-a-Foreign-Language university undergraduates. The design of the corpus and sampling of students with different native languages make contrastive interlanguage analyses and error analyses…

Examines the interference of first language neutralization rules in the acquisition of a marked second language phonological feature. Presents results from a study of the acquisition of the voicing contrast in English word-final obstruents by native speakers of Catalan. (Author/VWL)