susanne carroll - input and evidence (the raw material of second language acquisition)

INPUT AND EVIDENCE

Volume 25

Susanne E. Carroll

Input and EvidenceThe raw material of second language acquisition

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION & LANGUAGE DISORDERS

EDITORS

Harald Clahsen Lydia WhiteUniversity of Essex McGill University

EDITORIAL BOARD

Melissa Bowerman (Max Planck Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen)Wolfgang Dressler (University of Vienna)

Katherine Demuth (Brown University)Nina Hyams (University of California at Los Angeles)

William O’Grady (University of Hawaii)Jürgen Meisel (Universität Hamburg)Mabel Rice (University of Kansas)Luigi Rizzi (University of Siena)

Bonnie Schwartz (University of Durham)Antonella Sorace (University of Edinburgh)

Karin Stromswold (Rutgers University)Jürgen Weissenborn (Universität Potsdam)

Frank Wijnen (Utrecht University)

INPUT AND EVIDENCETHE RAW MATERIAL OF

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANYAMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA

SUSANNE E. CARROLLUniversität Potsdam

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Carroll, Susanne.Input and evidence : the raw material of second language acquisition / Susanne E. Carroll.

p. cm. -- (Language acquisition & language disorders : ISSN 0925-0123; v. 25)Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Second language acquisition. 2. Linguistic models. I. Title. II. Series.P118.2.C374 2000401’.93--dc21 00-046767ISBN 90 272 2493 5 (Eur.) / 1 58811 011 7 (US) (alk. paper) CIP

© 2001 - John Benjamins B.V.No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or anyother means, without written permission from the publisher.

John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 36224 • 1020 ME Amsterdam • The NetherlandsJohn Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA

To my Dad, J. Allan Carroll. Just for you.

Table of contents

List of tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xiii

List of figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xvii

C 1Questions, problems, and definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11. Objectives and research questions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.1 Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2 Research questions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2. Definitions: stimuli, intake, and input. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82.1 Stimuli and transducers: the first level of processing. . . . . . . 82.2 Modularity and the Comprehensible Input Hypothesis. . . . . . 122.3 Processing in the Autonomous Induction Theory. . . . . . . . . 162.4 Positive and negative evidence, positive and negative

feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172.5 Competence and performance, skill and control, faculties, and

abilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243. A reformulation of the research questions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314. Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

C 2Property and transition theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371. Why do we need the Autonomous Induction Theory (or something

like it)? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371.1 What must an SLA theory explain?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371.2 Problems with SLA applications of Principles and Parameters

Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401.3 Problems with the Competition Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

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1.4 A third approach: the Autonomous Induction Theory. . . . . . 501.5 The limits of theism and deism as accounts of SLA. . . . . . . 51

2. Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

C 3The representational and developmental problems of language

acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 651. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 652. Principles and parameters theory (P&P). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

2.1 P&P theory: the core ideas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 712.2 Universal Grammar: substantive universals. . . . . . . . . . . . . 732.3 Universal Grammar: formal universals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

3. Well, that looks good! So what’s the problem?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 883.1 UG and the problem of representational realism. . . . . . . . . . 893.2 Can parameters be biological constructs?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 933.3 The SLA P&P theory has no model of triggers. . . . . . . . . . 963.4 How does one set a parameter in the face of ambiguous

stimuli from two different languages?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1003.5 The deductive value of parameters is now questionable. . . . . 1013.6 What if there were no parameters in a theory of UG?. . . . . . 1063.7 What might it mean now to say that UG is “innate”?. . . . . . 107

4. Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

C 4The autonomous induction model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1191. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1192. The language faculty in outline. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

2.1 Representational Modularity: The hypothesis of levels. . . . . . 1212.2 The intermediate level theory of awareness. . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

3. Induction and i-learning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1303.1 Basic properties of induction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1303.2 Induction as asearchthrough asearch space? . . . . . . . . . . . 1313.3 Domains of knowledge as mental models. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1363.4 Condition–action rules. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1413.5 Competition among rules. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1513.6 Clustering of effects?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1553.7 Generation of new rules. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1643.8 What initiates and ends i-learning?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

4. Summary of the Autonomous Induction Theory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

TABLE OF CONTENTS ix

C 5Constraints on i-learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1791. Form extraction, distributional analysis, and categorisation. . . . . . . . 179

1.1 Prosodic bootstrapping and form extraction?. . . . . . . . . . . . 1791.2 Distributional analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1831.3 Categorisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1841.4 Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

2. Removing the straw man, or why induction needn’t produce “roguegrammars” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1872.1 Induction and the Autonomy Hypotheses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1872.2 Induction is not random hypothesis-formation. . . . . . . . . . . 1912.3 Jettisoning the problem-solving metaphor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1952.4 The Coding Constraint. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1972.5 The role of feedback. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202

3. Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203

C 6The logical problem of (second) language acquisition revisited . . . . . . . 2071. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2072. There is no logical problem of second language acquisition. . . . . . . 208

2.1 The form of the argument. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2082.2 What is the logical problem of language acquisition?. . . . . . 210

2.2.1 Three basic assumptions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2102.2.2 The linguistically innocent learner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2132.2.3 The cognitively innocent learner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2152.2.4 The Poverty of the Stimulus Hypothesis. . . . . . . . . . . 2222.2.5 Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226

3. The empirical facts from first language acquisition. . . . . . . . . . . . . 2273.1 From FLA to SLA? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2273.2 Input consists of more than strings of forms. . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

3.2.1 Meaning as input. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2283.2.2 Feedback as input. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2303.2.3 The Simplified Input Hypothesis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

3.3 The representational problem vs. the discovery problem. . . . 2363.4 Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238

4. The empirical problem of second language acquisition. . . . . . . . . . 2394.1 Preliminaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2394.2 The Success Measure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

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4.3 The adult’s other cognitive “equipment”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2404.3.1 How meaning solves the logical problem of language

acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2414.3.2 How feedback solves the logical problem of language

acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2414.3.3 The time element. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

5. Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

C 7Input and the Modularity Hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2491. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2492. The Modularity of Mind Hypothesis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250

2.1 Componentiality, autonomy and domain-specificity. . . . . . . . 2512.2 Modules are part of the “hardware”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2522.3 Modular domains exhibit a specific ontogeny. . . . . . . . . . . . 2522.4 The automaticity and speed of modular processing. . . . . . . . 2542.5 Modules produce “shallow” outputs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2552.6 “Cross-talk” is limited. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2552.7 The Schwartz model of modular L2 acquisition. . . . . . . . . . 255

2.7.1 K-acquisition vs. k-learning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2552.7.2 Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

3. What’s wrong with Fodorian modularity?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2603.1 Problem one: We’re not talking about “language acquisition”,

we’re talking only about “grammar acquisition”. . . . . . . . . . 2613.2 Problem two: Fodor’s concept of what a module is is too

crude. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2623.3 Problem three: The relationship between parsing and

knowledge in proficient native speakers and acquisition in L2learners is unclear. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271

3.4 Problem four: It cannot be true that all grammaticalrestructuring takes place as a direct consequence of a failureto process input bottom-up. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273

4. Whither Linguistic Competence?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2744.1 What does a psychogrammar really consist of?. . . . . . . . . . . 274

4.1.1 Rules. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2744.1.2 Meaning and form. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278

5. Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284

TABLE OF CONTENTS xi

C 8The evidence for negative evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2891. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2892. The empirical studies of indirect negative evidence, metalinguistic

instruction, and feedback and correction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2902.1 Indirect negative evidence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2902.2 The metalinguistic instruction studies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2942.3 The feedback and correction studies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313

3. The -ing affixation/morphological conversion study. . . . . . . . . . . . . 3213.1 The subjects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3213.2 Design and methodology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3223.3 Predictions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3293.4 Major findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3293.5 Discussion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337

4. Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340

C 9Feedback in the Autonomous Induction Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3471. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3472. Focused attention and detectable errors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348

2.1 Focused attention. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3482.2 Detectable errors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3502.3 Error location, or the blame assignment problem.. . . . . . . . . 3542.4 Categorisation, i-learning, and feedback. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357

3. Learning the double object construction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3633.1 The metalinguistic feedback. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3643.2 The other forms of negative evidence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366

4. Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366

C 10The interpretation of verbal feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3711. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3712. How could feedback and correction initiate restructuring in the

learner’s grammar?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3732.1 Feedback and correction are types of speech acts. . . . . . . . . 3732.2 To count as feedback an utterance must be parsed and

interpreted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3762.3 Irrelevance of linguistic feedback. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3772.4 The Relevance of feedback depends on its informativeness . . 382

xii TABLE OF CONTENTS

2.5 The blame assignment problem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3862.6 Metalinguistic information, grammar teaching, and

information which cannot be modelled. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3882.7 The corrective intention and indirect forms of feedback. . . . . 389

3. Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390

Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393

Appendix 1: Acceptability judgement task. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395

Appendix 2: Experimental session. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401

Subject index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449

List of tables

Chapter 6Table 6.1: Complexity of language input (reconstructed from Morgan1989: 352) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

Chapter 8Table 8.1: Means and standard deviations by group and session forthe feedback items. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329Table 8.2: Results of repeated measures ANOVAS for the feedbackitems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331Table 8.3: Between-group comparison of means of feedback itemson the initial feedback session. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332Table 8.4: Between-group comparison of means of feedback itemson Test 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332Table 8.5: Between-group comparison of means of feedback itemson Test 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333Table 8.6: Means and standard deviations by group and session forthe guessing items. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334Table 8.7: Results of repeated measures ANOVAS for the guessingitems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335Table 8.8: Between-group comparison of means of guessing items onthe initial guessing session. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335Table 8.9: Between-group comparison of means of guessing items onTest 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336Table 8.10: Between-group comparison of means of guessing itemson Test 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336Table 8.11: Between-group comparison of means of guessing itemson initial guessing session (from Carroll and Swain 1993). . . . . . . . 338Table 8.12: Between-group comparison of means of guessing itemson Test 1 (from Carroll and Swain 1993). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338Table 8.13: Between-group comparison of means of guessing itemson Test 2 (from Carroll and Swain 1993). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339

List of figures

Chapter 1Figure 1.1: Transducing linguistic stimuli. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Figure 1.2: The relationship of stimuli to input. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Figure 1.3: A modular processing/learning model à la Schwartz(1993: 157). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13Figure 1.4: The Comprehensible Input Hypothesis (Faerch et al.1984: 187) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Figure 1.5: Types of possible inputs during speech processing. . . . . 17Figure 1.6: Positive and negative evidence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Chapter 4Figure 4.1: The organisation of all levels of mental representation(Jackendoff 1987: 248). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122Figure 4.2: The organisation of the grammar (Jackendoff 1997: 100) . 124Figure 4.3: Processing Hypothesis for perception (Jackendoff1987: 101) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125Figure 4.4: Processing Hypothesis for production (Jackendoff1987: 109) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126Figure 4.5: Problem-solving as the transition from an initial“problem state” to a “goal state”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132Figure 4.6: Problem-solving as the transition from an “initial state”to an “intermediate state” and to an “end state”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

Chapter 7Figure 7.1: Fodor’s model of faculty psychology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251Figure 7.2: Schwartz’ model of modular processing. . . . . . . . . . . . 256Figure 7.3: Interactive parallel processing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268Figure 7.4: Frazier’s modularity (Frazier 1990: 413). . . . . . . . . . . . 269

xvi LIST OF FIGURES

Chapter 8Figure 8.1: A model of Lexical Phonology showing the interaction ofword-building processes and phonological rules (based on Jensen1990: 92) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325Figure 8.2: % Correct — Feedback items. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330Figure 8.3: % Correct — Guessing items. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333

Acknowledgements

The origins of this book go back to the mid 1980s and my increasing dissatisfac-tion with the turn which generative work in second language acquisition was thentaking. I decided to do something completely different. In the intervening years,I have instead been pursuing an agenda focused more on the integration oflinguistic theorising with research on processing, perception, memory, and otheraspects of cognition. My intellectual debt to Ray Jackendoff will be apparentfrom the first pages of this book. If Ray ever chooses to read it, I can only hopethat he is pleased with the use I have made of his many ideas about linguisticcognition and meaning. Bonnie Schwartz and I have been discussing the specificthemes treated here for years — over e-mail, at conferences, over the telephone.We don’t agree on the details but the discussions have always been stimulatingand I expect them to continue to be. Merrill Swain was co-principal investigatorof the project which led to the data set reported on in Chapter 8. This projectwas funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada(SSHRCC File no. 410–89–1484) and the Ontario Ministry of Education throughits block grant to the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. I would like toacknowledge the generosity of both of these funding agencies. I take pleasurealso in acknowledging the assistance of Myriam Schachter, who carried out theexperimental sessions with the subjects, Phil Nagy, who provided statisticaladvice, and Harmut Brasche who carried out the statistical analysis. I am gratefulfor this collaboration; I learned a great deal from it.

Mike Sharwood-Smith read parts of the manuscript and made manyimportant editorial suggestions. Kevin Gregg read two (only two?) completedrafts, commenting on everything from my interpretations of Chomsky to myspelling. The final version is vastly improved due to his pointed criticisms andsuggestions. (And I still owe him a dinner!) Olaf Malecki proof-read the penulti-mate text and assisted with the bibliography and indices. Lydia White and HaraldClahsen are to be thanked for facilitating things at Benjamins. Kees Vaes ofBenjamins was understanding about interminable delays in the delivery of the

xviii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

manuscript (due to the use of three different versions of Word on three differentcomputers in three different locations).

I thank Cambridge University Press for permission to reproduce Figure 1.3(also 7.2) taken from B. D. Schwartz “On explicit and negative data effectingand affecting competence and linguistic behavior”Studies in Second LanguageAcquisition15(2): 157, Table 6.1, taken from J. Morgan “Learnability consider-ations and the nature of trigger experience in language acquisition”Behavioraland Brain Science12(2): 352, and Tables 8.11, 8.12, and 8.13, taken from S.Carroll and M. Swain “Explicit and implicit negative feedback: An empiricalstudy of the learning of linguistic generalizations”Studies in Second LanguageAcquisition15(2); John Benjamin’s for permission to reproduce Figure 8.1, takenfrom John Jensen’sMorphology: Word structures in generative grammar; andMIT Press for permission to reproduce Figures 4.1, 4.3, and 4.4, which are allfrom R. Jackendoff’s Consciousness and the computational mind. Gyldendal wererepeatedly approached for permission to reproduce Figure 1.4 fromLearnerLanguage and Language Learning(1984: 187),models of speech processing:Psycholinguistic and computational perspectives.

If I have not lost sight completely of the many changes which haveoccurred within linguistic theory during my period of psychological reeducation,it is due to the members of the Linguistics Department of the UniversitätPotsdam. My colleagues Ria de Bleser, Damar Cavar, Gisbert Fanselow, CarolineFéry, Hans-Martin Gärtner, Ina Hockl, Barbara Höhle, Inge Lasser, SusanPowers, Doug Saddy, Matthias Schlesewsky, Peter Staudacher, and JürgenWeissenborn, have created a particularly stimulating work environment forsomeone like me. It is hard to imagine a more interesting place to be if you’reinterested in linguisticandpsycholinguistic issues. If the relationship has at timesseemed one-sided (all take and no give) I can only plead that the UP occasional-ly provides too many distractions. Ria de Bleser, Reinhold Kliegl, and SusanPowers have done me a thousand kindnesses in various ways at various times.The Parkes (John, Alexandra, Dennis, and Jessica), Diane Massam, YvesRoberge, Susan Ehrlich, Nancy McNee, Lynn Drapeau and Michael Rochemonthave provided much e-humour and e-support over the years. To my two bestfriends Margaret McNee and Chantal Ramsay I owe many thanks for theirgenerosity, affection, and ability to put everything into perspective when I can’t.Finally, I would like to thank my husband Jürgen M. Meisel for his encourage-ment. We have discussed aspects of this work over the years, and I have madeextensive use of his ideas and his research. But JMM had a more important roleto play in the genesis of this work. At some point, all discussions ended with:“Finish your book!” And so I did.

C 1

Questions, problems, and definitions

1. Objectives and research questions

1.1 Objectives

This book has several objectives. One is to explore the logical relationshipbetween the language that second language learners hear and interpret and thenature of the knowledge of a second language (L2) that they ultimately acquire.A second objective is to investigate the particular role that feedback and correc-tion might play in principle in second language acquisition (SLA). A third is toinvestigate these issues against the backdrop of research on Universal Grammar(UG), seen as an attempt to constrain language learning theory to what islogically possible and empirically observable. Fourthly, I wish to locate input andevidence within a particular metatheoretical space by embedding discussion oflearning within a theory of speech processing and speech production. Fifthly, Iintend to add to the body of empirical evidence which supports the hypothesisthat feedback and correction have a role to play in initiating second languageacquisition and determining the nature of its course, although I will also showthat this role is much more limited than many might at present think. Finally, Ihope to draw attention to one of the most under-researched and under-theorisedaspects of second language acquisition — the raw material from which learnerslearn — and to argue that it deserves far more attention than it currently gets.

(1.1) Objectives of this booka. to explore the logical relationship between the language second lan-

guage learners are exposed to (input) and the linguistic competenceand skills they ultimately acquire;

b. to explore the function of feedback and correction in SLA;c. to fit input, feedback and correction into a constrained theory of

second language acquisition;

2 INPUT AND EVIDENCE

d. to embed models of second language acquisition in a theory of speechperception and speech production;

e. to add to the empirical evidence which shows that feedback and cor-rection play a causal role in SLA, but to also show that this role islimited to specific kinds of language acquisition problems and toparticular periods of development;

f. to demonstrate that feedback and correction cannot be major explana-tory mechanisms in a general theory of language acquisition.

My motivation is quite simple. Although SLA researchers agree about very littlewhen it comes to explaining the how and why of L2 acquisition, one point onwhich there is consensus is that SLA requires exposure to the second language.If you want to learn Ojibwa, you will have to listen to Ojibwa speech, readOjibwa texts, and attempt to reproduce Ojibwa sentences. This much would seemto be a matter of logical necessity, since there is as yet no Ojibwa pill on themarket obviating the need for language learning, nor are there any reported casesof anyone coming to know Ojibwa through telepathy. Learners still have to workat learning, and learning requires exposure to the sounds or written forms of theL2. From these sounds and written symbols, learners must construct grammaticalrepresentations of the speech they are hearing or reading and infer a meaning.

This said, consensus ends, for there is no agreement on what kind or howmuch exposure a learner needs.1 Indeed, we know very little still about the kindsof linguistic exposure learners actually get. Are they bathed in the sounds of theL2 in a way which makes the words and structures expressing particular meaningstransparent? Or do they spend their days immersed in their own thoughts againsta background rumble of noises which make no sense to them, and emerge onlyoccasionally to participate in speech exchanges mostly involving highly ritualisedlanguage? On the basis of what we currently know, we could argue for eitherscenario. We also do not know how learners process the sounds they hear althoughprocessing speech is a necessary first step in constructing grammatical representa-tions. Do all learners experience the L2 initially as a “wall of noise” whose soundscannot even be perceived as syllables? Certainly, this is the initial experience ofmany learners. Or do learners of particular L1s learning particular L2s alreadycome equipped with the knowledge necessary to re-analyse the continuous speechsignal into discrete strings of sound units? Extensive search of the SLA literaturehas failed to produce any studies shedding light on this particular question. Muchof the early SLA literature discusses learning in general terms and presupposesthat learners already have the ability to perceive and extract “words” from thespeech signal. Such discussions can shed no light on the initial state or on how thelearner leaves it. Even if we limit our attention to learners at a subsequent stage of

QUESTIONS, PROBLEMS, AND DEFINITIONS 3

learning, still we do not know a whole lot about how they construct grammaticalrepresentations once they do perceive and encode “words”, although we havemade some progress in the investigation of both global properties of interlanguagegrammars and the specific details of a limited range of learning problems such asinflectional morphology, constituent order, reflexives, stress, syllable structureconstraints, and the learning of phonetic segments. It is often suggested thatlearners discover form through meaning. But we know little about how learnersmake sense of the sounds they hear in context, that is to say, how they mapmeanings onto sounds. It is often implied that meanings are transparent wheneverspeech is used in context but observation of real language use suggests that manysituations lend themselves to a number of mutually inconsistent interpretations. Ifmeaning is to provide the way into grammatical form, we will require a sophisti-cated theory of meaning, appropriate for different groups of learners. In itsabsence, we must admit that we have no theory of input for SLA.

A theory of input to learning is required for all sorts of reasons. We need it,first of all, to make sense of learnability research. Learnability studies ask how itis possible in principle to learn a language. One criterion is that learners get input,but no one has, as yet, explored the minimally necessary kinds of input needed tolearn a single grammatical phenomenon. This is partly due to the complexity ofeven “simple” grammatical phenomena, partly due to the changing nature ofgrammarians’ views of how to define them. If we are to state how learnersidentify formal entities like “word”, “sentence”, or “passive construction” in thespeech stream, then we will obviously need clear and unambiguous formaldefinitions of what they are. Secondly, it is not clear yet how to marry theidealisations of learnability theories to the psycholinguistic assumptions designedto characterise real learning in real time. Consequently, the claim that learners canlearn on the basis of a single exposure to a given phenomenon is currently just asviable as the contrary claim that they need several hundred hours of exposure,correction, and practice. Indeed, there is not even agreement as to whether it reallymakes sense to claim that learnerslearn a language from exposure to the soundsof the L2. If second language acquisition is constrained by an innate language-specific knowledge system called Universal Grammar, as many have maintained,and if by the wordlearningwe mean hypothesis-formation and hypothesis-testingof the sort evidenced in problem-solving and concept learning, as Schachter(1992) has argued, then it would be misleading, say some researchers, to describewith this word what language learners do.2 Krashen (1981) has attempted to drawa distinction betweenacquisition(defined as the unconscious processes of infantsand children, whatever they might be) andlearning (the conscious processesinvolving metalinguistic information in the form of grammar rules of the sort


fostered in many language classrooms). Krashen argued that learnersacquirefromexposure to the sounds of the L2 in meaningful communication, but this is notlearning. While Krashen has provided no direct empirical evidence for thedistinction, many now assume that it is correct.3 To summarise, the most basicquestions about the relationship between grammar learning in SLA and the speechor meanings on which it is based have yet to be sorted out. In this book I shall asksome of these basic questions, and I hope to provide some equally basic answers.

1.2 Research questions

In pursuing my objectives, I will explore in detail four particular questions. Thefirst is:

Question 1What is the nature of the raw material on which particular grammaticalgeneralisations are formed?

In contrast to what appears to be the standard position in our field (see Carroll1999b, for a defense of this claim), I will argue here that the input to languagelearning cannot consist of the objective properties of the speech signal or thephysical properties of the page of a book. Language learning requires the transfor-mation of wave forms or patterns of light detected by the eye into mental repre-sentations of a particular sort.Only thesemental representations canbe the startingpoint for language learning. Exploring how the wave form (or the patterns of light)is converted into mental representations ties a theory of language learningirrevocably to research on speech processing.4 Unfortunately, contemporaryresearch on speech processing has had little influence on main stream SLAtheorising which has contented itself largely with the investigation of ideasemanating from grammatical theory, in particular, Principles and ParametersTheory, and from first language acquisition research done within the sameparadigm.5 While individual efforts can undoubtedly be cited, for example,Myles’ (1995) treatment of working memory in the parsing and acquisition of wh-constructions in French by English speakers, the on-going research in variouscentres in Europe (especially in The Netherlands) on the L2 and bilingual lexicon(see, e.g., de Groot and Nas 1991; de Bot, Cox, Ralston, Schaufeli and Weltens1995; Pal 1999, 2000), Juffs’ (1998a, b) studies of sentence-based parsing in aprinciple-based parsing framework (see also Juffs and Harrington 1995, 1996), orPienemann’s use of production models in his Processability Theory (Pienemann1998a, b), such efforts have tended to be narrow in focus. Certainly they have hadlittle influence on the way in which SLA tends to be conceptualised in the


textbooks we use to train our students. I hope this book may help to change thisstate of affairs.

The second question to be asked is:

Question 2What is the role that conceptual information plays in the learning of gram-matical distinctions?

In contrast to some generative SLA research to be discussed later in detail, I shallargue that input to learning cannot consist solely of information entering thelinguistic systems “bottom-up” from the sensory systems. Some grammaticallearning requires linkages between concepts and morphosyntactic representations;some grammatical learning requires linkages between concepts and phonologicalrepresentations. Both possibilities presuppose that conceptual distinctions areaccessible to and accessed by learning mechanisms constructing novel grammati-cal categories or novel grammatical structures. At the same time, I hope to showthat learning mechanisms makeconstraineduse of conceptual information. Thisentails that learning mechanisms must make use of grammatical features, catego-ries and structures of an autonomous sort. Grammatical categories are not mereconvenient labels for conceptual categories, thus allowing us to dispense with allthat formal nonsense so beloved of grammarians! Nor can the constraints whichhold of interlanguage grammars be derived from conceptual functions. Conse-quently, a theory of SLA must show how grammatical categories and structurescan be acquired given appropriate input. My view is that thatinput (including inputof a conceptual type)must bedefined in formal terms if it is to account for grammati-cal knowledge.

The third question to be examined has to do with the role of feedback andcorrection in adult SLA as a motor of grammatical restructuring.

Question 3What is the role of feedback and correction in adult second language acqui-sition?

It is a major thesis of this book that correction and feedback play a role in thecreation of novel forms of grammatical knowledge. I intend to demonstrate thatfor correction and feedback to play a role in grammatical restructuring, what issaid to the learner must receive ametalinguistic interpretation. In other words, shemust understand that someone is talking about her speech, which in turn demandsthat she form a conceptual representation of her own utterance. The deploymentof correction and feedback thus operates initially from within the conceptualsystem of the learner, where what has been said is interpreted and integrated into


a model of the on-going speech situation. This logically entails that meaning mustbe able to influence grammatical restructuring. Talk of meaning requires us tohave a theory of meaning. This work will make extensive use of two distinctapproaches to that subject. On the one hand, I will adopt Jackendoff’s theory ofConceptual Semantics, which is especially congenial to psycholinguistic argumen-tation and data, in contrast to much of the truth-theoretic formal semanticsdeveloped within the philosophy of language and pursued within linguistic theory.6

Nonetheless, it must be admitted that Jackendoff’s theory is one which attemptsto describe and explain in principle how linguistic expressions can have themeanings they do. It is not per se a theory of inferencing or ratiocination. In orderto explain how learners can derive information from feedback and correction as aprelude to learning some new part of the second language, I will need such atheory of inferencing. I shall, therefore also draw heavily on Sperber and Wilson’s(1986) Relevance Theory. Both theories will be presented in some detail insubsequent chapters. They are necessary supports for a demonstration thatfeedback and correction has a role in any theory of adult SLA.7

Notice that such a demonstration will not arise just from amassing a largeamount of empirical data showing that the provision of feedback coincides withbehavioural changes among targetted groups of learners. In other words, I mighthave attempted to show merely that learners appeared to know things after havingreceived feedback or correction, that they did not know before, and that they wereable to act on the basis of that knowledge. Or, I might have shown that learnershave somehow acknowledged the provision of feedback and correction. This hasbeen the tack of theinteractionistapproach to input (see Pica 1994; Wesche 1994;Long 1996, for state-of-the-art reviews of a large number of empirical studies). Itis important to show that there is an empirical phenomenon to investigate. If theprovision of feedback and correction never is conducive to seeing changes inlearners’ behaviour, and we conclude that it has no effects on the learning of anygrammatical distinction, then that would be the end of the matter. But the demon-stration that feedback and correction sometimes are effective will not substitutefor a theory of feedback and correction. It will be the theory which provides anexplanation and not the empirical facts. Although I have said before that thepossible effects of feedback and correction in SLA is a matter for empiricalinvestigation and not one to be settled by theoretical fiat (Carroll and Swain1991, 1993; Carroll 1995b), and although data, my own and that of othersworking on this topic, will be presented and reviewed in Chapter 8, I will not becontent to show that feedback works with this individual or with that one, forthis problem or for that problem. The longterm goal is to develop an explanationof learning on the basis of this kind of input.


The elaboration of such an explanation cannot proceed without participatingin current debates about the causal factors in SLA. These debates have to dowith the major theoretical question animating much SLA writing: What is thenature of the constraints on SLA?

Question 4What is the nature of the constraints on SLA?

I shall also explore this question. In SLA research, Question 4 can be brokendown into three subparts:

Question 4 (in more detail)a. What role does existing knowledge, in particular knowledge in the

form of linguistic universals, play in determining the form of inter-language grammars and the course of developmental patterns?

b. What role does existing knowledge, in particular knowledge in theform of acquired knowledge from the first language, play in determin-ing the form of interlanguage grammars and the course of develop-mental patterns?

c. How are novel forms of knowledge created?

Question 4a is the UG question: How does Universal Grammar constrain theprocesses that form grammatical categories and construct linguistic representa-tions? Question 4b is the transfer question: How does knowledge of the L1constrain the processes that form grammatical categories and construct linguisticrepresentations? Question 4c is the creation question: How do we construct newgrammatical categories and new linguistic representations? Can we do souninfluenced by prior forms of knowledge?

The answer to the last question, in this book, will be a firm “No.” Novelgrammatical representations will consist of novel combinations of existingelements constrained in a variety of ways. I take very seriously the problem ofconstraining a theory of language learning to exclude forms, structures andgeneralisations which in fact no learner ever seems to acquire. The theory oflanguage learning to be presented here is, moreover, embedded in a modulartheory of the mind in the precise sense that UG provides a repertoire of represen-tational primitives and combinatory operations which no learning mechanism cancountermand or override. New representational primitives and new combinatorialoperations cannot be acquired. Within these constraints and others to be men-tioned as we go along, there is still much room for talk of learning. But beforewe turn to the theoretical debates, let us start with some definitions.


2. Definitions: stimuli, intake, and input

2.1 Stimuli and transducers: the first level of processing

It is standard practice in the SLA literature to refer to the speech that learnershear in meaningful contexts asinput, borrowing a term from the ArtificialIntelligence literature. Most writers, however, do not bother to define what theymean by the term. In some cases it is clear that what is intended is some kind ofphysical entity.8 Input in this sense consists of events effecting the visual andauditory perceptual systems. They can be understood to be acoustic-phoneticevents, in the case of speech, or graphic objects, in the case of written text,produced by an individual for some purpose on a specific occasion. These eventsand objects are observable by third parties; they can be recorded, are measurable,analysable, and hence objectively definable. They are the “stuff out there” whichwe will need to refer to from time to time, although in my view this constitutesthe least interesting aspect of a theory of input. Let me introduce the termstimuliinto the discussion and refer to all such observable instantiations of the secondlanguage with this word, using the standard terminology of the psychology oflearning.9 This means that when people say that learning a second languagerequires exposure to the L2, minimally what they intend to say is that learningrequires exposure to L2 stimuli. If you want to learn Ojibwa, you need exposureto Ojibwa stimuli, but if you want to learn Plains Cree, you need insteadexposure to Plains Cree stimuli.

It has been well understood for some time, however, that language acquisi-tion depends not so much on what transpires in the observable environment, butrather on what transpires in the unobservable mind/brain of the learner. Learnerscan, on a given occasion, attend to some stimulus in the speech environment,process it, and acquire some bit of knowledge about the L2. On a differentoccasion, however, the same learners may not attend to the same relevantphysical events, not process the relevant stimulus, and not learn anything aboutthe language. From the learner’s perspective, these situations are quite different;you hear the L2 utterance in the first situation but in the second, you just don’tquite get it. To differentiate, therefore, between the observable stimulus and theinformation that the learner extracts from it, most researchers contrast input andintake (Corder 1967: 165, 1978: 82; Krashen 1981: 102; VanPatten 1993: 436).The minimal definition of intake is that it is some processed stimulus. By this,I mean that the stimulus has been mentally represented. We can contrast intakeand stimuli accordingly by saying thatintake is a mental representation of a


physical stimulus, as Corder’s original discussions make clear. This leads to thequestion: What kind of mental representation is intake?

Much of the interaction literature claims that intake iscomprehended speech(Gass, MacKay and Pica 1998). Comprehended speech in turn corresponds to aspeech signal which has been successfully parsed and re-encoded in semanticterms. Under this view, all grammatical learning would involve concept learning,since the properties of grammars would be derived from information encoded asconcepts. Thus, the raw material for grammatical learning would be conceptsencoded in what I am calling here conceptual representations. However, if thiswere literally true, then it would be possible for learners to reflect about allaspects of their own grammar learning since conceptual representations are alsothe representations in which we think. Learners ought even to be able to projectthe various aspects of grammatical knowledge into conscious awareness, sinceour semantic encodings appear to be the basis of our phenomenological experi-ences (Jackendoff 1987). There is, however, not a single shred of evidence thatlearners can think about the sounds of the speech signal in terms of the constitu-ents and properties which must be acquired if they are to master the phonologyof the L2. Thus, we have no reason to think that as learners learn the sounds ofthe L2, they decide to extract syllables out of the speech signal, or to breakdown syllables into sequences of consonants and vowels. No one says: “I mustlearn to hear the consonants and vowels of this noise you’re making” and evenif they were to say such a thing, it would have no consequences for the learners’actual experiences. Even highly trained phoneticians and phonologists hear thespeech signal of an unfamiliar L2 initially as just a lot of noise and not assequences of syllables or “words.” Similarly, there is no evidence that as learnerslearn enough of the L2 to begin to extract syllables, they simultaneously canthink about them as morphosyntactic features and structures. The learner does notsay: “Now I am hearing a subject and that word must be an auxiliary” even ifthe successful interpretation of the speech signal requires the analysis of the signalas an NP Aux sequence. I conclude that the view that intake is comprehendedspeech is mistaken and has arisen from an uncritical examination of the implica-tions of Krashen’s (1985) claims to this effect. I discuss Krashen’sComprehen-sible Input Hypothesisin some detail below so I will limit myself here to pointingout that comprehending speech is something which happens as aconsequenceofa successful parse of the speech signal. Before one can successfully parse the L2,one must learn its grammatical properties. Krashen got it backwards! Obviously,before we can sort out how information gets from the “outside” in to the learningmechanisms, we must first understand something about the nature of speechparsing in knowledgable and proficient hearers of a language.


In order to have a term which refers to minimally processed stimuli, I shalldefine intake in this book to be literally that which is taken in by the hearer,following Corder’s logic. Stimuli which make it into the system will be, more-over, characterised astransduced stimuli. Transducers are defined as analogueprocessors that convert stimuli available to the perceptual systems into neuralsignals that covary in a direct fashion with properties of the signal (Lowenstein1960). In speech processing, for example, it has been hypothesised that speechsignals are first coded in the peripheral auditory system when stimuli such as thebursts of noise associated with simple (or steady state) vowels and stop conson-ants occurring in consonant-vowel (CV) syllables trigger auditory-nerve activity.The sounds represented in phonetic transcription as /pa/ and /ba/ would be goodexamples of such simple syllables. The triggering events, here complex acousticproperties of the syllables /pa/ or /ba/, correspond in a direct way at this level ofrepresentation to the discharge patterns of the nerve fibres (Pisoni and Luce1987: 27). So the discharge patterns of the nerve fibres instantiate the relevantacoustic properties. These analogue representations, however, are only the firststage in a series of complex transformations of the stimuli into discrete, struc-tural representations. Keep in mind that the signal does not exhibit such discretestrings. Transduction and transformation of the signal are thus essential tolinguistic representation of any sort. Once stimuli are mentally represented and“in the system”, other processors can extract additional information from them.See Figure 1.1.

Stimuli are thus converted into intake. Intake from the speech signal is, however,

speci c acoustic propertiesof the linguistic stimuli

fianalogue representationscharacterised in terms ofvarying discharge patternsof the auditory nerve

→→→

Figure 1.1.Transducing linguistic stimuli

not input to learning mechanisms. Rather it isinput to speech parsers. Parsers aremechanisms designed to encode the signal in various representational formats.They consist of various acquired procedures encoding grammatical distinctionsand are tuned to the frequency of particular structures in the language the hearerhears. Good parsers are thus not only able to parse the sentence which has neverbeen heard before, they are designed to operate very quickly on precisely those


structures which occur over and over again. Let us think about language process-ing in terms of the functional architecture of linguistic cognition. It is common-place to picture the mind/brain in terms of “black boxes” which operate onmental representations of information transforming them into other mentalrepresentations. See Figure 1.2.

Conceptual representations

↑ (↓ ) ↑

Processor n

↑ (↓ ) ↑

Analysed and represented output

Processor 3

↑ (↓ ) ↑

Analysed and represented output

Processor 2

↑ (↑ ) ↑

Analogue representation of the stimuli

Processor 1

↑ (↑ ) ↑

Potential stimuli

Figure 1.2.The relationship of stimuli to input

Note that in a modular bottom-up only system, the direction of information flowwould be in a single direction only. The arrows in parentheses in Figure 1.2 aredesigned to raise the possibility that information can also flow “downwards.”Models of speech processing which permit information to flow in both directionsare commonly calledinteractive. The model adopted here will be partiallyinteractive in that it treats the phonetic and phonological processing as bottom-upto the point of lexical selection. See below.

Functional architecture pictures of this sort treat mentally representedinformation as the input and output of various processors. Input is therefore notsomething “out there” in the external environment; it is, like intake, a purelymental construct. Moreover, input need not be restricted to representations trans-duced from proximal stimuli. It also can consist of second-order representations


which convert intake into structural representations. And in interactive models ofprocessing, input can also be mental representations stored in longterm memory(LTM) and activated to participate in some processing. In such models, input canalso be mental representations created afresh from inferencing, problem-solvingor ratiocination of the “I just sort of dreamt it up” variety. In Figure 1.2, eachlevel of represented information serves as input to the next processor and is theoutput of the processor which created the relevant representations.

2.2 Modularity and the Comprehensible Input Hypothesis

Saying even this much about input, admittedly not much at all, requires makingcertain assumptions about language processing and language processors. I haveframed the definition of input in terms drawn from classical structural theories ofinformation processing. These theories claim that mental processes are sensitiveto structural distinctions encoded in mental representations (see Carroll 1989b:535–43, for more discussion from an SLA perspective). According to thisapproach to cognition, input is a mental representation which has structure.Classical connectionist approaches to linguistic cognition (Rumelhart andMcClelland 1986, 1987; Gasser 1990; MacWhinney 1987a, b, 1992, 1997), onthe other hand, explicitly deny the relevance of structural representations tolinguistic cognition, claiming that linguistic knowledge can be encoded asactivated neural nets instantiating, e.g. concepts, and linked to acoustic eventsmerely by association.10 Classical connectionist approaches therefore allow talkof stimuli and intake (transduced information), processes, and even mentalrepresentations, but they do not allow talk of mentally represented structure.Anyone who is convinced that the last 100 years of linguistic research demon-strate that linguistic cognition is structure dependent — and not merely patterned— cannot adopt a classical connectionist approach to SLA.11 I happen to beconvinced that linguistic knowledge is structure dependent — indeed dependentupon just the sorts of structural distinctions that grammarians like to talk about(dominance, precedence, sisterhood, c-command, etc.). I will therefore assumethroughout that language is mentally represented in terms of structures, and thatconstructing a model of language processing and language processors involvesbeing explicit about the structures that are being built, and modified.

In the previous section I defined input in a way that information is notrestricted to what is derived on-line during the bottom-up processing (from signalto construal) of a linguistic stimuli. See Figure 1.2 again. Schwartz (1986, 1987,1993; Schwartz and Gubala-Ryzak 1992), in contrast, claims that input forsecond language acquisition is derived solely from the analysis of intake by the


linguistic processors. She provides the view of processing shown in Figure 1.3,based on an interpretation of Fodor’s (1983) Modularity of Mind hypothesis andhis theory of faculty psychology.

According to Schwartz’ view, the perceptual and linguistic systems analyse

Things out there in theworld (e.g. that what wesee or hear)

Centralprocessingsystems

Vision module

Language module

etc.

Figure 1.3.A modular processing/learning model à la Schwartz (1993: 157)

linguistic stimuli and intake independently of a mental representation of the on-going speech situation, of world knowledge, of information inferrable throughvisual or non-language auditory processing of stimuli in the environment, and soon. Since there is considerable empirical evidence for the interaction of concept-ual information and the analysis of stimuli, ranging from phoneme restorationeffects to word recognition (see Jackendoff 1987, for a summary), Schwartz’argumentation hinges entirely on the nature of on-line language processing atcritical decision-points. Since Schwartz’ claims, if correct, would preclude anyrole for feedback and correction, or indeed for any metalinguistic information, ingrammar acquisition, they must be examined closely. I will come back to herarguments in Chapter 7.

Despite the fact that Schwartz (1987) claims to be re-interpreting Krashen’sproposals, quite a different view of input is provided by Krashen, who hasarticulated what he calls theComprehensible Input Hypothesis:

… in order to acquire, two conditions are necessary. The first is comprehen-sible (or even better, comprehended) input containingI + 1, structures a bitbeyond the acquirer’s current level, and second, a low or weak affective filterto allow the input “in.” This is equivalent to saying that comprehensible inputand the strength of the filter are the true causes of second language acquisition.(Krashen 1982: 33)

Krashen refers to stimuli which are comprehensible, i.e. which the learner iscapable of comprehending, or which are indeed comprehended by the learner.Comprehensibility is not the same thing as parsability. We may be able toprovide a construal for a string likeMy walk walk longtime you see— perhaps “Iwalked a long time in order to see you” — without being able to parse it.


Indeed, we may infer that talk of input “beyond the acquirer’s current level”means “beyond what the learner’s parser will now parse.” Krashen thereforeappears to be saying that the mechanisms responsible for grammar learning areoperating on the basis of semantic representations despite the fact that thelearner’s parsers cannot parse the speech the learner is hearing. The Comprehen-sible Input Hypothesis therefore requires an interactive, possibly non-modularmind, with information from the conceptual system determining the constructionof linguistic representations in the grammar. The Schwartz model does notrequire that intake be comprehended in order for language acquisition to takeplace on the basis of an analysis of it. Indeed, given that comprehension is theend-point of processing in her model, it couldnot play a role in the acquisitionof phonological or morphosyntactic knowledge. For Schwartz, the comprehensionof the stimulus must be irrelevant to grammatical restructuring; for Krashen,however, the comprehension of the stimulus is a precondition for the acquisitionof structures not currently part of the learner’s interlanguage grammar.

A position like Krashen’s is spelt out explicitly in Faerch, Haastrup andPhillipson who appear to adopt both the distinction between input and intake, aswell as the Comprehensible Input Hypothesis:12

Some of the input can be interpreted directly by means of the knowledge thelearner already has of the foreign language (the learner’s “interlanguage”knowledge (…) This means that the psycholinguistic rules (…) which a nativespeaker has used in order to produce the language are matched by rules in thelearner’s IL system. The learner can also interpret input by means of inferen-cing strategies (…) by making qualified guesses as to the meaning of input(“top-down processing”). The result may be total or partial comprehension, orthere may be a residue of input which is incomprehensible. (Faerch et al.1984: 187)13

Foreign language learning presupposes input which is made comprehensible bymeans of inferencing and not by the direct application of a psycholinguisticrule. To continue with our metaphor from computer science, we can refer tothose parts of input which satisfy the conditions we have just specified forlearning to take place as: intake is input which affects the learner’sexisting knowledge of the foreign language.14 In Figure [1.4], (b) refers tointake. (Faerch et al. 1984: 188).

The picture they present is shown in Figure 1.4.


Comprehensible input

acan be interpreted directly bymeans of a learner’s existingIL knowledge

bcan be interpreted by means ofinferencing procedures

Incomprehensible input c cannot be interpreted

Figure 1.4.The Comprehensible Input Hypothesis (Faerch et al. 1984: 187)

According to this view of learning, it must be the case that conceptual informa-tion can interact with the learner’s grammar.

Finally, the assumption that meaning can determine the course of acquisitionis a necessary part of the Interaction Hypothesis of Long (1980), who argues thatlearners’ grammars change as a result of conversational interactions in whichnative speakers are forced to simplify their speech (to accommodate the limitedcomprehension of the learners) while learners are obliged to elaborate theirspeech in the face of their conversational partner’s failures to comprehendthem.15 There are two ways to interpret the claims of this literature. One is tosay that comprehension of the meaning of a stimulus is sufficient for linguisticdevelopment. If you understand the meaning of an utterance, then you can learnits form and grammatical organisation. A stronger claim which emerges from thisliterature is that comprehension is necessary for acquisition. If you don’tunderstand the meaning of an utterance, then you cannot learn its form andgrammatical organisation. Under either interpretation, it must be the case thatrepresentations of meaning can interact with those parts of the acquisitionmechanism responsible for learning the sound system and the morphosyntax ofa language.16 If modularity can be shown to hold in the strong sense of Schwartz,then the Interaction Hypothesis must be rejected. If modularity can be shown tohold in the weaker sense that I argue for, then the Interaction Hypothesis willrequire some serious emendation.

I shall have more to say about both Schwartz’ version of The Modularity ofMind Hypothesis and the Comprehensible Input Hypothesis/Interaction Hypoth-esis in subsequent chapters so I will reserve making detailed comments aboutthem until then. Suffice it to say here that the contrast between them brings outone important fact, which is that we will not understand the nature of SLA bystudying the putatively objective properties of the stimulus. What matters for


language acquisition is how stimuli are analysed. This processing is not directlyobservable. It cannot be directly measured. At best we can make inferences aboutit on the basis of other observable events such as the utterances that learnersproduce, the interpretations they assign to utterances they hear or read, the timeit takes them to interpret an utterance, their judgements of the acceptability ofutterances, etc. These events must be construed as the outward consequence ofinternal events which we can only study in the context of a theory of languageprocessing. The scholarly disagreement between Schwartz, on the one hand, andKrashen, Faerch et al., and Long, on the other, does not hinge on logicalproperties of the SLA problem. It hinges on matters of fact, namely, on howlinguistic stimuli are processed. Consequently, to explore the relationshipbetween language acquisition and the speech events in which learners findthemselves we will necessarily have to spell out what language processing islike. Much of this book is dedicated to doing just that.

2.3 Processing in the Autonomous Induction Theory

In the theory being expounded here, language processing isbothautonomous andinteractive. The various representational systems needed to encode acoustic,articulatory, phonological, and morphosyntactic representations in interpreting thespeech signal or in articulating our ideas are all distinct and not reducible to anyother. Speech processing is both bottom-up and top-down. In contrast to theabove-mentioned authors, I use the terminput to refer to any mental representa-tion which is analysed by a processor. A possible picture of input is shown inFigure 1.5.

The first thing to do in developing an explanatory theory of input is to makea distinction between these inputs to speech processing and input to learningmechanisms. In the theory of speech processing adopted here, the input to aprocessor (either on the signal-to-interpretation side of things or on the concept-to-articulated speech side) is any representation which can be “read” by the pro-cedures of that processor. Procedures encode acquired grammatical distinctionsand so are the by-product of language acquisition. In the theory of acquisition tobe elaborated in this book, novel encoding of information is triggered by on-lineevents related to the processing of a speech stimulus. In particular, I want toclaim that the novel encoding of information occurs when parsing fails.Input tothe parsers is therefore necessarily different from input to the acquisition mechan-ismsand we must be clear about which one researchers are referring to.


2.4 Positive and negative evidence, positive and negative feedback

Input types Processing mechanisms

Linguistic stimuli Auditory nerve bresfi

? ?? ?

Phonological Lexical activationrepresentations

Word class features,number, gender,& other morpho- Syntactic parsersyntactic features,subcategorisation

Conceptual category,theta roles (maybe)

s-structurerepresentation

lexical conceptualConceptual Interpreter

representations ofwords of the s-structure

argument structure

default conceptualstructures provided byvarious Mental Models

Figure 1.5.Types of possible inputs during speech processing

I can now rephrase Questions 1–3 as: What role is played by input (to learningmechanisms) derived from stimuli, input (to learning mechanisms) derived frominferencing, and by input (to learning mechanisms) derived from feedback andcorrection in SLA? In order to answer this question, we must make a distinctionbetweenpositiveandnegative evidence, andpositiveandnegative feedback.

The termpositive evidenceoccasionally is used to refer to physical instantia-tions of the L2. This usage fails to do any work and should be given up. Some-times it is used to refer to analyses of linguistic stimuli in the sense that I haveso far been using the terminput, as is the termprimary linguistic data. In other


words, the stimuli give rise to a particular form or meaning as a consequence ofparsing. Positive evidence in this usage refers to the output of the parsingsystem, and not to input to acquisition mechanisms. If one thinks about it,however, the termevidencerefers to proof of something. Positive evidenceshould therefore be thought of as stimuli which provide evidence for a particularanalysis. Researchers who work on language processing often talk ofcues inprecisely this way. In German, the occurrence of an AdvP at the left edge of asentence is a cue for the presence of a verb in Comp, e.g. the sequenceGesternat the left edge of a matrix clause will be a cue that the next constituent may bea tensed verb —Gestern habe ich meine Pfingstrosen geschnitten(‘Yesterdayhave I my peonies cut’) and not an NP or a pro-NP, e.g. *Gestern ich habemeinePfingstrosen geschnitten(‘Yesterday I have my peonies cut’).

If we say there is no evidence for the learner for a particular analysis, then,we are claiming that there is no stimuli which can reasonably be analysed in aspecific way. I have said that language acquisition will take place when parsingfails. Therefore the absence of evidence for a particular parse will coincide withthe triggering of the acquisition mechanism. What is positive evidence for SLA?Since we have said that acquisition begins when parsing fails, the evidence fora novel analysis cannot come from the speech signal. At the moment of parsefailure, the parser is attempting unsuccessfully to complete a bottom-up analysis.Thus, positive evidence cannot be literally in either the speech signal (it doesn’tinstantiate grammatical constructs) or in the partially parsed representation theparser has attempted to build. At best, what can be meant is that once thelearning mechanisms have somehow arrived at the appropriate informationneeded to successfully parse the previously unparsable, then that entity can beconstrued as the element which caused grammatical learning. This hardlyadvances our understanding of acquisition, but it does allow us to distinguishbetween stimuli or input (to a parser) and the stimuli or input which causeparsing failure. Let’s agree to refer to the latter with the termpositive evidence.

The termnegative evidenceis usually used to refer to information derivablefrom strings which are not part of the grammar of the language which the learneris to learn. Since the strings do not occur in the language, the potential forconfusing input to parsing and evidence for learning does not arise. Illformedstrings are not parsed by definition. How do such strings provide evidence forthe acquisition mechanisms? Since I am interested in how information could bederived from such ill-formed strings, it won’t do to merely construct examples.The termnegative evidencewill be used here to refer to representations whichcan be defined neither as an intake representation of a stimulus nor as a parse ofa given bit of intake (since the string is not part of the language), but which


nonetheless convey information about structures of the language to the acquisi-tion mechanisms.

The sentence in (1.2a) can motivate some positive evidence about wordorder in a learner of English whose grammar cannot yet analyse NP V infinitivalcomplement structures. The sentences in (1.2b–c) are the basis for derivingnegative evidence about English word order.

(1.2) a. Jessica likes to go to circus school.b. *Likes Jessica to go to circus school.c. En anglais, le sujet logique d’une proposition ne doit pas normalement,

dans une phrase déclarative, suivre le verbe principal à temps fini.‘In English, the logical subject of a proposition in a declarative sen-tence normally does not follow the tensed main verb’

The sentence in (1.2a) instantiates the information that in a declarative sentencein English the logical subject of the proposition

, namely, instantiated by a formJessica, may appear to the leftof the form likes to go to circus school, which instantiates the predicate.17 Gram-marians usually shorten this complex statement by saying that the subject (or S)in English precedes the verb (or V). Under current generative assumptions, it isassumed that the subject NP is the daughter of a Tense Phrase or an Infl Phrase(see Pollock 1989), occupying a so-called specifier position. If the learner’sgrammar does not have any representations of sentential structure, and thelearner’s parser has no parsing mechanism which will permit the analysis ofJessicaas an NP-subject which must be attached as a left branch of a TensePhrase, then the parser will break down in attempting to analyseJessica. See(1.3).18

(1.3) Current input and current parseInput: Jessica Analysis: NPAttachment rules: NoneAddition to the parser which must be acquired by the learning mechanism:“Attach NP-subject as left branch of Tense Phrase”

Tense Phrase

NP

N

Jessica


Once the learning mechanism has successfully added the correct parsing pro-cedure to the parser, it can be said that (1.2a) provides positive evidence to thelearning mechanism that the subject precedes the verb in English. A successfulparse of the sentence will in fact deploy this information (once it is representedin a parsing procedure). This sentence, of course, instantiates many other thingsas well, and hence could provide the learning mechanisms with evidence formany other distinctions.

Sentence (1.2b) is an artefact. It is not a naturally occurring utterance usedin normal communicative situations.19 It has been created by placing the tensedverb in the first position of the sentence. The asterisk “*” indicates that the stringis not a possible sentence of English (accepting the cautionary remarks ofendnote 19). The string plus the intended meaning given in the proposition together with the conventional interpre-tation of the asterisk, and the comparison with sentence (1.2a) provide thenegative evidence that the verb and the subject cannot appear in the positionsgiven. Thus, a learning mecanism would need to combine all of this informationto represent the facts. Let me emphasise this by rephrasing the point: thenegative evidence that in a normal declarative sentence in English the verbcannot precede the subject arises as an inference from the form-meaning corres-pondence *Likes Jessica to go to school/ ,the interpretation of the asterisk to mean , and the systematic comparison ofthe starred form and the well-formed stringJessica likes to go to circus school.The string (1.2b) has no intrinsic properties making it evidence for anything; theevidence only arises through the described inferencing.

The string in (1.2c) also permits the same inference, for anyone who cancomprehend it. Once the string has been interpeted, it can be used to makeinferences about the position of the subject and the tensed verb in Englishsentences. It thus instantiates in French information about word order in French(and thus might provide a mechanism learning French with positive evidence)but it expresses information about word order in English. It licenses inferencesabout French grammar as positive evidence, and licenses quite different infer-ences about English grammar as negative evidence.

To sum up, positive evidence is evidence for a particular analysis of astimulus which the learning mechanism uses to encode a category, a parsingprocedure and/or an interpretation of linguistic stimuli. It is the entity whichrequires restructuring the grammar and/or the creation of new productionschemata. The evidence will often not be directly encoded as physical propertiesof the speech signal, rather it can emerge in any of the mediating levels of


processing, or via the conceptual system. Negative evidence, in contrast, cannotbe derived bottom-up by the parsing and interpretation of a linguistic stimulussince, by definition, the information would have to be derived from sentenceswhich are either not parsable or not interpretable. Rather, negative evidenceemerges as result of a complex inferencing process which must work top-downand which involves a systematic comparision of an analysable string to anunanalysable string, or some other inferencing process which leads to theconclusion that some property is not part of the grammar of the language. Since,by definition, the systematic comparison of representations cannot be based onthe on-line bottom-up analysis of a string, it is important to ask just where andhow these representations are being generated. If the story here is correct, theymust be generated as conceptual representations, raising the problem of how theconceptual system could accurately encode the grammatical properties needed bythe performance systems. While it might be the case that conceptual structurescould encode as concepts information directly relevant to the contents of aseparate mental grammar (understood as sets of rules and categories), there is noreason to assume that conceptual structures could encode the procedural informa-tion needed to parse a representation.

The termfeedbackwill be used to characterise particular kinds of utteranceswhich are produced by, for example, native speakers, but which are used bylearners to derive positive and negative evidence about the second language. Theterm is designed to draw our attention to the fact that feedback occurs as aresponseto something the learner has said or done and only counts as feedbackfor the purposes of language acquisition if the learner so construes it. Feedbackis a general category which includes repetitions of things the learner has said,anticipating and “filling in” things that the hearer expects the learner to say,questions about intended meanings, statements of a failure to understand, and soon. Since the constructs positive evidence and negative evidence have focused onthe role of information in the learner’s processing system, it would be useful tohave some terminology to distinguish what the respondent is reacting so.Feedback can be directed at pronunciation, the appropriateness of a word choiceto express a given idea, word order, morphological wellformedness, or any otheraspect of grammatical organisation that people are capable of reacting to andcommenting on. It is also produced as a consequence of interactions which havelanguage at their centre. Since language can convey information about anythingthat we can communicate about, it can also be used to make commentary aboutitself. Interactions in which one speaker makes comments to another about thatperson’s use of language can be said to provide that person with feedback abouthis language use. They can be an attempt to confirm that some expression or


sequence is well-formed, or else they can be an attempt to state that some stringproduced by the learner is not well-formed. I will call the first type of feedbackpositive feedback, and the second type will be callednegative feedback. I give anexample in (1.4).20

(1.4) a. A: is it [flanz6nkatal"g]?b. B: [katalog® ] nicht [katal"g], we don’t have ["]. It’s so easy.c. A: Yes, but is it [flanz6nkatal"g]/[katalog]d. B: /[katalok] … yese. A: I mean is it plural in this sort of compound or what?f. B: [pflanz6n] yes

The L2 learner in example (1.4) wanted to know what the correct form was ofthe German version ofplant catalogue. She had been looking at a British seedcatalogue and had noticed that British English differs from her North Americanvariety in using a plural first element, e.g.plants catalogue, drugs problem,weapons trade, etc.21 This raised the possibility that German compounding mightfollow either the British model or the American one. Her initial question wasdesigned to confirm that German compounding follows the British model. Thelearner was thus attempting to elicit feedback about morphological structure. Herinterlocutor, however, couldn’t get beyond her non-native pronunciation anddecided to correct that instead. He offers two corrections of the initial pronunci-ation (1.4b, d), explicitly mentioning her faulty pronunciation of the final vowelin (1.4b), and implicitly correcting her pronunciation of the final consonant. Hethus provided (negative) feedback that her pronunciation of the compound is notpermissible. The confirmation that the first element of the compound is indeedplural in the interlocutor’s final utterance (1.4f) can also serve as an instance offeedback — positive feedback this time, telling the learner that her surmise wasindeed correct.

To summarise: negative feedback is an utterance which is normally intendedto communicate the information that something is not possible in a language.Positive feedback is intended to license the inference by the learner that some-thing else is. Ordinarily, negative feedback signals trouble in the communicationwhile positive feedback is rarer.22 We also use positive feedback to confirm thatwe are attending to a conversation, e.g. although our heads are hidden behind anewspaper or our ears are covered by headphones. In other words, we providepositive feedback in precisely those cases where our interlocutor has reason tobelieve that communication might not be successful. There are certain environ-mental settings where positive feedback is commonplace. The language class-room is one case. It is well-known that language teachers will respond “Yes” to


ill-formed utterances and to wrong answers as part of a didactic practice to elicitspeech from L2 learners (Chaudron 1977). Frequent use of positive feedback isthus one of the characteristics of teacher talk.

Developmental psycholinguists have developed a separate terminology for stimuli

Evidence frommemory

Evidence from stimuli Analysis & RepresentationEvidence fromvisual perception

Evidence frominferencingEtc.

Figure 1.6.Positive and negative evidence

that purportedly are both positive feedback and positive evidence:modelsandrecasts. A model is any utterance offered by the native speaker which thelearner is supposed to construe as positive evidence for some analysis and as theproper way of saying something. A model is therefore not merely positiveevidence, it is also a stimulus with metalinguistic implications. The learner mustinfer that the interlocutor is saying “This is the way to say ‘X’ …” Note that inthe normal course of conversation any utterance uttered might lead to the sameinference but typically does not. We normally do not construe utterances asmodels because we normally do not consciously process them for their mediatingform but rather for their meaning.23 Models are utterances which have beenassigned a role as exemplars of specific form-meaning pairs. Unacceptablesentences can be modelled. In the linguistics literature, they frequently are. Arecast is a reformulation of a learner’s faulty utterance in response to its ill-formedness. It can be seen as a particular subtype of modelling. A recast is also tobe construed as saying “This is the way to say ‘X’ …” In addition, it is supposedto license the construal “Don’t say ‘X’ the way you just said it!” It can be thoughtof, therefore, as positive evidence or negative evidence depending on whatconstruals the learner actually makes. It can be construed as positive feedbackand negative feedback depending on what intention the native speaker has.

In (1.4) above, B’s first utterance (1.4b) is a recast, offering a model of theproper pronunciation, and explicitly rejecting A’s pronunciation. That A draws thecorrect inference can be seen from the fact that she repeats her L1-based pronunci-ation ofKatalog, hears it, recognises that she has made an error and immediatelycorrects her pronunciation herself. See (1.4c). B’s second utterance (1.4d) is alsoa recast, attempting to draw A’s attention to her faulty pronunciation of the final


stop consonant which is devoiced in German. In this instance, A heard theutterance, understood the utterance as a recast, but chose to ignore it, since shealready knew that German voiced stops devoice in syllable final position. Thissecond recast therefore has no effect.

2.5 Competence and performance, skill and control, faculties, and abilities

I have emphasised that I am interested in the analyses that the learner assigns toparticular stimuli but that to study them we are obliged to make inferences aboutthem on the basis of learner behaviour. To facilitate the discussion, I shouldintroduce further terminological distinctions here. The first is the now traditionaldistinction betweencompetenceandperformance.

The termcompetenceis used to mean a number of quite different things inthe linguistics literature. It is important for us to be clear about which ones areuseful for SLA. On the one hand, competence is sometimes defined as theknowledge that an individual has in some cognitive domain. Linguistic compet-ence is thus said to be knowledge of a language however it happens to berepresented. This knowledge might correspond to a psychogrammar — definedhere as the grammatical information used in parsing and producing a language.Or else, linguistic competence might be any representation of linguistic informa-tion, regardless of how, or indeed if, it is put to use. Chomsky has thus arguedin a variety of places that an individual can possess linguistic competence in thissense even if he could never express the knowledge in his behaviour due to somephysical impairment, for example.

There is also another quite different use of the term, however, also foundin the linguistics and philosophical literature. Chomsky has used the term to referto the knowledge of an ideal speaker/hearer living in a homogeneous communitywho knows his language perfectly (Chomsky 1965: 3). Since such individuals donot exist, it is impossible to directly observe competence in Chomsky’s sense.Competence of this sort is not a construct equivalent to some individual psycho-logical system, which may be why Chomsky subsequently introduced the termI-languageto designate that system. In this book, therefore, I will reserve theterm competencefor Chomsky’s idealised notion, or when quoting others, anduse the term I-language to refer to all aspects of the individual’s knowledge ofthe language, regardless of how idiosyncratic that may prove to be.24 Note thatthe term I-language is still neutral as to how and where the knowledge isrepresented. It will certainly include the psychogrammar, but it could alsoinclude metalinguistic information encoded in the speaker/hearer’s conceptualsystem. Thus, when an individual examines the string (1.2b) and makes a


classification judgement to the effect that (1.2b) is not a possible sentence ofEnglish, the conceptual representation encoding that judgement is encodingknowledge of English. In the case of L2 learners, I will also occasionally followtraditional practice and refer to the I-language of the L2 as theinterlanguage.When I want to focus on specific aspects or components of the I-language, I willrefer simply to the relevantknowledge system, e.g. the phonological system, themorphosyntactic system, and so on.

Performanceis normally defined as the actualisation of the linguisticknowledge system in concrete situations — what the individual actually does,subject to shifts in attention and interest, memory limitations, etc. (Chomsky1965: 3). This construct has been much criticised as inadequate to account for therelationship between knowledge and behaviour. Its purpose originally was tolegitimise talk of knowledge, to distinguish between knowledge and the behav-ioural manifestations of that knowledge, and to make the case that cognitivepsychology should have as its object of study and explanation the knowledgesystems, rather than behaviourtout court. See Chomsky (1980: Ch. 1–3) forrelevant discussion. Elbers and Wijnen (1992), however, note that a distinctionmust be made between a learner’s actual behaviour at any one time, and theabstract processing mechanisms which underly or potentiate performance. Inorder to comprehend speech, to read a text, to speak, or to write a sentence,knowledge must be put to use. Putting knowledge to use requires the develop-ment of complex procedures which select and integrate representations beforeactualising them in motor or interpretation programs. The deployment ofknowledge of language may be expert or inexpert, mature or immature, inaddition to being subject to shifts in attention, interest and memory limitations.This observation has led to the creation of constructs designed to capturebehaviour-based knowledge. One well-known construct isprocedural knowledgeor the implementation of knowledge “on-line” in working memory (Anderson1983: 10–11). A slightly different way to think about procedural knowledge is todefine it as the encodings of grammatical information in parsing and productionsystems.25 Consider the case of an L2 learner of German. One thing that musthappen is that the person develops procedures to analyse representations ofembedded sentences with verb slots in final position. This is not merely arequirement for production, although we know that putting tensed verbs in theright position is a problem for L2 learners (Clahsen, Meisel and Pienemann1983; Clahsen 1984, 1988; Meisel 1991). It is also a minimal requirement forcomprehending German speech. A speaker of a subject (S) verb (V) object (O)order language like English who transfers parsing procedures to German, alanguage which is SVO in matrix sentences but SOV in embedded sentences will


have comparatively little problem processing German matrix SVO sentences evenin the early stages of acquisition (as long as those sentences contain knownvocabulary). However, working memory will often not be sufficiently large toaccommodate a parser building a representation of an embedded sentence wordby word. This is what must happen when the learner initially hears an SVdaßSOV sentences (= SVthatSOV). It is well known that working memory is quitelimited in the number of unrelated items it can hold and process (see Eysenckand Keane 1995: Ch. 6). In Miller’s (1956) famous paper on memory, heestimated that working memory could deal with between 5 to 9 unrelated items.Processing sentences or other input of greater length is assumed to involve“chunking” or grouping elements into larger units in such a way that capacity inworking memory is freed up. Chunking is precisely what the unskilled hearercannot do. Alternatively, we might think of the difference between expert andinexpert parsing as the ability to activate pre-compiled chunks with which toanalyse incoming material. Novices must construct the parsing routines in real-time. Now, analysing a verb is essential to finding out who did what to whom ina sentence. If a learner cannot chunk the lexical items comprising subjects anddirect objects, and if the verb is further away than the magical number 7 (plus orminus 2), then the learner will simply “lose” the incoming message stored brieflyin verbal memory. The memory trace of the analysed and represented sounds(phonetic and phonological encodings) simply fades away before the soundsequences of the final items can be reanalysed as syntactic and semantic units.26

This ability to put knowledge to use Elbers and Wijnen callskill, following well-established traditions in the psychology of learning. I will adopt this terminologytoo, keeping the termperformancefor the individual, context-specific behaviours.

Bialystok and her colleagues have drawn a distinction between componentsof skills, namelyanalysisor knowledge and control.27 Analysis here does notrefer to processing in general (the way I use the term) but rather to the specificanalysis of information into conceptual representations (or propositional ordeclarative knowledge).Unanalysed knowledgeis knowledge which is not so re-represented in conceptual terms.28 Unanalysed knowledge can be put to use inspeaking and hearing, but tasks such as making acceptability judgement tasks,performing grammatical analysis consciously, or writing sonnets, so the claimgoes, requireanalysed knowledge. The distinction that Bialystok is making is animportant one, although the choice of terminology is not especially felicitous. Toavoid confusion, I will adopt a terminology drawn from Karmiloff-Smith (1992)and talk aboutrepresentational redescription. Karmiloff-Smith (1986, 1992: 15)argues that the same information can be represented in a variety of representa-tional formats and that skill development involves a cyclical process by which


information stored in special-purpose (autonomous) representations is madeavailable progressively to other cognitive systems by increasing the level ofexplicitness of the encodings. From the perspective of Representational Modula-rity, representational redescription amounts to information in autonomousrepresentations of the parsing and production systems being gradually put intocorrespondence with representations in a conceptual representation, where it canbe put to use for conscious reflection, performing particular kinds of metalin-guistic tasks, and so on. Alternatively representational redescription means thatinformation is reencoded intophonological representations which can beprojected into conscious awareness (Jackendoff 1987). In the theory of func-tional architecture adopted here, it is these phonological representations whichserve as the basis for thinking about language and which are probably the pointof departure for acceptability judgement tasks.

In the Bialystok and Karmiloff-Smith models, there are no obvious con-straints on how representational redescription occurs. In the model developedhere, in contrast, it is assumed that the architecture of linguistic cognitionimposes quite severe constraints on which autonomously represented knowledgecan be redescribed. It is claimed, for example, that the featural contents ofconceptual and phonetic representations are not re-representable in phonologicalrepresentations so that we are never consciously aware of either semantic orphonetic features of speech.29 Whether the model adopted here is compatiblewith Bialystok’s assumptions is not clear and will not be pursued.30

Control in Bialystok’s model (Bialystok 1986a, b) involves the ability tofocus attention on various dimensions of a task in order to do it. The develop-ment of expertise necessitates the development of control in this sense. Producinga simple sentence in an L2 involves organising a message, selecting suitablelexical items to express that message, grouping those lexical items into a surfacestructure (a linear and hierarchical syntactic structure), mapping the syntacticstructure onto prosodic structures, and articulating the motor-articulatory schemasof the phonetic representations. Beginners cannot do all of these things at once,although they may possess all of the necessary information encoded in partialrepresentations, and must attack the problem of production bit by bit, practising,making errors, being corrected, and practising some more.

It is an interesting question whether control is involved in the developmentof parsing and comprehension skills. Clearly, there are differences in the waybeginning and advanced learners process stimuli, which involve, in part, theirability to chunk and deploy analysed information. There is no evidence, however,that focused attention is involved in improving one’s ability to do this. Rather,something happens during development, outside of our awareness, beyond our


control, such that stimuli that were formerly incomprehensible suddenly becomecomprehensible. To the extent that the Analysis and Control model has nothingto say about this, it is incomplete.31

Moreover, as a model of language learning, it is also fundamentally flawedsince it provides neither a theory of I-language nor a theory of how I-languageschange. Why these weaknesses are so basic will become clearer in Chapter 2. Itseems to me, however, that the basic distinctions Bialystok is making, based onthe idea that control varies in terms of task demands, will be an essential part ofany theory of skill development. Indeed, it is a robust finding of much psycho-linguistic research that behaviour fluctuates in terms of the demands of the taskbeing done. It is well established in speech production that the same learnersmay manifest different degrees of control of syntactic properties of Englishdepending on whether they are performing a written manipulation task orspeaking spontaneously. Research on speech perception reveals similar task-specific variability. Janet Werker and her colleagues have demonstrated that theability to make certain acoustic-phonetic discriminations disappears with age.Indeed, although children appear to be born with the ability to make certainlinguistically relevant featural discriminations, and quickly manifest the ability tomake other (possibly all) linguistically relevant perceptual distinctions (Eimas,Siqueland, Jusczyk, and Vigorito 1971; Streeter 1976; Jusczyk 1985, 1992), theyfine-tune their perceptual systems to the specific properties of the stimuli withinthe first year of life. This means that some distinctions which are discriminableat birth, or shortly after, are no longer discriminated later on (Werker and Tees1984a; Werker and Lalonde 1988; Werker and Pegg 1992).32 Nonetheless, theability to make discriminations among sounds not part of the L1 does notnecessarily disappear for all or even for most types of features (Tees and Werker1984; Werker and Tees 1984b). When adults are required only to discriminatebetween exemplars exhibiting L1-non-distinctive phonetic features, they can oftendo it. Interestingly enough, this ability is task-specific; embed the same soundsin a word recognition task and they cannot discriminate the relevant features (seeWode 1992 for further discussion). Therefore, the well-documented problems thatadult learners have in mastering and accurately producing new segmentalcategories in the L2 (Flege 1991, 1992) cannot be explained entirely on the basisof differences in perception and in the absolute representability of sounds.Rather, the ability to perceive and represent acoustic-phonetic distinctions is alsodependent upon the level of processing carried out — processing in what Werkerand Logan (1985) call “speech mode” interferes with the ability to make certaindiscriminations which can be made nevertheless when processing in a lessdemanding “phonemic mode.” Processing in phonemic mode involves processing


sounds qua sounds rather than, e.g. processing sounds in order to recognisewords.33 These differences between native speakers and L2 learners can thus becharacterised in terms of differing abilities to analyse and deploy the informationin the stimulus relative to other types of information available in specificperceptual tasks.

Other confirmatory evidence comes from research on memory and learningwhich shows systematic dissociations on distinct memory tasks. This research hasled to what is known as theprocessing account of memory. According to Morris,Bransford and Franks (1977), memory for some particular bit of informationimproves to the degree that the type of processing needed to perform a givenmemory task is the same type of processing needed to encode or learn theinformation. See also Roediger (1990). The basic idea is that there is a transferfrom the initial encoding to the performance on the memory task. When there isa dissociation between the initial encoding and the processing needed to performa memory task, then the information must be re-represented to perform the task.There is a substantial literature showing patterns of dissociation on memory tasksperformed by normal subjects, reviewed in Blaxton (1992). She then testedamnesic patients suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy on a variety of tasks. Inone experiment, subjects were tested on 4 different memory tasks involvingwords, half of which had been previously studied, half of which were novelitems. The first test was a word-fragment completion task in which subjects hadto fill in the missing letters on stimuli such as _UT_E_FL_ (target =butterfly).The second test was a test of conceptual knowledge related to the selectedsemantic class, e.g. “What kind of insect are both the Monarch and the QueenAlexandra?” Answering such a question involves drawing on the knowledge thatthe Monarch butterfly is a sub-class of the superset. The third testinvolved semantic cued-recall in which subjects heard previously unstudiedwords (in the context, these were new stimuli), semantically related somehow toitems previously studied, e.g.mothas a cue tobutterfly. The fourth test was agraphemic cued-recall test in which subjects saw words graphemically like thosestudied, e.g.buttery. The hypothesis behind the design was that reading a list ofwords is a data-driven information-encoding task, and that generating a word onthe basis of conceptual knowledge or semantic cues is a conceptually driven task.The memory tests can also be analysed in this way. Thus, the word-fragmentcompletion test is hypothesised to be an implicit data-driven task, answeringquestions based on conceptual knowledge is assumed to be an implicit butconceptually driven task, the semantic cued recall is an explicit task which isconceptually driven and the graphemic recall task is explicit and data driven. Theresearch question was: Given the nature of the encoding tasks, does it make any


difference what the memory task is? The answer turned out to be positive.Amnesic patients performed best when there was a match between data-drivenprocesses at learning and at test time. Their worst performance occurred whenthere were conceptually driven processes at both learning and at test time.Normal controls exhibited, as expected, similar dissociations. Subsequentexperimentation showed that the amnesics were having particular difficulty withthe generation tasks, and that there are important differences in the performanceof left-temporal-lobe and right-temporal-lobe epileptics.

One way to interpret these results is to say that performance on a given tasktype (data-driven or concept-driven) is enhanced when the memory task requiresthe activation of the same type of representations of the encoded information.The processing account of memory leads us to the conclusion that informationcan be encoded and activated in a task-specific way. Matching across learningand memory tasks thus involves “transfer” from the learning task to the memorytask, which is just another way of referring to facilitation effects seen when thetask-based encodings were the same. In Blaxton’s experiments, the processingaccount of memory forces a rethinking of such terms as “amnesic”, for herexperiments clearly show that subjects could access memory traces on sometasks. We might expect that such research will also help us to understand thedifferences between expert and novice behaviour, since experts re-encodeinformation in different ways as expertise develops. Novices, in contrast, appearto have single encodings of information. This point has obvious implications forSLA, since proficient speaker/hearers are none other than expert users of thelanguage. Finally, recall that the hypothesis that information is first encoded inautonomous encodings is explicitly assumed in the theory of representational re-description. This idea can now be interpreted in terms of the processing accountof memory. I conclude that discussion of control and the nature of encoding ofinformation on specific tasks has a place in any theory of second languageacquisition. The processing account of memory is a promising theoreticalapproach to the facts.

I will continue to use the termability as a way of talking about skills inabstraction from the specific demands of a task. This usage follows normal usageas when we say that Gisbert has the ability to play the piano or Alex has theability to ride a bicycle. Finally, I will use the termfaculty to talk in a generalway about both the representations and mechanisms involved in deployinglanguage. We will thus talk about the language faculty in contrast to the facultyfor number, face recognition, or music.


3. A reformulation of the research questions

Now that we have some basic terminology, we can rephrase the researchquestions under investigation. I began by saying that I would be exploring therelationship between the language that learners hear (or read) and the knowledgeof the L2 that they acquire. I can now reformulate this as (1.5):

(1.5) a. What role is played by positive and negative feedback in forcing thelearner towards a specific analysis of intake and intermediate inputrepresentations during language learning?

b. How does feedback interact with positive evidence during the analysisof grammatical representations?

c. What processing mechanisms must exist in order for feedback to beutilised?

d. What is the relationship among the various processing mechanisms ina given faculty and the information they manipulate?

e. How are representations of stimuli computed on-line?

SLA, indeed psycholinguistics in general, is not so far advanced that I can hopeto answer these questions. Nevertheless, by exploring each one, I hope to castinput and evidence in a novel light, pushing us towards a different sort ofexplanation from those which are currently popular.

4. Summary

In this chapter I have laid out the broad lines of the investigation into evidence,feedback and correction which will follow. I will examine the hypothesis thatfeedback and correction can cause the restructuring of interlanguage grammars,within a theory of acquisition called the Autonomous Induction Theory, embed-ded in a partially interactive theory of processing. I have also introduced someterminology necessary to conceptualise evidence, feedback and correction ininformation processing terms. In particular, I have pointed out that currentCorderian terminology is inadequate, distinguishing only between some undiffer-entiated stuff “outside” the mind/brain in the environment and some undifferen-tiated stuff “inside” the mind/brain. I have instead distinguished between threebroad categories of information in the information processing systems I shallinvoke to discuss second language acquisition. The first broad category concernsrepresentation types to the parsers, where I have distinguished (i) stimuli (=information entering the perceptual systems), (ii) intake (= transduced stimuli or


analogue representations), (iii) input (= structured representations enteringparticular processors). The second broad category concerns information to thelearning mechanisms. Here I have distinguished between two types of informa-tion. The first type is derivable from analyses of speech stimuli during parsingor inferences based on parsing some string which is part of the language (posi-tive evidence). The second type is derivable via complex inferencing fromconceptual representations encoding information about non-existent strings orunacceptable strings, or inferencing from feedback and correction (negativeevidence). The third broad category concerns a distinction between the nature ofinteractions between learners and native speakers and the nature of the responsesof native speakers to the errors and infelicities of interlanguage. Here I distin-guished between positive feedback (confirmation that some form or string orinterpretation is possible in the language) and negative feedback, which isintended to communicate that some form, string or interpretation is not possiblein the language. Finally, I have been careful to distinguish between linguisticknowledge (I-language), the encoded information which is directly relevant to theparsing and production systems (the psychogrammar), skills (task-based encod-ings of linguistic information in parsing and speech production), and performance(what one does on a given occasion). With these distinctions in mind, I wouldnow like to show why the Autonomous Induction Theory is needed.

Notes

1. To simplify the presentation, I will assume throughout that we are discussing adult learners wholive and work in a community where the L2 is the language of official communication. I happento believe that at the micro-processing level that I intend to explore here, the important situationaldifferences which characterise language-to-(im)migrants and language-to-classroom-learners,differences which still need to be explored empirically and theoretically, will not matter much.

2. In my view, describing SLA as hypothesis-formation and hypothesis-testing is a misleadingmetaphor. In learning new categories of the grammar, new structural arrangements in on-lineparses and hence new parsing procedures and new production schemata, learners arenotlearning new concepts.

3. At the very least one might ask for some solid psycholinguistic evidence to support it. In themean time, many of us find it unhelpful to arbitrarily reallocate the termsacquisition andlearning in the way Krashen does without ever defining what the processes actually consist of.In my view, Krashen’s terminological distinctions simply obscure analysis of the differencebetween representation and process.

4. Although reading texts in a foreign language plays an important part in classroom learning, Iwill have nothing further to say about it in this book. The significance of literacy for adultlearners should not, however, be underestimated for many reasons, among them being thatwriting practices can provide many clues to word boundaries which the speech stream does not


(thus giving the literate learner a leg up on constructing form-meaning associations), or thatreading is often linked to vocabulary expansion. Through reading the learner can also bettercontrol the amount of exposure he gets; starting up and maintaining conversations for thepurpose of just hearing more speech is not nearly so easy.

5. This remark should not be construed as saying that no other theoretical influences can beobserved in SLA. Nothing could be further from the truth. However, to the extent thatfunctionalists have contented themselves with descriptions of interlanguage varieties, and setaside the problem of constructing a transition theory, as we shall shortly call it, their use ofsemantic models cannot be described as “mainstream theorising” in the intended sense. Similarremarks can be made about the application of neurological theory in SLA. Finally, while theexciting research of the last decade on cross-linguistic speech perception (to be discussedelsewhere) has certainly influenced phoneticians and phonologists working in SLA, thesignificance of this work for characterising general aspects of SLA has not been seen.

6. This theory has been developed over many years, beginning with work which predates thecurrent label for the theory, namely Jackendoff (1972). The first exposition of the theoryappears as Jackendoff (1983), which was developed and extended in Jackendoff (1985, 1990b,1992, 1995, 1996a, b, c).

7. I intend to demonstrate that the role of correction depends on a metalinguistic interpretation ofa given stimulus. Since the ability to re-encode and conceptualise language in metalinguisticterms appears to depend upon cognitive developments which may, in turn, be linked tomaturation, I will not discuss the role correction may play in either the simultaneous acquisitionof two first languages (that is,child bilingualism) or in early child SLA. This book is aboutadult learners and learning by adults. I will simplify the exposition by omitting specificreference to adults except where I intend to contrast child and adult language acquisition.

8. Gass and Selinker (1994: 197), for example, refer to the speech stream as “input.” Towell andHawkins (1994: 249) refer to “authentic data.” VanPatten (1993: 436) defines “input processing”as the conversion of linguistic data to that subset which is comprehended and attended to in someway through the mediation of various (unspecified) linguistic and cognitive factors. All of thesediscussions appear to regard input as outside of the cognitive systems which encode language.

9. In the Competition Model (see Chapters 2 and 3), cues are stimuli since they meet thisdefinition of being objectively definable properties of the environment. In my view, cues shouldmore properly be defined as properties of internalised representations, relatable to stimuli viaparsing procedures.

10. I might add hear that we can talk for eons about association without necessarily knowing whatwe are talking about. Studies of animal learning have clearly demonstrated that animals showa remarkable sensitivity to probabilistic relations among events. As Kelly and Martin (1994: 113)have pointed out, these demonstrations reveal very little about the mechanisms underlyingassociation or about what is actually represented.

11. This does not preclude hybrid approaches which resort to connectionist architecture to capture thelowest levels of information-processing but which also incorporate structure. I will have nothingfurther to say about this issue beyond saying that my approach to SLA is not in principleinconsistent with such hybrid functional architectures. See Goldsmith (1992) for discussion.

12. I am drawing conclusions here since the authors fail to cite either Corder or Krashen in theirdiscussion.

13. It should be clear that Faerch et al. are not using the term “input” as I do to mean internalmental representations of structures but rather to mean “stimuli.”


14. As in note 13, Faerch et al. are attributing a different meaning to their technical terminologyfrom my definitions.Intake in this citation is intended to mean what I callinput.

15. See also Long (1981, 1983, 1996) for additional discussion.

16. To anticipate discussion which follows, let me say here that both of these claims are falseunless qualified.

17. I will capitalise semantic information and constituents following a practice introduced inJackendoff (1983). Linguistic forms are italicised.

18. Parsing procedures will have to be redefined in Minimalist approaches to conform to theproperties of the operationMergewhich replaces X-bar theory. To simplify discussion, propernames will be analysed as NPs. DetPs will be used only where definiteness is critical to thediscussion.

19. I sidestep a difficult problem here which is the definition of the term “normal language.” Thefact that such strings regularly appear in linguistics texts serving as examples of what is notpossible in English, and can be identified by knowledgeable readers of such texts in theintended manner, might be sufficient to define them as instances of naturally-occurring Englishused in normal communicative situations.

20. This example comes from a corpus that I have been collecting since 1992 of spontaneouslyprovided cases of feedback and correction, occurring during normal conversation between adultsecond language learners and native speakers. In the example in (1.4), the learner is a nativespeaker of English learning German and the corrector is a multilingual native speaker of German.

21. These are attested examples. Lardiere (1995: 28), in a treatment of the Level-OrderingHypothesis and the “No regular plurals inside compounds” claim, provides a critique of theAmerican-based morphological literature which claims that such forms are impossible inEnglish. Three years of watching SKY News have convinced me that they are not only possiblebut productive, with no idiosyncratic interpretation, just as Lardiere suggests. (Although MikeSharwood Smith disagrees and has other intuitions based on his English- English variety.) Thispoints to a standard problem that psycholinguists face, namely defining the object of study. Noone can have intuitions about the “English language” because no one speaks that. Rather, eachof us speaks a particular variety of it. A more cautious approach to grammatical descriptionwould see grammarians limiting their claims to the specific varieties which they do speak, andbuttressing broader generalisations with facts drawn from corpus analysis. To the extent thatESL subjects are learning their English in an American context, relying on such descriptionsmaynot be a problem for psycholinguists, if the language of the community happens to matchthe descriptions provided in the literature. This needs to be verified of course. It stands to reasonthat researchers whose subjects are acquiring English outside of the U.S. need to be doublycautious in interpreting the facts of the “target” language, and are well-advised to establish localnorms. In the case where subjects have little exposure to native-speakers this may involvetesting the students’ instructors or collecting baseline data from language classrooms.

22. Since some researchers apparently treat all instances of use of the Gricean Cooperative Principleas “feedback” (see Allwood 1993), I should stress here that I do not. While there may beoccasions where we would want to distinguish a response to a question from a topic shift, I willnot treat answers to questions, responses to commands, etc. as feedback. My use of the termthroughout is restricted to its role in language acquisition.

23. Notice that this allows two different ways for input to influence grammatical organisation. Onthe one hand, unconscious processes of parsing can operate to feed a sound sequence, a word,or a structure into the grammar. On the other hand, the same elements can be treated by the


conscious system as a model, directing the learner’s attention to the formal properties of thestimulus. It is not clear to me whether the results will differ.

24. The psychogrammar is also an idealisation, inferred necessarily from the observation ofbehaviour. We attribute to it a direct causal role in explaining, say, Aunt Helen’s ability tocomprehend and produce sentences likeWe went there for to visit Lee. Whether Chomsky’sconcept of competence plays any direct causal role in explaining this ability is another matter.

25. I do not want to suggest that this is Anderson’s view. I am, in particular, not making referenceto declarative knowledgesince this is merely information stored in long-term memory,undifferentiated as to type or level of analysis. This distinction is critical for me. In addition,Anderson makes no assumptions of modularity of processing.

26. I can attest to the reality of the phenomenon, having lived through it myself. This anecdote isnot, however, a substitute for an empirical investigation of the English-L1 learner’s parsing ofverb-final German sentences at various stages of acquisition.

27. See Bialystok (1982, 1987, 1994), Bialystok and Bouchard Ryan (1985), and Bialystok andSharwood Smith (1985).

28. The reader should keep in mind that in my framework it is incoherent to talk of “unanalysedknowledge.” Structural knowledge, by definition, is contained in a representation which is theproduct of analysis.

29. It does not follow that acoustic-phonetic information cannot be directly encoded in conceptualrepresentations so that, for example, I can use aspects of it to imitate a British accent, writedown a phonetic transcription of sounds I hear in the alphabet of the International PhoneticAssociation, or reproduce on demand for my German-speaking students the difference betweenmy own Canadian pronunciation of the written formgrassand the pronunciation indicated inthe Oxford English Dictionary. In Jackendoff’s theory, conceptual structures are the level ofrepresentation at which information decoded from language meets information decoded from theperceptual and motor systems. Since we can talk about what we see, hear and do, it musttherefore be the case that conceptual representations can encode phonetic representations,articulatory-motoric representations, 2 ½ D representations and so on. But since we cannotalways think about the contents of these representations, the claim in the text means that I donot encode in myinterpretationof sound strings a phonetic analysis of the phonetic featureswhich make them up.

30. The psychological literature on learning and memory makes available a variety of modelspotentially of relevance here, e.g. data-driven vs. conceptually-driven processing models,implicit vs. explicit learning and implicit vs. explicit memory, declarative vs. proceduralknowledge. See Eysenck and Keane (1995: Chs. 6 and 7). Ultimately, one would hope to seethe constructs of analysis and control linked explicitly to some such model.

31. Hulstijn (1990) has mounted a more general critique of Bialystok’s work.

32. It follows that there are necessarily real representational differences between first and secondlanguage acquisition. On these grounds alone, we can reject the simplistic notion “L1 = L2”(Dulay, Burt, and Krashen 1982).

33. The full story on adult L2 perceptual abilities and their effects on the ability to acquire anauthentic accent will therefore have two parts: the first part will detail the absolute loss ofperceptual discriminatory abilities during the first year of life, the second part will show howprocessing speech to isolate lexical items interferes with the ability to detect sub-segmentalfeatures exhibited in those words.

C 2

Property and transition theories

1. Why do we need the Autonomous Induction Theory (or something like it)?

1.1 What must an SLA theory explain?

I have been careful in Chapter 1 to frame the discussion in terms of knowledgeand behavioural change. A theory of second language acquisition must explainboth. It takes behavioural changes into account as part of its observables. We areinterested in describing and explaining how the ability to understand and producethe L2 changes over time. While it might be true that learners regularly undergochanges in their internal knowledge states, this will be of no consequence for ourfield unless those changes cause the learner to do things that previously were notdoable. We are interested in internal statesbecausethey can explain behaviour.However, at the same time, we are committing ourselves here to a cognitivestory — it is the nature of and changes in internal state that are the objects ofanalysis and theorising.

Gregg (1993), citing Cummins (1983), states that explanation in SLArequires us to have two different but related sorts of theories: aproperty theoryand atransition theory.1 The property theory will tell us how knowledge of anL2 is instantiated or represented in a learner, while the transition theory describeschanges in what is represented, and also, when connected to some causalmechanism, explains how one knowledge state develops into another. No SLAtheory will be explanatory without possessing both subparts, which is why in theface of numerous models, hypotheses and proposals, Gregg can maintain that westill have noreal theory of SLA. On the one hand, much work in the past hasfailed to recognise the centrality of a theory of grammar as a property theory ofSLA. Since the early 1980s, this problem has been addressed by researchersadopting the Principles and Parameters Theory (Chomsky 1981b, 1986: 243).However, Principle and Parameters Theorists in SLA have made little effort todevelop a transition theory, and consequently, their results can only tell us part


of the story, namely what the property theory has to look like. To put the mattermore succinctly, talk of parameter-resetting is a description of the fact that onemental grammar has been restructured into another; it is not an explanation ofhow restructuring occurs. The challenges facing a theory of parameter-resettingare considerable, as we shall see below.2 On the other hand, only one seriousproposal has been made to date regarding a transition theory, namely connection-ism, more specifically as it is instantiated in the Competition Model (see Batesand MacWhinney 1981, 1987; and the papers in MacWhinney and Bates 1989)and explored in an explicitly SLA context by Gass (1987), Harrington (1987),and Kilborn (1987). The Competition Model, however, lacks a property theoryrich enough to be taken seriously as an account of linguistic competence. Neitherparadigm in its present form can be said to meet the requirements of providingboth a property theory and a transition theory.

Gregg can be read as claiming that once we have a theory of knowledgestates (e.g. a theory of mental grammars) and a theory of how those knowledgestates change over time, our work is over. We can then relax and go for a beer.I part company with Gregg on this point in that I think property and transitiontheories are still only one-half of the story. I have said above that a transitiontheory explains changes in knowledge stateswhen connected to some causalmechanism. In my view, making that connection requires us to link a theory ofrepresentation to a theory of speech processing, and therefore ultimately tolanguage behaviour. Another part of the explanation story therefore links theknowledge states and their changes to information coming from the environmentor somewhere else in the cognitive system outside the learner’s grammar. Inputto learning mechanisms somehow has to be brought into the equation and thiscannot be done in the absence of processing theories which connect the knowl-edge states to speech in the environment or to information (stored elsewhere)which is applied to a linguistic problem. So, we require now three things: atheory of mental representations (i.e. of mental grammars), a theory of howmental grammars can restructure, and a theory of how learning mechanisms getaccess to stimuli or to conceptual information to reanalyse and encode gram-matically during the learning process. But even this will not be the full story. Wealso need a theory of learning in addition to property, transition and performancetheories. The learning theory will explainhowrestructuring takes place given theavailability to the learning mechanisms of new information at some moment intime. Once we embed discussions of second language learning within a theory ofspeech processing, learning must be defined in several quite distinct ways: as theinitial encoding in memory of a specific representation, as the entrenchment ofthat initial encoding so that it becomes easily activated, as the realignment of

PROPERTY AND TRANSITION THEORIES 39

previously encoded cues to an existing category, or, as what happens whenparsing with extant parsing procedures fails. Speech processing theory cannotprovide an answer to the question: What happens next? Only a theory of learningcan do that.

(2.1) What a theory of SLA must consist of:a. a theory of linguistic knowledge (a theory of mental grammars);b. a theory of knowledge restructuring (how the representations of a

mental grammar can change in principle and, equally importantly,how they cannot);

c. a theory of linguistic processing showing how input gets into thesystem from the speech signal (bottom-up) or from the conceptualsystem (top-down) thereby creating a learning problem;

d. a theory of learning which shows how novel information (not broughtinto the system from outside the grammar by the parsers) can becreated to resolve the learning problem.

Feedback and correction are sometimes presented as central elements of ageneral theory of learning designed to serve the functions of both a property andtransition theory. Since a general theory of learning is intended to do the workof a particular theory of second language acquisition, we may conclude thatfeedback and correction are intended as central elements of a theory of SLA.Such a theory names induction as the principal mechanism responsible for boththe properties of the L2 knowledge systems and for the changes observed in aninterlanguage grammar when it restructures from one state to another, say, fromone which cannot encode complement sentences to one which can.3 I intend toargue that induction is indeed needed to explain how truly novel information getsinto the language processing system (2.1d above). I shall, however, take theposition that induction, with or without feedback and correction, cannot properlyexplain the nature of the basic organisation of linguistic knowledge whichmanifests certain abstract universals unique to linguistic systems. Alone it cannottell us, for example, why L2 linguistic knowledge shows sensitivity to constitu-ents like phones, syllables or prosodic words.4 None of these constituents arepresent as objective properties of the speech signal. Rather, they must beattributed to the signal as part of a re-representation of it during the course ofspeech processing. But speech processors must somehow come to perform thesere-representations which means that learners must come to mentally representphones, syllables and prosodic words as part of a representational format.Induction cannot explain where the format comes from. Induction alone alsocannot show why predication, one of the basic semantic relations, is constrained


by c-command which is a structural relation defined over morphosyntactic repre-sentations. (See Chapter 3, note 33, for a formal definition.) Alone, inductioncannot explain any of the abstract constraints which appear to be true of gram-matical relations.5 However, given a suitable representational system, oneconstrained by properties of Universal Grammar, induction, coupled with atheory of input (including feedback and correction) along with the relevantperformance mechanisms, can give a constrained and correct account of inter-language grammars, of how one interlanguage grammar changes into another,and of how learners’ ability to understand and produce speech changes over time.I think that such an approach can give a better account than the current alterna-tives — the Principles and Parameters theory of Universal Grammar and theCompetition Model — as they are currently applied in SLA research.

1.2 Problems with SLA applications of Principles and Parameters Theory

The Principles and Parameters theory, henceforth P&P theory, suffers from twomajor faults, as it has been imported into SLA studies: It is incomplete as atheory of grammatical encoding, and it has been treated by many as a theory oftransition. Let me take up the incompleteness argument first. By focusing on theagenda of UG research within grammatical theory, which is to whittle awaylanguage-specific details in order to zero in on the universal, P&P research inSLA runs the risk of simply ignoring most of what one would like to callknowledge of a second language. Variation is what P&P theory is designed for,but it limits itself to those aspects of variation which are not the result oflearning. It therefore can only deal with part of the job. There are three distincttypes of knowledge which P&P theory largely ignores. First of all, there is whatwe might callirregular variation, which derives from the fact that grammars ofparticular languages consist of information which is unsystematic or only partlysystematic, information which simply does not lend itself to a characterisation ineither general or parametric terms. As we know from descriptive studies ofindividual languages and cross-linguistic comparative research, languages varysometimes considerably from one another in terms of their repertoires ofconstituents, the ways in which those constituents are organised syntagmaticallyand in how constructions correspond across levels of analysis. Some of thisvariation is just variety-specific. In his own writings, Chomsky has alwaysacknowledged the necessity of describing and explaining the flotsam and jetsamof specific language systems (see Chomsky 1981a: 8). This type of linguisticknowledge often gets referred to as the grammaticalperipherybut this term isnot well-defined. Certainly we have no reason to equate “peripheral” with


“marginal” or “uninteresting” or “trivial.” The flotsam and jetsam must also beacquired and a language learning theory must therefore encompass mechanismsto do that job. Secondly, once we focus our attention on the fact that psycho-grammars are the by-product of individual experience, we must grant that muchlinguistic knowledge varies from speaker to speaker.6 The theory of UG hasnothing to say about idiosyncratic knowledge. We need a theory which willexplain that I say [th6Áme:no] and you say [th6Ám":tho] while somebody I knowfrom Kitchener Ontario says [th6Ámaeno]. Psychogrammars, the grammaticalsystems which we use in parsing and producing speech, are rich in such particu-lars. Only some of this variation will be explainable in terms of the norms andspeech practices of the groups in which the language user holds membership.Some of it is just truly unique. Thirdly, research in sociolinguistics revealsvariation in language use within a given language community of a ratherdifferent sort. Much of that variation is patterned and shared and can beexplained in great detail in terms of the social contexts in which language isacquired and deployed, as well as in terms of the social symbolism features oflanguage take on for members of a given community.7 P&P theory has nothingto say about sociolinguistic variation either. Moreover, certain kinds of socio-linguistic variation raise fundamental difficulties for grammatical theories whichassume that mental grammars are homogeneous systems. Mufwene (1992) hasargued that they are not, on the basis of variation in the use of the copula inAfrican-American Vernacular English (AAVE). Labov (1998) has taken up thisissue, trying to sort out the logic of traditional assumptions. He points out(Labov 1998: 117) that the speakers of AAVE who are also skilled users of“other American dialects” (OAD, or, basically, the white varieties heard in theelectronic media, and used in the school systems), might be seen to be in one ofseveral distinct states. Thus, AAVE and OAD could be seen as separate lan-guages or dialects (or grammars) and variation in use could be analysed as code-switching. Roeper (1999) has argued for something along these lines forall usersof a language. Variation within a learner’s language of the sort which mightallow a child learning English to master and use productively verb-raising in avery narrow set of contexts (say the language of storybooks but nowhere else)would then be accounted for in terms of “bilingualism.” The child would havetwo distinct “grammars” and would “code-switch” between them. Understoodproperly, however, it is clear that the child might have a large number ofgrammars, each distinguished by its irreduceability to some other parameter-setting. In the absence of clear situation-based definitions of the impetus for“code-switching”, this makes a mockery of the construct. On the basis of anunderstanding of perhaps a broader range of cases of variation, Labov points out


the necessity of distinguishing other types. AAVE and OAD might be seen asdistinct but interdependent systems (grammars). On this view, one of the systemsmay be incomplete and incapable of producing a full range of utterances, and isused merely to enhance the other. Speakers of English who systematicallyproduce German names likeStrausswith a palatal fricative (instead of a coronalfricative) might be subsumed under this type of variation. In this case, there is nofundamental incompatability among the rules used to articulate English spellings.Some items might simply be tagged [+German] and pronounced in a way thatEnglish-speakers think sounds German. Or, AAVE might be seen as a “meso-lectal” or intermediate stage and OAD as the “acrolect” or highest stage on acreole continuum characterising the variation between the most creole-likegrammar and the most standard-like grammar. In this case, one would expect tofind implicational relationships among the varying phenomena. Finally, AAVEcould be viewed as a de-creolised dialect of English with certain creole-likefeatures remaining as historical residue. This view reduces AAVE copulavariation to the flotsam and jetsam type. In his analysis of AAVE, Labov arguesfor parallel and co-existent systems.

Observe that if UG were assumed to be the whole sum of grammaticaltheory, and one sometimes gets the impression from the SLA literature that UGis all there is, then that theory would fail as a property theory, regardless ofwhether it is applied to monolinguals or L2 learners. UG does not provide a wayof accommodating variation. Those who blithely make assertions that linguisticknowledge is not to be described in terms of rules, learned exceptions to rules,or idiosyncrasies of other sorts because current conceptions of UG have no placefor such constructs, have either not understood this basic point, or else they havedecided not to participate in the development of a theory of second languageacquisition. It requires a theory of linguistic competence which can describeeverything that a speaker/hearer knows. For further discussion of these issues inthe context of first language acquisition, see Meisel (1999) and Valian (1999).

If it is legitimate to ask: What are the properties of interlanguage grammars?— and it is — then we need a property theory rich enough to describe andexplain all of them. Psychology and psycholinguistics have every reason to beinterested in not only variation but also variability and idiosyncratic knowledgesince they show how language acquisition is guided (or not guided) by propertiespresent in the environment. Researchers who are interested in how languages areacquired have the right to demand a property theory in which one can talkwithout embarrassment about context-dependent learning. Linguistic theory hasbeen forced to grapple with the issue of language variation, first in terms ofmarked and unmarked rules, subsequently in terms of parameter-setting. But


given the generative focus on the universal, it is hardly surprising that generativetheory has tended to ignore forms of knowledge which are context dependent.Although many would readily grant that a theory of language acquisition needslearning mechanisms to acquire these aspects of linguistic competence, there hasbeen little attempt within UG-based second language acquisition theory todevelop independent models of learning mechanisms capable of explaining howlearned properties of grammars get learned or even could in principle be learned.In the first acquisition literature, such independent models exist and are acknowl-edged even by those whose primary interest is the study of UG and what firstlanguage grammars might have to say about it. We return to such models insubsequent chapters. However, no such independent models exist yet in SLA.8 TheL2 literature has focused exclusively on variation deemed to be under the controlof UG — the parameter-setting part of the P&P story — and left apparently noroom for the characterisation of the acquisition of instances, rules, paradigms, orexceptional phenomena.9 To the extent that P&P theorists in SLA have offeredus UG as a property theory, we can legitimately regard it as incomplete.

Note that given the way in which UG and mental grammars are characterisedas autonomous and modular systems, it is not obvious how to repair this inad-equacy. It will hardly do to suppose that a general theory of learning can be “stuckon” to P&P theory as a way of dealing with what has been acquired. Generaltheories of learning are fundamentally incompatible with the P&P framework. Analternative solution must be found which respects the autonomy of the grammati-cal systems and allows for a fit between those aspects of linguistic competencedeemed to be provided by UG and those aspects which are not.10

In addition, it is not obvious that parameter-setting has been good atresolving the central task it has set itself, namely explaining cross-linguisticvariation. Theoretical work on grammatical variation has been reinterpreted inSLA as allowing for a restatement of the transfer problem (see Question 4b ofChapter 1). If the grammars of two distinct languages can be said to be charac-terisable in terms of different parameter-settings, then the knowledge systems ofan individual who knows the one language and is learning the other can also befruitfully characterised in terms of different parameter settings. The state of L1knowledge can be said to consist of setting M, and perhaps that is what thelearner transfers to the L2, but when he has indeed acquired the L2, he will bein a state of knowledge consisting of the distinct setting N. So the learner has toleave state M and enter state N; this is parameter-resetting. Lifting the curtain onthe jargon, however, shows that this is just another way of saying that when thelearner has successfully acquired the L2 he knows something different from whathe knew before. P&P theory in SLA tells us nothing about how the change occurs;


it can only inform us as to the properties of the states of knowledge themselves.And just what does it tell us? In my view, not very much when one looks

closely at the relevant literature. For one thing, there is an on-going problem inthe definition of the central theoretical constructs. Despite considerable activityin grammatical research trying to delimit a range of central parameters capableof explaining the discoveries of typological research, there is no agreement oneven a handful of proposals.11 Every putative parameter with deductive potentialhas been picked apart and rejected as empirically and conceptually inadequate.This has become something of an embarrassment for SLA studies as researcherscommitted to the P&P paradigm have seen otherwise decent empirical SLAresearch undermined by that nagging critical voice which pipes up: “But no onebelieves in that proposal any more!” This puts the onus on SLA P&P researchersto continually reanalyse the same data set to make it theoretically acceptable togrammarians. See White (1995) for relevent discussion.12 One might instead ask:Why should grammatical theory be setting the research agenda of SLA?

More problematic is the logic itself of P&P theory. It currently consists oflists of stipulations of ways in which languages can arbitrarily vary from oneanother. Grimshaw (1985) warned about the danger of calling every instance oflinguistic difference a “parameter.” She pointed out that parameter-setting theorywas interesting for acquisition purposes precisely because it attempted to explainclusters of effects in terms of a single abstract parameter. The clusteringprovided the theory with “deductive” consequences (Nishigauchi and Roeper1987). In the intervening years, this constraint on the theory of parameters hasdisappeared; now any arbitrary distinction gets labelled a “parameter.” Whyshould we view this as an improvement on earlier versions of generative gram-mar? In the “old days”, linguists wrote rules with lists of stipulations of ways inwhich the rules could arbitrarily vary from one another. With time, it wasrecognised that this approach was not principled. The stipulations were replacedwith more abstract and more general formulations of linguistic constraints.Stipulations of arbitrary lists of ways in which individual languages differ fromone another are equally unappealing. It is inevitable that they will be rejectedtoo. In recent publications, we can see the logic of Chomsky’s research agendaat work; arbitrary “parameters” are being replaced by more abstract and moregeneral formulations of universal principles. In the most recent versions ofgenerative theory, Minimalist Theory, and, more obviously, Optimality Theory,the formulations are absolutely universal — which raises some doubts about thefuture of parameter-setting within the generative paradigm. Again, White (1995)acknowledges the difficulties for SLA researchers; unfortunately, she offers noprincipled solution.13


Lest I be misconstrued, let me point out what criticism I amnotmaking ofP&P theory or its proponents. I am not criticising those researchers solelyinterested in the question of how SLA research can contribute to the refinementof a theory of Universal Grammar. UG research has been extraordinarily rich andinsightful and has made a major contribution to our understanding of humancognition. To the extent that acquisition research can support this approach, it isuseful. More specifically, to the extent that SLA research can show that univer-sals are manifested in interlanguage grammars even when the learning conditionsof first and second language acquisition are radically different, it will haveadded significantly to our understanding of linguistic competence.

To summarise, I claim that P&P theory fails as a property theory for SLAbecause it is incomplete and conceptually inadequate for our purposes. Develop-mental psycholinguistics requires a property theory of universalandof language-specific phenomena. The more universal the formulation of parameters becomes,the more obvious it will be that UG will not provide the right property theory.14

It is unreasonable to expect those devoted to the pursuit of UG to provide uswith one. Descriptive linguistics, first language acquisition studies and researchin language parsing are more likely sources of the necessary information we needto construct reasonable models of the specific grammatical systems of individualspeakers. We need such models to characterise the adult learner’s initial state (theL1 grammar). If we choose to define “successful L2 acquisition” as the acquisi-tion of a grammar identical to that acquired by the monolingual L1 speaker/hearer, then such models would also be needed to make that notion precise.15

Now let me turn to a consideration of P&P theory as a transition theory inSLA. It fails in this role too for a number of reasons. First of all, it fails toprovide any account of why language learning begins. This is because none ofthe current P&P SLA theorising is connected to a theory of perception andlanguage processing. It therefore also fails to explain why some phenomenon ata given point in time, and no other, gets acquired. Secondly, aside from somelimited discussion of the Subset Principle (see, e.g. White 1986a, 1989b), no onein SLA has bothered to articulate a model of logically prior parameter-(re)set-tings for a given language such that a learner would need to set P1 before settingP2.16 Thus, the logical relations among parameters have yet to be worked out forthe acquisition of any given language. Thirdly, no one in SLA has bothered toarticulate the triggers for given parameters.17 Triggers are the logically necessaryinput to parameters, the minimal type of input for resetting to occur. Unless weknow something about triggers, we cannot understand parameter-resetting.18

Triggers are to P&P theory what cues are to the Competition Model, but whileproponents of the latter have worked out some of the details of cue extraction,


cue validity, cue reliability, and cue conflict, no comparable research programhas emerged in the SLA P&P literature.19 It will not do to cite learnabilitystudies or research in first language acquisition as if they were a reasonablesubstitute for SLA activity. SLA researchers have todemonstratethe relevanceof treatments presupposing monolingualism to a characterisation of acquired orincipient bilingualism. I suspect that defining “the same parameter” for distinctlanguages and isolating the relevant triggers for that parameter will turn out to bea complicated affair.20 Fourthly, although interesting results have emerged fromresearch investigating developmental orders, SLA P&P theory says nothing at allabout why the things which are first learned are learned first. Moreover, SLAresearch in this paradigm fails to explain why two different learners can followdistinct developmental paths, what Valian (1999) callsmicrovariationin develop-ment. This would require dealing with the variability issue which, as previouslynoted, P&P researchers cannot do. Finally, P&P theory also has no account ofwhy language learning stops. There is a deep and difficult problem at the rootof this question which involves explaining how learners can be simultaneouslysensitive and insensitive to variation in the speech they hear. They must besensitive enough to cognise, to use Chomsky’s (1980: 69) felicitous term, thatwhat they currently know will not accurately represent what they are hearing.They must be insensitive enough not to detect and encode other types of varia-tion in the speech signal once they have arrived at the right analysis. Otherwise,they would be constantly revising their grammars and would never settle on afinal analysis for a given phenomenon. To mention a simple example, a learnerof English whose L1 Spanish has null subjects has to detect and encode thatsubjects occur with extraordinary regularity in English in simple sentences, withweather verbs, presentational verbs and verbs likeseem. But the learner cannotbe so sensitive that she notices data like those in (2.2) and construes them asevidence that English, like Spanish, has null subjects in the relevant sense.

(2.2) Q: Goin’ out?A: Dunno!

If the learner resets whatever parameter is responsible for explaining the differ-ence between English and Spanish with regard to subjects (be it dubbed the Pro-Drop Parameter, the Morphological Uniformity Principle, or the MorphologicalRichness Parameter, it’s name is of no consequence to my argument), she shouldnot re-reset the same parameter when she encounters (2.2), as she will if she isexposed to normal vernacular English.

This difficult problem, dubbed thecatapult problemof endless parameter-resetting by Randall (1990, 1992) has been recognised in the first language


acquisition literature (see also Valian 1990a, b). One proposal to deal with it isthat there simply is no parameter-resetting (Bley-Vroman 1990; Clahsen 1990/1991; Müller 1994). Proponents of P&P theory in SLA have largely ignored thiscritical issue. It is complicated in SLA because we must factor in somehow theproblem of the learner’s incipient bilingualism. How does an L2 learner decideon the evidence for a given analysis of a parameter? One issue we must addressis the validity of what appears to be the default assumption in much of the SLAtheorising that as far as parameter-setting is concerned, the learner’s grammarsare always in separate “boxes” which never communicate with one another — atleast not where parameter-setting is concerned. How else could one put aside thethorny question: How does a single mind/brain establish contradictory settings forthe same parameter? SLA researchers appear to believe that the psychogrammarsfor the L1 and L2 are distinct and separate (in other words, that they arecognitively and functionallyautonomous), so that parameter-resetting in the L2cannot possibly negatively influence the parameter-setting in the L1. Consequent-ly, the acquisition of a contradictory parameter-setting in the L2 does not causeloss of the parameter-setting in the L1. At the same time, however, we arerequired to believe that parameter-settings cantransfer from one grammar toanother, and that the grammatical systems can mutually influence one another inadditional ways, permitting borrowing, code switching, lexical interference, thereadjustment of linguistic category boundaries, language attrition, and so on.How grammars can be autonomous and permeable to cross-grammar influencesat the same time is not clear.21 Further consideration of this issue is surely inorder. Secondly, it is not obvious why the learner’s prior experience should benecessarily irrelevant for the analysis of the L2. If Finnish is defined as morphol-ogically “rich”, how could a Finnish learner of French, German or English notfind these languages morphologically “poor” in their manifestations of morphol-ogical marking of morphosyntactic categories? And would a Finnish learner ofall three languages notice subtle differences among them which would besufficient to account for differences in their use of subjects? This seemsunlikely. It seems far more plausible to hypothesise that the explanation of thecorrelation between morphological complexity and the existence of expletivesubjects and “obligatory” use of pronouns in non-focus contexts will require amore abstract solution than those proposed in the P&P literature. Finally,consider that in the more recent interpretations of parameter-setting, parametershave been hypothesised to be associated with the heads of particular morpho-syntactic categories, more specifically withfunctional categoriessuch as tense,agreement, or comp (Ouhalla 1991). Somehow, in ways which are not at all clearsince paradigm learning is at stake, setting these parameters is said to take place


“in the lexicon.” The exact properties of the lexicon are open to debate withinlinguistic theory. What matters for syntactic discussion is simply that the lexiconlies outside of derivational paths for particular sentences. So, parameter-settingis outside of the derivation of a specific sentence. At the same time, generativetheory asserts that the lexicon is a memory store, in particular a storage place forthe idiosyncrasies and irregularities which could only result from learning — inthe conventional sense of the term. It follows that the mechanisms which areresponsible for setting lexical parameters cannot operate until (possibly) domain-general mechanisms responsible for the induction of individual expressions fromthe stimuli available have done their work. This proposal makes parameter-settingand parameter-resetting dependent upon learning mechanisms in ways whichhave as yet not been explored in SLA and which can hardly be called trivial.

Above we raised the issue of the functional architecture of the bilinguallinguistic system. We can raise it again in thinking about parameters which arelexically expressed. One of the most vexed issues in treatments of bilingualismis the question of whether bilinguals have one lexicon or two, and how thelexical entries interact. The evidence that they do is compelling. See Pal (2000)for discussion. What the implications of interacting lexicons are for the analysisof functional categories and the re-setting of parameters connected to them hasyet to be discussed in the SLA literature.

All of the questions raised above are legitimate ones to be asked of a P&Ptheory parading as aexplanatorytheory of acquisition. Unfortunately, the ques-tions are being asked by the critics of the theory and not by its proponents. It isthe critics who have made plain that much current work in P&P theory hasconfused Gregg’s two types of theories, treating a property theory as if it werea transition theory. An acquisition theory must explain what causes grammaticalrestructuring and must describe its course. This the P&P theory does not do. Ihave concluded that parameter-(re)setting is an interesting metaphor, but ulti-mately one which will not stand up to close scrutiny. I see no reason, therefore,to contest claims by Bates and MacWhinney (1989: 71) that their CompetitionModel is the only theory which can claim to be a theory of language acquisition.

1.3 Problems with the Competition Model

This said, I should add that being the only game in town does not mean that thegame is thereby a winning one. The Competition Model suffers very much fromits unwillingness to take seriously research into the nature of linguistic knowl-edge. Indeed, one may question the extent to which the “Competitors” understandcontemporary theoretical linguistic research. On the one hand, one looks in vain


in the Competitors’ publications for signs that structural constructs play a role inprocessing and acquisition, although it is now abundantly clear that no accountcan be given of linguistic knowledge without them. On the other hand, theCompetitors refuse to question the relevance of the form- and meaning-relatedconstructs they do adopt, as if it were somehow obvious that words and mor-phemes have psychological reality while c-command and the No Crossing LinesConstraint do not.22 It is as if the theoretical notions of American structuralism(constructs likephoneme, morpheme, word, or sentence) have ceased to havetheory-dependent status simply because psychologists have heard of them (allother more recent theoretical developments being, in contrast, suspect). This ishardly a sensible approach to the characterisation of language. In addition, it isapparent that the Competitors gloss over important linguistic details in experi-mental work in an attempt to make induction and a structured environment themajor explanatory factors.23 It is therefore obvious to many of us that structuralrepresentations have no explanatory role to play in this theory of language use.Since the Competition Model also purports to be a theory of acquisition itfollows that the structural nature of grammatical representations can play nocausal role in explaining the transitions between knowledge states. This remainstrue despite the rather frivolous response that Bates and MacWhinney (1989: 7)give to their critics.24 The reason is obvious: the Competition Model claims thatthe mappings between acoustic stimuli and semantic representations are direct.This means that there are really no psycholinguistically relevant mediatingphonological or morphosyntactic representations. Any kind of grammatical orsemantic primitive must be characterised in terms of patterns of activation ofconnected nets of nodes standing in for neurons. At best, therefore, grammar isa metaphor for an emergent or distributed knowledge fully characterised in termsof patterns of excitation of the auditory nerve, distributed patterns of nodeactivation in the neural nets doing the cognitive work, and the weighted connec-tions among them. I reject this vision of linguistic knowledge.25 Finally, at leastsome versions of the model (McDonald 1986; McDonald and Heilenman 1991)explain language development by assuming that incorrect interpretations are atriggering force. Incorrect interpretations are detected either when a giveninterpretation contradicts the state of affairs perceptible through other means thanlanguage, or when the learner is informed that his interpretation is incorrect. Wehave no evidence yet that this particular type of negative evidence has any roleto play in the acquisition of the full range of types of grammatical knowledge.


1.4 A third approach: the Autonomous Induction Theory

I intend to take a route different from both of these approaches. On the onehand, I shall go beyond my original claim that feedback and correction have arole to play in adult SLA, to show how it might work. On the other hand, I shallelaborate an independent model of SLA called theAutonomous Induction Theory.It is based on a theory of cognition developed by Ray Jackendoff (1987, 1996a),called Representational Modularity. The Representational Modularity modelposits that cognitive universals play a fundamental role in explaining what weknow about language and how we come to know it. These universals includeUniversal Grammar, but UG is just one of several types of universals in thearsenal of the human cognitive system. It also starts from the assumption that themappings between stimuli in the environment and meanings are cruciallymediated by representational “languages of the mind” which have significantstructural properties (Jackendoff 1992). These languages are quite distinct fromone another, and cannot be reduced to a single general type.

Representational Modularity is therefore incompatable with the view thatthere is a general theory of learning in which the same processes and constraintsoperate across all cognitive domains.

The Autonomous Induction Theory adopts representational modularity. Thisassumption alone makes the Autonomous Induction Theory different from allother current proposals, including the Competition Model, and proposals by Bley-Vroman (1990), Clahsen and Muysken (1986, 1989), and Schachter (1992). Itfollows from the assumption of Representational Modularity that not everythingthat is representable in our conceptual systems can be encoded in our phonologi-cal or morphosyntactic systems, and vice versa. This means that there will besevere constraints on how conceptual information can interact with informationencoded in the specialised representational systems. Consequently, there areimportant limitations on what feedback and correction can accomplish ininitiating grammatical restructuring. However, the theory elaborated is compatiblewith the hypothesis that feedback and correction, mentally represented inconceptual representations, can have an effect on grammatical restructuring. Thismakes the Autonomous Induction Theory different from theories claiming thatthere is no negative evidence in SLA (Schwartz 1986, 1987, 1993; Schwartz andGubala-Ryzak 1992) or no language acquisition based on metalinguistic informa-tion (Truscott 1998b). I take the view that the investigation of exactly what theeffects of feedback and correction are can shed light on the nature of modularityand information processing. Indeed, I will argue that the study of adult SLA and,in particular, the study of the nature of the input and evidence to L2 grammatical


acquisition constitutes an especially interesting domain for the study of psycho-linguistic processing and representation. All of these ideas will be developed atlength in other chapters. Here it suffices to note that the modular representation-al systems hypothesised provide the basic codes in which linguistic knowledgeis discovered, represented, computed and stored. There is interaction among thembut it is highly constrained.

Despite its emphasis on universals, the Autonomous Induction Theory isnevertheless designed to provide a role for induction in explaining L2 develop-ment. To offer up a transition theory, it must focus in part on induction.Induction has not been a fashionable topic in second language acquisitionresearch of late. Understanding why involves dealing with the so-called “logicalproblem of language acquisition.” This problem is based on a deceptively simplequestion: How is it possible in principle to acquire a language?

For many years it has been suggested that if one is to answer this questionthere simply is no alternative to UG-based approaches to linguistic cognition.There is no alternative because induction does not adequately constrain languageacquisition. Theconstraints problemthen forces UG on us. This happens to bea statement that I agree with. But one can adopt a universalist/rationalist positionwith respect to the constraints problem without thereby rejecting induction andcommitting oneself to the claim that UG is a mechanism of language acquisition.Everything else being equal, one can adopt a universalist/rationalist positionwithout claiming that UG is a unique mechanism of language acquisition. Thesolution is to carefully distinguish between UG’s function in the property andtransition theories.

1.5 The limits of theism and deism as accounts of SLA

Gregg analyses current views about UG in SLA, which he labelstheismanddeism. According to Gregg, theism corresponds to the position that “UGfunctions in SLA just as it does in L1 acquisition” (Gregg 1994a: 3723). Theismis not directly attributed to anyone, but since it is connected with those defendinga P&P approach to SLA we may draw the inference that P&P theorists, andpresumably also Gregg himself, are all theists.26 Such individuals hold theposition that UG is “accessable” to adult second language learners and allconceptualise UG within the P&P framework. Deism, in contrast, corresponds tothe view that “UG ceases to function once an L1 is acquired in childhood”(Gregg 1994a: 3723). A more concrete example of deism is the FundamentalDifference Hypothesis of Bley-Vroman (1990, 1994). The Fundamental Differ-ence Hypothesis states that UG does not “operate directly”, and knowledge of


UG, specifically knowledge of principles and parameters, is available onlythrough the particular instantiations of principles and parameters in the L1. Asimilar position can also be attributed to Clahsen and Muysken (1986, 1989), toClahsen (1988), to Meisel (1991, 1997), and to Schachter (1988, 1990, 1991).These scholars have all stated that first language acquisition can be characterisedin terms of parameter-setting but adult SLA grammars do not conform to UG,therefore, UG is not constraining SLA and other mechanisms must be at work.Clahsen and Muysken go so far as to argue that interlanguages are not naturallanguages. A slightly different position has been articulated by Felix (1985,1986), who claims that adults have “access” to UG but that this access is incompetition with the operation of inductive mechanisms so that adult SLA musttake a different course than L1 acquisition.

In my view, Bley-Vroman’s influential papers have successfully muddiedthe learnability waters by confusing the constraints problem with the question asto why L2 learners know different things than L1 learners (theultimate attain-mentissue). The Ultimate Attainment Issue is a very complex problem which hasreceived only superficial treatment in the SLA literature. Part of the difficulty inunderstanding the issue is that many scholars appear to take it for granted thatadults can never successfully acquire an L2. The position has apparently becomea piece of dogma, especially among American researchers, for which no evidenceis required. Thus, one need not define the construct “successful acquisition.”Some appear to believe that successful acquisition can only be defined in termsof the knowledge states and behaviour patterns of monolingual native speakers;this is not the only option and hardly a reasonable one unless one can demon-strate that L2 learners get exactly the same kind of stimuli. In contrast, success-ful acquisition can be defined with respect to the amounts and types of linguisticstimuli and derived input that learners actually get. Learners have successfullylearned if they have constructed specific sorts of grammars on the basis of theinput available to them — complete grammars if the input is complete, partial ordeviant grammars if it is not. But one looks in vain for information about thenature of the L2 exposure of learners in studies investigating the UltimateAttainment Issue (Do they hear 5 hours of the L2 a day? a week? a month? Arethey communicating largely with monolingual native speakers or with other L2learners? Do they hear embedded clauses? Topicalisations? Double objectconstructions? If so, how often and under what circumstances?) Nor are weinformed about the bilingual speech practices of the “unsuccessful” learners sowe do not know if they are using the L1 or the L2 or even an L3 much of thetime. Until these questions are answered and systematically compared withcareful analyses of what learners actually know and can do, no conclusions are


possible about the potential ultimate attainment of adult learners. The fact that animmigrant can live for 30 years in a country with an official language and stillspeak it with an accent, or manifest imperfect control of the morphology of theL2 is hardly compelling evidence that adults are incapable of learning an L2.Indeed, serious research on the topic, to be discussed later, is turning upindividuals who are both highly knowledgable and highly proficient in the L2.

Finally, we might ask if it is reasonable within a plausible theory ofbilingual cognition to define successful acquisition as meaning “knowing exactlyand only what monolinguals know.” The differences observed between monolin-gual and L2 learner speech practices could be attributed to the fact that L2learners are bilinguals. Or that they have had far less input, or far less practiceof particular speech patterns, or have less highly automated retrieval of the L2production schemata. There are countless ways to explain the fact that the“perfect bilingual” is a rarity.27 We need not resort to fundamental representa-tional differences in FLA and SLA to account for that observation. To make alearnability argument, and to make the case for a fundamental difference in thenature of L1 and L2 linguistic knowledge, one needs to demonstrate that the thegrammars of L1 learners and adult L2 learners are indeedfundamentallydifferent. In my view, there is no convincing evidence for such fundamentalrepresentational differences, although the evidence for difference is increasing.28

That so many have been willing to jump into the water after Bley-Vromanshows that the issues are complex. We need not, however, feel compelled todiscuss SLA in these terms. There is a third stance that one can adopt within auniversalist/rationalist perspective, the stance I shall defend, which is that the“accessibility” debate between theists and deists is a debate about not much at allsinceUG is not a learning mechanism.29 Therefore, while it is possible to ask ifinterlanguage grammars manifest properties of UG, it is not possible to ask ifadult SLA learners “access UG in exactly the same ways that infant L1 learnersdo.” These questions are not equivalent. The debate between theists and deistshas been, however, only tangentially about whether interlanguage grammarsexhibit properties of UG and has mostly been about whether the processes andstages of development are the same. In my view, the latter discussion miscon-strues the nature of UG.

UG can be understood as providing certain initial limitations on therepresentational systems used to encode language prior to linguistic experience.This means that for neonates about to acquire a first language, we can thinkabout UG as the initial state of their knowledge.30 UG is not the initial state ofknowledge for anyone who has had any kind of exposure to a language and isabout to acquire another. Moreover, it is not a box in the mind/brain that the


learner consults when building a grammar, as the access metaphor would haveit. I like to think of it as an emergent property of all mentally representedgrammars. The representational system of the newborn rapidly develops into alanguage-specific, multiply-differentiated system, closely attuned to certainproperties of the stimuli which comprise the linguistic environment. Thislanguage-specific, multiply-differentiated system is consistent with analyses ofUG. Rather than UG, it is the language-specific, multiply-differentiated represen-tational system which is the initial state of adult L2 acquisition. Let me rephrasethis hypothesis: The initial state of adult L2 acquisition consists of the L1-spec-ific parsing procedures and production schemata, the L1-specific contents of themental lexicon, and possibly some performance-independent knowledge store thatwe call the mental grammar of the L1.31 Consequently, this representationalsystem is also consistent with analyses of UG. It is wrong-headed to characterisethe differences between first and second language acquisition by suggesting thatchildren “access” UG while adults do not. Neither group of learners is “access-ing” UG in the sense that they are activating stored information in a UG-blackbox when they have to learn to represent, e.g. which lexical item in an incomingstring is the tensed verb. When we abandon the dynamic vocabulary whichtheists and deists alike use, we no longer can ask: Do adult L2 learners accessUG? This question simply makes no sense since the biologically-given initialrepresentational capacity is not located somewhere to be accessed. The onlylinguistic representational systems which can be initially accessed are those inwhich the L1 is encoded.

If we abandon the misleading access metaphor, we are suddenly free to aska different question: Do adult learners in fact encode L2 stimuli in the samerepresentational systems as those used to encode their L1? Or do they encode L2stimuli in some other non-linguistic systems? The debate about the FundamentalDifference Hypothesis notwithstanding, I believe that the answer to thesequestions elicits some rare consensus in the field: “Yes!” This is my interpreta-tion of the widely accepted hypothesis that adults transfer knowledge of the L1grammar to the tasks of parsing and producing the L2. Transfer is just the namewe give to the fact that L2 speech is encoded in terms of the same categoriesand patterns of the L1. Transfer appears to require as a logical necessity that theencoding systems of the L1 and the interlanguage be of the same type becausetransfer is the analysis of a phenomenon X as being an instance of category Y.

I fail to see how such equivalence relations could be established if, forexample, one were somehow to attempt to encode syllable structure patterns interms of the dynamic properties of event structures, or the temporal properties ofmusical cognition. The very idea boggles the mind. In fact, although there is


much talk about SLA involving other non-language-specific systems, no one hasmade any serious attempt to argue that phonological and morphosyntacticphenomena in interlanguage grammars indeed manifest the properties of othercodes. Thus, the existence of transfer, indeed its prevalence in characterisationsof L2 behaviour and L2 knowledge provides a strong prima facie argument forthe hypothesis that interlanguage knowledge must be encoded in the same“languages of the mind” as those used to encode the L1.

Having established that the same representational systems are used inparsing and producing L2 speech, precisely because transfer is so much inevidence, we can then ask: Do these representational systems manifest the samebasic properties as those deployed by monolingual native speakers of the L2?The answer to this question must, in my view, also be “Yes!” The UG-basedresearch cited above shows satisfactorily that interlanguages exhibit hierarchicalas well as linear order, structure dependency reflecting knowledge of syllablesand feet, maximal and intermediate morphosyntactic phrases, c-command,subjacency or other “island effects”, and other universal properties of naturallanguage systems. No one has had great difficulty in applying the constructs ofcontemporary linguistic theory to L2 data, presumably because L2 grammars arefairly well-behaved, despite what Clahsen and Muysken (1986) assert.

In short, there is an alternative position to the theist and deist positionssketched by Gregg which is consistent with the universalist/rationalist position.32

On the one hand, I deny that we will see evidence of UG in the interlanguagegrammars only insofar as structures of the L1 are transferred into the inter-language grammar, which is essentially Bley-Vroman’s position. On the otherhand, I also deny that UG operates in L2 “as it does in the L1” because to claimthis is to grossly misunderstand the putative biological basis of UG. At the sametime, I deny the assertion that UG “ceases to operate” after childhood in thesense that language acquisition must then necessarily be caused by domain-general problem-solving mechanisms completely unrelated to linguistic cognition,and that interlanguage grammars are therefore to be expected to beroguegrammars. There is no evidence to date that domain-general problem-solving canexplain any of the above-mentioned properties of interlanguages. Most claimsthat L2 acquisition takes place on the basis of problem-solving are not supportedby any serious investigation of what these general problem-solving mechanismsare, or of how they would work. The one counter-example is provided by thevarious researchers associated with the ZISA project.33

The ZISA team applied to SLA proposals by Slobin (1973, 1977, 1979;Slobin and Bever 1982) made for primary language acquisition. The purpose ofthese proposals was to show how a learner could construct morphosyntactic


representations either from a primitive semantic system or from a primitiveperceptual system. In other words, Slobin was interested in developing atransition theory. Since Slobin rejects the hypothesis that linguistic cognition isgrounded in Universal Grammar, which would delimit the basic nature of thechild’s grammatical representations, his problem was to explain how the learnercould create a grammatical mode of representation from some other non-linguis-tic mode. He developed a number of pre-theoretical strategies or procedures, hisoperating principles, which were designed to capture generalisations about thenature of early child language, while making minimal assumptions about thechild’s a priori cognitive system, and which would amount to mappings from theperceptual and the conceptual systems onto morphosyntactic representations.Slobin originally believed these proposals would be domain-general but has sincegranted that they are domain-specific since they mention units which exist onlyin linguistic representations, e.g. “Pay attention to the ends of words” (Slobin1985a: 1243). Their status in the current debate between theism and deism hastherefore become unclear, but this is ultimately unimportant. Slobin’s proposalsare in the end nothing more than descriptive generalisations desperately in needof a theory of semantics — to motivate the correspondences between the syntaxand meaning — as well as a theory of sound structure and speech perception —to motivate the correspondences between the speech signal and the syntax. SinceSlobin has no theory of structure, meaning or the perception of sounds, he has notheory of domain-general processes relevant for language acquisition. Neither dothe researchers who resort to the same domain-general strategies to describeSLA. Thus, while the research which has emerged and continues to emerge fromthe ZISA project makes a major contribution to our understanding of L2development, it cannot be used to assert that domain-general learning processesexplain SLA (see White 1991b; Epstein, Flynn and Martohardjono 1996, forother criticisms, specifically of Clahsen and Muysken 1986, 1989).34

In addition, the argumentation of Clahsen and Muysken that interlanguagesare not natural languages because they appear to require movement rules whichare not structure-preserving, root or local transformations in the sense of Emonds(1976), while clever, is ultimately unconvincing. Clahsen and Muysken’sargumentation hinges solely on the properties of rules explaining the distributionof constituents in the learners’ speech across developmental stages. In otherwords, they claim that in order to explain transitions from one interlanguagegrammar to another, one must postulate rules which move constituents to the rightin a derivation, deriving a novel morphosyntactic representation (in somethinglike the traditional notion of asurface structure) from some other more basicmorphosyntactic representation (thecanonical word order). Such rightward


movement rules are excluded from current versions of UG. Therefore, so theargument goes, such grammars are not natural-language grammars. Theseproperties, however, have to be attributed to the learners’ grammar only if oneis also forced to grant the necessity of the assumptions displayed in (2.3–2.5)

(2.3) that the data Clahsen and Muysken have at their disposal (spontaneousproduction data) is a direct reflection of the learners’ grammar and not ahybrid reflecting both properties of the grammar and the operation of theproduction system.

Since Clahsen and Muysken did not investigate what the learners could parse, wedo not know if there were significant differences between what the learnerscould cognise and what they could control in production. We need not assumethat production data is necessarily a faithful reflection of the learners’ cognisedgrammatical knowledge since there is independent evidence that learners learnspecific phenomena (that is, mentally represent them) before they attempt toproduce sentences containing those phenomena and long before they control thephenomena automatically in production (see Sharwood Smith 1986, for dis-cussion). Moreover, there are good reasons to hypothesise that what learners canproduce at a given moment in their linguistic development is severely constrainedby the nature of the production system (see Pienemann 1998a, b).

(2.4) that the data at their disposal informs us uniquely about the learners’morphosyntactic systems.

Clahsen and Muysken simply assume that because they are interested in morpho-syntax, their data is informing them about morphosyntactic representations andmorphosyntactic operations in the interlanguage grammar. Another interpretationis, however, possible, namely that when learners are at the stage where they areconsciously trying to correctly order lexical items in a sentence, they aremanipulating prosodic constituents, namely prosodic words in prosodic phrasesand intonational phrases. It could be argued, consistent with Jackendoff’s (1987)position that we project prosodic representations into conscious awareness, that whatlearners align when they consciously construct output strings which are differentfrom the over-learned patterns which the L1 production system makes available,are prosodic constituents. In other words, when learners are consciously trying toput the verb in the right place, what they are manipulating are prosodic constitu-ents in the initial construction of a phonological production schema. C-commandis irrelevant to prosodic structure, and prosodic constituentshave a much flatterorganisation than syntactic structure (Nespor and Vogel 1986). Itremains to be seenif realignments of prosodic constituents violate principles of UG.


(2.5) That the operations used to describe post hoc changes to an interlanguagegrammar can be equated with the derivational operations of the mentalgrammar.

This assumption is essential to buttress Clahsen and Muysken’s conclusion thatthe data from their L2 learners provide evidence of rules which are not permittedby UG, namely right-ward movement rules. To make this argument, we mustassume that learners are attempting to establish Slobin’s canonical word order,that is to say, a prototypical “basic sentence.” This construct is, however, notobviously compatible with the grammatical theory which Clahsen and Muyskenadopt. There certainly is no reason to assume that the learner’s mental grammarat the “verb-final” stage comprises a subject verb object order to which somekind of rightward movement rule must apply to get the constituents into thecorrect surface order. Indeed, there is no reason to assume either that learnerscreate a canonical word order to which leftward movement rules apply to deriveactual utterances.35 It is just as plausible to assert that the developmental changeinvolves adding an additional representation to those already encoded whichdirectly reflects verb-final order. Under this view, the learner constructs a varietyof representations for each sentence type and none need by regarded as more“basic” in the sense that other sentences are derived “on-line” from it. Thelearner thus maintains all previous encodings but increases over time theaccessing of those which more accurately match the L2 input.36 To summarise,one need not grant any of the points which the Clahsen and Muysken analysisrequire. Therefore, we need not assent to their claim to have shown that inter-language grammars are non-natural grammars.

Here is just once instance where the failure to be precise, in psycholinguisticterms, about the exact relationship between grammatical theory, psychogrammars,the functional architecture of the language faculty, and one’s data set leads toproblems of interpretation. What ought to strike even the casual observer is thatClahsen and Muysken’s argumentation is reallytoo clever. They do not attemptto claim that interlanguages do not exhibit truly fundamental properties of naturallanguages such as those mentioned above, although there is no reason to expectsuch properties to emerge in interlanguages through the application of generalproblem-solving mechanisms or Slobin’s operating principles. Similar remarkscan be made of Meisel (1991, 1997). Meisel’s careful analyses demonstrate quiteclearly that child L1 learners and adult L2 learners are constructing differentrepresentations and are sensitive to different sorts of properties in the input.There can be no doubt, given Meisel’s analyses, that L2 acquisition is not “justlike” L1 acquisition — a conclusion which will be further substantiated else-where in this book. Moreover, Meisel’s conclusion that parameter-resetting gives


a poor account of the L2 data appears to me to be correct. It does not follow,however, that UG has no part in a theory of SLA. It follows even less thatgeneral problem-solving mechanisms can provide a better explanation. In short,I think the critique of universals in SLA is baseless. The real problem is theinvocation of parameters to characterise linguistic change and to serve as the soleor major mechanism in a transition theory.

We need to rethink all of these claims and to return to a consideration ofthe basic problem Slobin was attempting to explain in the context of firstlanguage acquisition: How does the learner acquire linguistic knowledge on thebasis of the speech in the environment? Or, what are the answers we must giveto our Questions 1 to 4? Let us return again to Question 1:

Question 1What is the nature of the raw material on which particular grammaticalgeneralisations are formed?

My answer to this question is that the raw material depends entirely on thenature of the grammatical phenomenon to be acquired and on the nature of therepresentational system in which that phenomenon will be encoded. The rawmaterial of learning is not, therefore, the objective material of the speech signal.

2. Summary

In this chapter I have been concerned with the essential properties of an explana-tory theory of SLA. Following Gregg, I have argued that we need a propertytheory which defines for us the essential properties of grammatical systems anda transition theory which tells us how grammars can change. In addition, I haveargued that we need a processing theory which will tell us how stimuli and inputcan enter the linguistic system. Finally, we will need a theory of learning to tellus how information becomes accessible to the learning mechanisms. Neither theP&P theory nor the Competition Model captures all four aspects. The Auton-omous Induction Theory does.

Notes

1. See additional discussion in Gregg (1994a, b, 1996).

2. The same problems face the avatars of P&P theory, namely Minimalism and Optimality Theory.


3. A second mechanism linked to learning models isassociation, exploited in SLA research largelyby connectionism, embodied in the Competition Model (Bates and MacWhinney 1981; Bates,McNew, MacWhinney, Devescovi and Smith 1982; Bates, MacWhinney, and Kliegl 1984; andespecially, MacWhinney 1987a, b, 1989, 1994, 1995) and in Anderson’s Adaptive Control ofThought model (Anderson 1983, 1985). The Competition Model has spawned some veryinteresting investigations into preferred analyses of sentences by bilinguals under information-ally reduced conditions. Some of this research will be discussed in more detail later in the book.The ACT model gets occasional mention in the SLA literature, see Towell and Hawkins (1994),or Johnson (1996) but to my knowledge has been largely ignored in empirical studies. I willhave nothing further to say about it except to point out that no theory of language acquisitionbased on simple association will ever explain the complexity of the linguistic competence of L2learners. Anderson (p.c., 1995) grants that a priori knowledge must play an important role inexplaining linguistic competence. As he put it so succinctly: “Language is different!”

4. See Brière (1968), Selinker (1972), Tarone (1972), Flege (1987), Flege and Munro (1994), andCarroll (1992) among other studies for empirical evidence as to this sensitivity.

5. It is still an open question as to what the most basic properties of interlanguage grammars are,and what constitutes convincing evidence for knowledge of language-specific universals. At theearliest stages of linguistic production, for example, interlanguage grammars have been said toprovide strong evidence for a paratactic organisation involving, among other functionalproperties, adjacency but specifically not embedding, see, for example, the discussion in Sato(1990: 29 et passim). Despite claims to the contrary, however, (see Perdue 1996), L2 learnersdo not, in fact, produce strings clearly contravening the c-command constraint on predication.Strings like in my apartment no goodare not multiply ambiguous and, in particular, are notconstrued — and are not intended to be construed — as saying any of ; , ; or , (or reference to some othercontextually desirable but not physically present object). In this string, the learner correctlymaps a onto a PP, followed by a negation intended to deny the principal predication.Modifiers operate locally (itself a notion requiring constituency) and predication applies (asrequired by English) to the left, not to the right. All of this suggests knowledge of the relevantunderlying structural distinctions. Equally important, there is no evidence that if learners heardsuch a sentence asin my apartment no good, they would attempt to construct any of theinterpretations just given. Learners ability to make use of local relations in constructinginterpretations of utterances must also be explained. In addition, what has been glossed over inmost of the literature discussing paratactic organisation, is that such strings preserve theprominence patterns of English prosodic phrases (prominence final). We can just as readilyconclude that at this stage of development, speech production is constrained by what the learnercan simultaneously encode syntactically and map onto a Prosodic Utterance. It may be thatsyntactic complexity gets sacrificed in the interest of prosodic wellformedness. This might beeither a problem arising from inadequate linguistic encoding or it might be a performanceproblem arising from the learner’s inability to simultaneously process several levels of encodingwithin the constraints imposed by working memory. Only appropriate empirical studies willshed light on this issue. Finally, I should say something about subjacency in interlanguagegrammars since both Schachter (1990) and Johnson and Newport (1991) have argued on thebasis of data involving acceptability judgement tasks that L2 learners do not cognise subjacencyin the L2. I am presently sceptical of the validity of these conclusions because acceptabilityjudgements tasks are metalinguistic in nature (Birdsong 1989; Schütze 1995) and, therefore, aswill be argued here, involve information encoded in the conceptual system. Since learners arenot producing strings which violate subjacency, I take this as evidence (admittedly weak


evidence, but evidence nonetheless) that interlanguage grammars do not violate subjacency.Alternatively, some scholars (Berwick and Weinberg 1984; Hawkins 1994, 1996) have arguedthat subjacency is a property of the morphosyntactic parsers. Whether subjacency then belongsto the learner’sinterlanguage grammarwill then depend upon how this term is understood.

6. Some researchers have taken variability to be an essential characteristic of interlanguagegrammars (Tarone 1988). Others have argued (Singh, D’Anglejan, and Carroll 1983) that thereis no evidence that interlanguage grammars are more variable than monolingual ones.

7. See Labov (1963, 1966, 1972a, b), Trudgill (1972, 1974), L. Milroy (1980), J. Milroy (1992)and Chambers (1995) for much discussion and empirical evidence on the subtle forms ofacquired linguistic knowledge and the richness of the systematic variation.

8. Truscott (1998a) makes a stab at integrating InstanceTheory into SLA. It is far too early topredict what effects this effort might have on the field.

9. Attempting to sort out the variation problem from the variability problem in UG theorising isnot easy. Liceras (1988) wades through the conceptual confusions arising from the markednessliterature, and the attempt to characterise thecore grammarof a specific language, arisingstrictly from the constraints of UG, as opposed to theperipheral grammarof that samelanguage, arising from making analogies, relaxing constraints of UG and learning. Unfortunate-ly, this distinction, which could do some real work for SLA theorising, has virtually disap-peared from public discussion.

10. Golinkoff (1999) makes the same point in connection with a discussion of how children learnthe words of their first language.

11. On typological universals, see Greenberg (1966), Ferguson and Moravcsik (1978), Comrie(1981), Hawkins (1983, 1988a).

12. I might add here, as a syntactician trained in generative linguistics, that I find the general level ofcritical evaluation of new proposals in linguistic theory, made by SLA generativists, pretty low,much lower than that witnessed within grammatical theory itself. Grammarians demand that novelproposals explain at least as much data as the old theory; SLA theorists ought to do the same.

13. Optimality Theoretic approaches to universals, optionality, divergence and variation are in theirinfancy in SLA, see Sorace (in press), Hancin-Bhatt and Bhatt (1997). I will set aside anydiscussion of their relevance to the characterisation of universals and L2 acquisition.

14. Shifting the locus of variation to the “interfaces” between syntax and meaning or syntax andphonology, as is proposed in Minimalism does not dull this critique, for to the extent thatparameter-setting must interact with, or even be dependent upon, concept or form learning, itceases to be deterministic and tightly constrained. The problem of making UG compatible withinduction becomes acute in such an approach.

15. I think this isnot the appropriate definition of successful L2 learning which should, instead, bedefined in terms of stimuli and input.

16. The Subset Principle is a principle formulated in L1 acquisition to ensure that learning canproceed on the basis of essentially normal speech to the child, without feedback and correction.Given analyses of input which could be generated by either of two grammars meeting theSubset Condition, the learner automatically adopts the most restrictive one. The SubsetCondition thus holds whenever two grammars describe the same set of sentences but one ofthem (the superset grammar) will also describe additional sentences. Note that there is noevidence that the Subset Principle needs to hold in SLA since learners do learn linguisticinformation from feedback and correction (thenegative evidenceof Chapter 1). White(1989b: Ch. 6) re-interprets the Subset Principle as a principle holding of parameter-setting


relations and discusses a number of empirical studies which show that it doesnot in factoperate in SLA even in this narrower interpretation. White (1989a) examines adjacency relationsin interlanguage grammars and comes to the same conclusions.

17. Although Archibald (1998: 66) has pointed out that parameter-resetting can only be understoodin the context of a theory of cues appropriate to a parameter. Raising the trigger-problem tendsto induce a lot of hand-waving in the direction of the first language acquisition literature, as ifproposals from that domain can slip seamlessly into SLA. They don’t. For one example ofappropriate research, see Liceras (1999).

18. This has obvious consequences for claims like those in Saleemi (1992) that there is a frequencythreshold to be associated with parameter-setting. In the absence of a definition of cues ortriggers, it is impossible to test such an hypothesis.

19. See Kail (1989), MacWhinney (1978), MacWhinney, Pléh, and Bates (1985), MacWhinney,(1989), and McDonald (1984, 1986, 1989).

20. Archibald’s adoption of the Dresher and Kaye (1990) trigger-based approach to parameterresetting of parameters relevant to stress is a case in point. Archibald merely assumes that thesystem can be taken over without change, meaning that the perception of stressed andunstressed syllables, rhythm, and “edges” of prosodic units has to occur independently of thelearner’s L1 grammar in order for parameter-resetting to take place. But there is no reason tobelieve, and indeed good reason not to believe, that L2 learners perceive rhythm and stressindependently of the L1 grammar, as Archibald (1994) has himself shown. If learners come tobe able to perceive new patterns of stress, it is precisely because something else in the systemhas already been acquired.

21. One proposal, namely that the contents of the L1 grammar, including parameter-settings, iscopied into the contents of the L2 “box” does not of itself deal with this issue since we stillneed to explain why the contents of the L2 box can restructure given a bit of data but thecontents of the L1 box cannot. At the very least, we might need to assume that the learner’slearning is guided by some mental model of what language the stimuli belong to, but this wouldappear to tie parameter-resetting to metalinguistic knowledge in a way which no P&P theoristis likely to accept.

22. C-command is a relation operative across nodes in morphosyntactic representations whichconstrains a variety of relations holding of sentence structures and correspondences betweenconceptual representations and their syntactic instantiations. There are various versions of therelation, a common one is “A nodex c-commands a nodey iff x andy do not dominate oneanother and the first branching node dominatingx also dominatesy” (Reinhart 1976, 1983). TheNo Crossing Lines Constraint is a constraint holding of autosegmental representations in thephonology which requires tiers to be strictly linearly ordered relative to one another. Constitu-ents on different tiers would not be strictly ordered if the association lines linking them wereallowed to cross one another. See Kenstowicz (1994: 317).

23. Most of the experimental work done within the Competition Model has examined various cuesfor semantic role, in particular agentivity. Anyone hearing a sentence which contains a verbassigning Agent and Patient semantic roles will decide who did what to whom. How he goesabout doing it is the processing question. What the Competition Model attempts to show is thatlanguage users vary in the kinds of information or cues they exploit since languages vary onsuch matters as constituent and phrase orders, case-marking, agreement, and so on. Theobservation is sound and the conclusion probably justified. However, we are not required toaccept the Competition Model’s account of how this happens. The experiments done consistent-ly say that variousword ordersare investigated; NVN, NNV and VNN are usually listed.


However, in many of the experiments conducted, this description is inaccurate for subjects seeor hearnoun phrases. Now noun phrases have their own internal structure, and there is noreason to assume, indeed the typological literature suggests otherwise, that the internal structureof the noun phrase is completely independent of the internal structure of the clause, as theCompetition Model researchers all apparently assume. I am suggesting, in other words, thatanyone learning a language whose NP is head initial has a good cue that the VP order will alsobe head initial. Similar remarks can be made about the relationship between the internalstructure of PPs or other major categories. There is no reason to assume that the only cues forhow to relate noun phrases to verbs must be found in the order of nouns to verbs, or in themappings between the possible semantic roles played by noun phrases and the semantic rolesassigned by those verbs. This patterned relationship has received extensive discussion in avariety of grammatical theories, and indeed can be seen as the fundamental idea behind theX-bar theory of phrase structure (Jackendoff 1977), and some of the parameters of the P&Ptheory (Koopman 1984; Travis 1984, 1989). In ignoring the theoretical linguistic literature, theCompetitors have deprived themselves of an important source of ideas about the nature of cuesand their relationship to parsing decisions. Pye (1989: 129–30) makes the same point.

24. “Other critics have, in all sincerity, accused us of not believing in grammar at all! Of course webelieve in grammar, and in grammatical diversity.”

25. The Competition Model has also been criticised for not being explicit about how stimulibecome input to learning mechanisms, see Gibson (1992).

26. Talking of “isms” and “ists” obscures the finessing and adjustments which emerge from carefulreadings of research over the years. More specifically, we would need to infer that early White(White 1984, 1985a, b, 1986, 1987a) — but perhaps not later White (White 1989a, 1990/1991)— Suzanne Flynn (Flynn 1983, 1987, 1989a, b; Flynn and Espinal 1985), Hilles (1986) — butnot Hilles (1991) — Marianne Phinney (Phinney 1987), Bonnie Schwartz (Schwartz 1992),Lakshmanan (1993/1994) — but not Lakshmanan (1989, 1994), and Margaret Thomas (1989,1993) are all theists. Whether those who stand accused would admit their guilt is a separatematter. Other researchers who pursue a P&P agenda, e.g. Finer (1991), Eubank (1991, 1992) orThomas (1995) are hard to classify in Gregg’s terms.

27. Including the idea that the construct itself is seriously flawed. See Grosjean (1985, 1989).Notice that the question of whether there is a critical period for the acquisition of specificfeatures of grammars is a separate, although related, matter.

28. See also the critique in Epstein, Flynn, and Martohardjono (1996: 681) which focuses on theways in which Bley-Vroman confounds representational and processing issues better kept apart.

29. Gregg (1996: 73) and Meisel (1991) make the same point. Gregg informs me (p.c., 1995) thatit does not make the theist/deist debate meaningless. I disagree because I am convinced thatwhen SLA P&P researchers actually take the trouble to define the object of their theory — UG— in psycholinguistic terms, i.e. in terms of the relation of the relevant constructs to speechperception, language processing, storage, retrieval, and language production, it will becomeapparent that principles and parameters are (i) not a representation put to use in a parsingsystem, (ii) not a mechanism of a learning device, and (iii) not a compiling process in aproduction system. If they are elements of a representational system which somehow informsthe parser — and they are universal — then they can have no role to play in characterisingchange in the learner’s interlanguage, i.e. in characterising change from the particularities of onegrammatical state to the particularities of another.

30. This is inaccurate since we now know that neonates can hear their mother’s voice before birthand have learned to distinguish at least some of its acoustic properties by birth.


31. To simplify the presentation, I will assume that linguistic competence consists of a perform-ance-independent mental grammar — a distinct “box” in the functional architecture of the mind.It would not matter much, however, if what we call “linguistic competence” were to consist ofgrammatical distinctions implicit in a variety of types of procedural knowledge lying behind ourability to parse speech, to produce it, to read and write text, to carry out metalinguistic taskslike putting an active sentence into the passive, to make acceptability judgements, and so on.See the discussion of the processing account of memory in Chapter 1.

32. I set aside here the “atheists”, the advocates of theories of acculturation (Schumann 1978),affective variables (Gardner 1985), variation (Ellis 1985; Tarone 1988), and discourse function(Hatch 1978a), who provide neither property nor transition theories, and therefore, cannot hopeto offer us an explanatory language learning theory. See Gregg (1990, 1993, 1994b) for to-the-point discussion.

33. See Meisel, Clahsen and Pienemann (1981), Clahsen, Meisel and Pienemann (1983), Clahsen,(1984, 1987, 1988), Clahsen and Muysken (1986, 1989), Meisel (1983, 1987, 1991, 1995), andPienemann (1981). Note that O’Grady’s proposals, dubbedgeneral nativism(O’Grady 1987,1991, 1996) are explicitly not concerned with problem-solving, and hence cannot count as a“serious investigation” of the same. Since I will be examining evidence in Chapters 4 and 6 thatlanguage is not the only cognitive domain exhibiting autonomous properties, and hencediscussing evidence against general nativism, I will not pursue it further.

34. To be fair to Clahsen, Meisel and Pienemann, it should be pointed out that their publishedproposals were based on research now 20 years old! All of them are aware of the limitations ofthese proposals in the light of subsequent research. Pienemann (1998a, b) has, moreover,recouched the findings of the earlier work in terms of hisProcessability Theory, a theory whichdeals exclusively with constraints on learner speech in production. Processability Theory is notincompatible with the hypothesis that mental grammars are encoded in representational systemsspecific to language and manifesting universal constraints.

35. While French is often claimed to have canonical SVO order, Charvillat and Kail (1991)discussed a number of studies which show that French speech, in particular the kind of speechused to and by young children, displays other orders due to the prevalence of left dislocationsof the le petit châton, il regarde la souris‘the+ little kitten, he looks-at the+ mouse’type. The heavy use of dislocations is, of course, a property of discourse and not to beexplained purely in terms of a theory of French sentence grammar. Charvillat and Kail alsoprovided on-line data from a word monitoring task which show that subjects (both children andadults) disregard linear order when processing sentences involving NPs and clitic pronouns indislocated sentences, meaning that the psycholinguistic status of word order in sentences withclitics and sentences without is quite different.

36. Another option is the tactic that DuPlessis, Solan, Travis and White (1987) take, which is toconsider a variety of restructurings whose effects are not directly visible in the production data.

C 3

The representational and developmental problemsof language acquisition

1. Introduction

In Chapters 1 and 2, I made the claim that developing an explanatory theory ofSLA will necessarily involve finding a way to link a theory of grammar totheories of perception, parsing and speech production and then to link theresulting product to a theory of language acquisition. I cited Kevin Gregg’swritings and talked about property and transition theories of language. A theoryof grammar embedded in a theory of speech processing can provide us with aproperty theory of language. It defines the nature of linguistic distinctions,namely what the basic primitives of language are, and how those primitives areorganised into more complex units and structures in individual psychogrammars.Just as importantly, a property theory spells out what representations cannot be.A property theory relevant for language acquisition will therefore specify thecontents of representations of an I-language, by hypothesis what the speaker/hearer cognises of her language. A property theory of language is thus needed tohelp us explain what Felix (1986: 82) calls therepresentational problemoflanguage acquisition, which turns on questions like: What is the nature of therepresentational systems in which linguistic knowledge is encoded in the maturespeaker/hearer? What are the limits of variation amongst the representationsneeded to account for knowledge of different languages? How do the representa-tional systems in which language is encoded arise in the species? How are theylike the representational systems of other faculties? In what respects are theyunique? Also included will be questions like: What is the functional architectureof the language faculty? Given a specific representational system, what processeslead to the encoding of stimuli? How does intake become input to a specificlanguage processor? How do representations of one type interact during process-ing with representations of another type?


Notice that this is not your average characterisation of the representationalproblem of language. While discussion of it may begin with issues addressedexclusively by a theory of grammar, it should not end there. In other words, theproperty theory can and must be explored in at least two differentdescriptivemodes— structural and process.1 As Jackendoff (1983, 1987) has emphasised,contemporary American psychology (and indeed this is also true of muchpsycholinguistic research) has investigated process at the expense of structure. Ifeel that the most recent research in SLA which takes its inspiration from thetheory of grammar has emphasised structure over process, as if a theory ofgrammatical description could substitute for a theory of language processing.2

Structure and process are inseparable in language acquisition, but they aredistinct ways of thinking about language and we need to find a coherent way oflinking them while preserving their distinctiveness. One way to do this is tointegrate mental grammars into a language processing framework in such a waythat the processes are defined as operations which build mental representations,some of which are categories, some of which are structures. One of the advan-tages of classic symbolic approaches to processing is that they allow us to definethe distinctions language users make in both categorial and structural terms andto define learning as the process of coming to encode the relevant distinctions(see Carroll 1989, for discussion). Thus, if a learner does not cognise eithergender subclasses or embedded clauses, meaning that she cannot parse orspontaneously produce them in her own speech, we interpret this to mean thatshe cannot represent the relevant gender categories or the relevant structures forembedded clauses. Learning gender subclasses would mean then cognising aformal distinction among the subclasses of nouns and learning to identify thecues which signal inclusion in one subclass or another. Learning embeddingwould mean either learning the operations needed to build sentential comple-ments (if we have reason to think that they are altogether absent from theinterlanguage grammar), or learning to apply extant operations to encoderepresentations in just the way demanded by the input.3

Consider another example. We noted in Chapter 2 that it has often beenargued that early interlanguage grammars have paratactic organisation. One wayto interpret such a claim is to assume that learners initially construct “flat”representations of utterances, as in (3.1a). Learning appropriate grammaticalstructures would mean that the learner constructs “deeper” constructions, as in(3.1b). The structure in (3.1b) represents a minimal expansion of the paratacticorganisation of (3.1a); adopting a theory of syntax which motivates richer phrasalstructure might justify imputing a more complex representation of the utteranceMe be British.

PROBLEMS OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 67

(3.1) a. paratactic organisation4

E

NP NP

N N

me British

b. syntactic organisation5

E

NP VP

N

me

V

be

NP

N

British

In this book, talk of process should be construed as talk about what happenswhen language parsing and production mechanisms construct mental representa-tions which are, in effect, categorial and structural objects. Once this step ismade, it becomes possible to ask how language acquisition mechanisms couldcome to encode the specific processes which build structures and create theirconstituent parts. Given this perspective, it becomes possible to explain why anadequate theory of SLA must be grounded in a property theory of languageadopting structural constructs provided by UG, and including the basic notion ofautonomous levels of representation. Language acquisition simply is the encodingof the relevant categorial and structural distinctions in the appropriate representa-tional “language.”

Nevertheless, and despite my interest in focusing on language processingand its connection to a theory of acquisition, I feel obliged to begin with a morethorough discussion of representational matters. In Chapters 3 and 4, I thereforeintend to examine in some detail how we might conceptualise acquisition inrepresentational terms. This is necessary in order to tease apart, first of all, issuesrelated to innateness and maturation (and hence to Universal Grammar) fromthose related to induction and instance-based learning and, ultimately, to positiveevidence, correction, feedback and other environmentally determined influences


on learning. I shall argue in this chapter that if UG is construed as a set ofpotentialities available to children in the absence of exposure to linguistic stimuli,then UG cannot be “accessed” by older learners (child or adult). As noted inChapter 2, UG is simply not encoded in longterm memory and therefore cannotbe “accessed” by any group of learners. The “accessing” metaphor misrepresentsin a fundamental way the hypothesis that UG is innate. A focus on representationis also necessary to broach the topic of what initiates learning. In Chapter 1, Istated that language acquisition is “input driven” in the sense that learningmechanisms are triggered when parsing of an input fails. Parsing will fail whenthe parser does not include a parsing procedure capable of analysing an inputdatum. Correcting a parse fail will mean constructing a new procedure capableof encoding a novel representation. But this hypothesis requires that we distin-guish carefully between processes of encoding on the parsing and productionsides of performance. In addition, we will have to distinguish between on-linerestructurings and off-line reorganisations or consolidations of representations inlongterm memory. On-line restructurings can be assumed to be input drivenwhile the reorganisations described in Chapter 1 as representational redescriptionappear to have some other source whose operations are little understood. Finally,we must distinguish between grammar restructuring and the strengthening ofencodings which makes accessing representations faster and more reliable. Imight hear and represent bothVórtrag (with stress on the first syllable) andVertrág (with stress on the second) and understand from the context, or becausesomeone has told me, that the former expresses the idea of a talk or a collo-quium or a public presentation while the latter denotes a contract. I might also beable to systematically discriminate between them when someone else uses them,but still activate both and hesitate between them whenever I myself want to askmy secretary to prepare a contract for a student: Is the right formVórtrag orVertrág, Vortrág or Vértrag; Which form should I say? Activation-based modelsof memory permit us to characterise such phenomena. Finally, we need clarifica-tion in order to make sense of current debates about the role of UG in SLA, asopposed to association-based models like the Competition Model or problem-solving type approaches like those suggested by Clahsen and Muysken (1986) orSchachter (1992).

At this point in the discussion, it is appropriate to return to the contributionsof various acquisition theories to the issues at hand. Recall from the discussionin Chapter 2 that Gregg makes the point that many of the past or currentproposals in the SLA literature, which have been drawn largely from develop-mental and social psychology, fail to constitute even an approximation to anexplanatory theory of second language acquisition. This judgement, while a harsh


one, strikes me as being correct. McLaughlin (1987), Ellis (1990), Larsen-Freeman and Long (1991), Towell and Hawkins (1994), and Meisel (in prepara-tion) all provide detailed reviews of the SLA literature. These reviews reveal thatfew of the various proposals provide answers to the representational problem ofhow learners could come to have encoding systems with the properties needed toinstantiate grammatical knowledge. Indeed, few of them recognise it as a centralissue (hence Gregg’s critique). Past and current proposals fall far short of explana-tion of how learners learn because most of them fail to specify with any precisionwhat learners learn. In the absence of a treatment of the contents of knowledge, itis hardly surprising that the literature also fails to address the problem of howlearners learn on the basis of the actual stimuli that they hear or read. In contrast,P&P theory, insofar as it offers a complete and explicit theory of grammar, meetsthe requirement of defining what language structures are.6 A theory of what itmeans to be a human language can be seen as setting the outer boundaries on atheory of language learning. A consideration of the representational problem oflanguage acquisition alone forces us to turn our back on most of what passes inSLA as acquisition theory. But there are other reasons to be interested in P&Ptheory. Explicitness as to what is being represented permits explicitness aboutlanguage processing. It is possible in principle to integrate some version of P&Ptheory into models of processing (both parsing and production).Principle-basedparsing theoriesexist (Pritchett 1992; Gorrell 1995) and are beginning to beexplored in SLA by Juffs (1998a, b) who has examined such issues as thedivergence of grammatical competence and parsing abilities in very advanced L2speaker/hearers. Taken together, P&P theory and principle-based parsing theoriesgive us a rich picture of the human language representational capacity.

Now let us look at acquisition in developmental terms. We have said weneed a transition theory, which will explain how and why grammars restructure.Transition theories are designed to explain thedevelopmental problemof lan-guage acquisition (Felix 1986: 82). Research questions related to the develop-mental problem are: How do representations change over time from some initialstage to the final steady state? What initiates the restructuring of a representa-tion? Are developmental changes local or global? Why does restructuring stop?Is the representational system subject to stimulus-independent processes of inte-gration and reorganisation, or is developmental change always dependent uponthe processing of stimuli and/or input? Related to this last question are theadditional questions: Must learning be driven by errors? Does it respond to nega-tive evidence? P&P theory offers interesting ideas to some of these questions, inparticular, the hypothesis that a small change in one part of the grammar canhave broad-ranging consequences in other, seemingly unrelated parts. P&P theory


also offers a principled basis for restructuring insofar as it requires a theory oftriggers, the latter being the necessary input to the learning mechanisms whichwill inform the learner how a given parameter is to be set. But here we begin tosee the gap between the promise of the P&P theory and the focus of SLAresearch. Triggering in SLA has been broached (although not solved) in thecontext of accent systems in SLA research adopting generative phonology(Archibald 1991, 1993, 1994, 1999). Archibald follows Dresher and Kaye (1990)and Dresher (1999) in assuming that a theory of parameters must include atheory of triggers. UG, in other words, must provide the learner with informationas to what a possible trigger can be. Whether it is conceptually plausible or evenpossible to stipulate triggers for morphosyntactic parameters like the null subjectparameter (or pro-drop parameter) or the verb raising parameter across a rangeof languages and language types is far from obvious. I will provide an argumentbelow that it cannot be the case that UG provides an independent list of triggersfor verb raising. In general, the subject of triggers has been largely ignored in theSLA literature, meaning that a major research effort is required if the P&Ptheory, as a theory of development, is ever to be more than a “promissory note.”Nevertheless, it is possible to map out a research strategy for an SLA theorywhich takes P&P as its core. Seen in this light, the SLA P&P research of the last15 years might be seen as laying the foundation for the creation of a transitiontheory of language development. If so, the appropriate question would then be:Where do we go from here?

We have seen that one of the primary arguments against P&P theory inSLA arises from the fact that at least some researchers appear to have beenmisled by the dynamic metaphor of “switch-setting” and treat UG as if it werean acquisition mechanism directly involved in the construction of mentalrepresentations. While I want to argue that categories, structures and mentalrepresentations arepsychologically realin the relevant sense, I want to deny thatparameters are. Parameters cannot be representations in a psychogrammar whichare “accessed” by learning mechanisms. But supposing that we correct thisfundamental misinterpretation of P&P theory, one might then ask: If P&P theoryoffers so much promise, surely the sensible research strategy would be to adoptit and fix the problems, would it not? We gain nothing by adopting the vagueviews of language prevalent in so much of the SLA literature. While the logicexpressed is impeccable, my answer is “No”, for the simple reason that I do notbelieve that P&P theory can be fixed. My reasons for this were partly stated inChapter 2 and will become clearer as we proceed through Chapter 3. But first weneed to see what the central characteristics of the P&P theory are. In the nextsection, I sketch out what I take them to be.


2. Principles and parameters theory (P&P)

2.1 P&P theory: the core ideas

Generative theories come in many forms — the Principles and Parameters theory(Chomsky 1981b, 1986, 1988, 1991a, b; Chomsky and Lasnik 1995) and its mostrecent offshoot Minimalism (Chomsky 1991c, 1994, 1995), Lexical FunctionalGrammar (Bresnan 1978, 1982; Kaplan and Bresnan 1982), Generalised PhraseStructure Grammar (Gazdar, Klein, Pullum, and Sag 1985) and its avatar HeadDriven Phrase Structure Grammar, or Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolenski1993; McCarthy and Prince 1995; Grimshaw 1997). They are all part of the“generative enterprise” insofar as they attempt to model linguistic cognitionagainst a backdrop of presumed linguistic universals. All of them meet therequirement of providing formal definitions of language, and, therefore, couldunderpin acquisition studies. To date, however, with the exception of work byManfred Pienemann (1998a, b), almost all generative SLA research has beencouched in the P&P theory.7 Its impact in the area of SLA morphosyntax inparticular has been decisive. This is so even though the research agenda of P&Ptheory raises some rather odd problems for acquisition theory.8 Why should P&Ptheory been adopted so readily in SLA? What is the nature of its appeal?

The P&P framework consists of a number of core ideas. The most importantis that linguistic cognition arises out of the interplay of linguistic stimuli and aspecies-specific cognitive faculty whose essential properties are biologicallygiven. The language faculty consists of an innate knowledge system, calledUniversal Grammar, and an innate language acquisition device, or LAD, whoseoperations are somehow constrained in such a way as to respect UG.9 UG is thatknowledge of language which humans possess in the absence of exposure tospeech. It constitutes therefore the initial state of linguistic knowledge which theinfant brings to the task of learning the first language. Knowledge of the L1,described as constituting the final state of the speaker/hearer, can be characterisedas arising as a by-product of UG in interaction with the environment.

The second central idea is that UG makes available for the construction ofindividual grammars neither rules, as they are normally understood, nor construc-tions like questions or the passive. Rule-learning has been rejected since it seemsto rely on a mechanism of hypothesis-formation and hypothesis-testing. Theformer is viewed as too unconstrained and the latter as computationally toocostly. Constructions are viewed as an epiphenomenon and this claim providesthe essential insight into the P&P approach to language-specific generalisations— they arise from the operation of sets of abstract universal principles and


parameters, the latter being a set of options as to how the universals should apply(Chomsky 1995: 6).

A third central idea is that problems of language variation and languagetypology can be characterised as the differential setting of the parametersprovided by UG. If one assumes that the variation among the grammars describedby typologists arises as a result of first language acquisition processes, thoseprocesses can then be construed as the selection of specific parameter settings inconjunction with learned properties of specific lexical items (Chomsky 1995: 6–7).

A fourth idea is that the principles of UG exhibit certain sorts of commona-lities. On the one hand, there are principles which are relevant to the characteri-sation of sentence derivations, namely transformations and the conditions on theiroperation, as well as the licensing conditions on representations. Licensingconditions include such properties as that nouns must be assigned abstract case,or that a verb must be assigned a tense feature. On the other hand, principles areorganised in terms of distinct subsystems, calledmodules, dealing with subpartsof the grammar, e.g. binding theory, case theory,θ-theory etc. (Chomsky andLasnik 1995: 27). This distinction is necessitated by the fact that these modulesor subparts of the grammar may or may not operate within a single level ofrepresentation. In P&P theory, in addition to a level of sound representationcalled PF (forphonetic form), a grammar also contains a level of morphosyntac-tic representation, with three distinct sublevels — D-structure (which reflectsdirectly the argument structure of expressions drawn from the lexicon), S-struc-ture (which feeds PF and organises the linear order of expressions), and LF (forlogical form) which presents the conceptual system with a disambiguatedsyntactic structure for the purposes of characterising scope phenomena and othersyntactically determined types of ambiguity. See Chomsky and Lasnik (1995).10

What exactly is the form of UG? This is the sixty thousand dollar questionand we all wish we knew the answer. Stating with any confidence any particularclaim from the perspective of the theory of grammar is difficult, especially at themoment, insofar as the various ideas which were commonplace in the 1980s havebeen modified dramatically in the early 1990s and then even rejected completelyas P&P theory has merged into Minimalism, on the one hand, and OptimalityTheory, on the other. I will limit myself to those ideas which have had aninfluence on SLA thinking, which means basically focusing on ideas prevalent inthe 1980s and early 1990s. I will divide the discussion into two parts, lookingfirst at substantive universals and then at formal universals.


2.2 Universal Grammar: substantive universals

Substantive universals are those features from which the basic constituents andclasses of a language must be drawn. This featural vocabulary instantiates speechsounds and the atomic units and phrases of the morphosyntax. In Chapter 1, ina discussion of how transducers feed input to phonological processors, I spokeof features, segments (consonants and vowels) and CV syllables. These areessential units or forms of the sound system (the phonology of a language). Atheory of grammar must provide a basic vocabulary from which the soundsystem of any language is constructed. It is therefore assumed that UG providesa set of primitive phonetic features which capture both acoustic and articulatoryaspects of speech perception and speech production. The language specificrepertoire of segments and prosodic units of a given language (morae, syllables,feet, prosodic words, etc.) will be constructed from this set of primitives.11 Thebasic typology of prosodic units is also provided by UG. As for morphosyntacticrepresentations, they consist of lexical categories (like noun, verb, adjective, orparticle — covering both prepositions and postpositions) and functional cat-egories (like tense, aspect, number, case, etc.). By hypothesis, it is assumed thatlexical and functional categories are derived from primitive morphosyntacticfeatures. The basic categorial features [±N, ±V] are cited in the relevant literaturebut a richer typology must be available in order to formally distinguish thenumerous word classes of most languages.12 The basic atomic units of thesentence combine in various ways to form phrasal categories. It is assumed thatthe combinations instantiate function-argument pairs with the features of thefunctors either selecting or licensing lexical categories and/or their projections.Selection is usually discussed in terms of idiosyncratic relations between pairs ofunits, as when the transitive verbpaint semantically and categorially selects anNP and an AdjP in sentences likeJessica painted her face green. Licensing ishypothesised to be a general relationship regulating the occurrence of specificcategories and features, for example, as when wh-words are said to be licensedin Spec of CP by a wh-feature in Comp under Spec-Head agreement. UG alsorequires that phrasal categories include a lexical head and that complements andspecifiers be attached to heads in such a way that the scope of specifiers bestructurally determined and complements and heads form “local domains.”Finally, UG provides for certain correspondences between the morphosyntax andconceptual structures. Derived phrasal categories are put into correspondencewith referential categories. Thus noun phrases will typically express individualsor THINGS, while verb phrases will typically express ACTIONS and adjectivephrases often express PROPERTIES (see Jackendoff 1983). Categorial selection


has been argued to derive from semantic selection (Pesetsky 1982).Not all features, categories or classes are, however, instantiated in the

grammar of every language. The interpretation of the universality of UGmoreover does not require this. Rather, the substantive universals are usuallyviewed as potential elements of a language — a language learner must choosefrom the set provided but need not choose everything. In this respect UniversalGrammar is more like dim sum than a menu fixe. It constrains the set ofofferings but does not impose a specific choice on every learner. It is usuallyhypothesised that UG provides a full set of basic features and that childrensomehow recognise which ones are needed in their particular L1, based on thestimuli available, using the stimuli to derive input which in turn are used toconstruct the relevant L1 categories. Thus, children learning Polynesian lan-guages will construct V and CV syllables based on the shape of the words theyhear, while children learning French will construct V, CV, VC, CVC, CCV,VCC, and CVCC syllables, again based on the shapes of the phonological wordsconstituting input to the learning mechanisms. Similarly, children learningEnglish will learn to construct sentences containing V NP NP frames, where theNPs are morphologically indistinguishable, presumably on the basis of stimulilike Give me that glass. Children learning Finnish do not since NPs in Finnishmust be morphologically case-marked.

Now at precisely this point, the discussion in the theory of grammarliterature tends to end, since the specification of the basic repertoire of primitivesand a categorial typology appears to exhaust the representational problem.Discussion within the theory of grammar thus leaves entirely unanswered thedevelopmental question: How does the child construct the appropriate categoriesof the L1? This is a complex issue as yet little understood. Moreover, it is atopic about which P&P theorists have said very little. The logic of P&P theoryas a theory of linguistic development would appear to require that children knowhow to construct the categories of their language in the absence of input or onthe basis of minimal bits of evidence. Certainly there are good reasons tosuppose that in specific cases children are indeed inevitably drawn to avoidparticular types of category-building although the resulting categories might belogically possible. As is well-known, there are constraints on how phoneticfeatures can combine to form segments, for example, a vowel cannot be simulta-neously [+high, +low] because the tongue cannot simultaneously be below andabove neutral position in the mouth. Such constraints are functional and arisefrom the nature of human anatomy. Others, such as the fact that highly resonantsegments constitute the nucleus of a syllable while less resonant segmentsoccupy slots on the edges appear to arise from general properties of perception


which requires maxima and minima of sonority to encode sequences of units.Such constraints do not require the postulation of parameters. Consequently,although languages vary according to the number and types of categories theymake use of and there are important restrictions on how categories can combine,the typology of categories has not lent itself as yet to the development of anexplicit theory of parameters with deductive consequences for phonetics andphonology.13 Similar remarks can be made about the typology of morpho-syntactic categories. To my knowledge, no one has proposed a set of parametersto explain why English speakers distinguish auxiliaries, modals and verbs ortransitive and intransitive prepositions alongside particles. Such categories existsimply because the facts of the language require that we postulate them. Now itis at precisely this point that we stub our toes on some of the more extremestatements to emerge from the P&P literature. The question of how the language-specific categories of a language are to be constructed within a theory whichtolerates no talk of rule-learning, constructions, pattern learning, induction,association and so on, remains unaddressed let alone resolved.

Category construction does get discussed in the L1 acquisition literature inrelation to the variousbootstrapping hypotheseswhich are designed to explainessentially how a learner might be led to construct morphosyntactic categories onthe basis of prior knowledge of categories at other levels of representation. Wefind in this literature thesemantic bootstrapping hypothesis(Grimshaw 1981;Gleitman and Wanner 1982; Macnamara 1982; Pinker 1984, 1987; Gleitman,Gleitman, Landau and Wanner 1988), thesyntactic bootstrapping hypothesis(Gleitman 1990), and theprosodic bootstrapping hypothesis(Gleitman andWanner 1982; Morgan 1986; Morgan, Meier and Newport 1987; Morgan andDemuth 1996). In all cases, the argument is that learners are driven by a prioritendencies or predispositions to map categories of one level of representationonto categories of another level of representation. The alternative to encodingcategories in this fashion involves learning distributional cues to categorylocation and inducing the categories from such distributional cues (Braine 1963,1966, 1987). Bootstrapping is thus seen to be part of the solution to the develop-mental problem of language, a factor in a theory of language acquisition whichis designed to eliminate a certain amount of induction. The logic of the boot-strapping literature is straightforward: If the theory of grammar does notconstrain the nature of category acquisition, then the theory of acquisition mustdo so.

There is a lively debate going on in the L1 literature as to the exact natureof initial correspondences in L1 acquisition. The semantic bootstrapping hypoth-esis amounts to the claim that children are guided to the discovery of lexical


categories by a correspondence operation which maps basic and universallyavailable conceptual categories onto morphosyntactic features. Such a correspon-dence operation might be expressed explicitly as something like: “If a wordexpresses a THING concept, then it is a [+N, −V] category.” We might construethese initial correspondences as eitherlearning procedures(that is to say, assomething performed by the learning mechanisms) or asspeech processingprocedures(that is to say, as something performed by a parser and by a speechproduction mechanism). If we hypothesise that this is a learning procedure, thenwe will assume that the learning mechanisms are accessing pre-establishedsemantic categories and a set of extant morphosyntactic features to construct aninitial lexicon. Note that this interpretation of learning is inconsistent with amodular view of learning like that proposed by Schwartz and discussed inChapter 1. It need not, however, be incompatiable with a modular view of speechprocessing. If, in contrast, we interpret these initial correspondences as primitiveparsing and production procedures then we might be forced to assume thatsentence parsers are initially interactive, resorting to semantic categories ex-pressed in Conceptual Structures in order to assign a formal classification to aphonological form. In any event, at the very least we can assert that the semanticcategory, the morphosyntactic features and the correspondence rule must all bein place (either innate or acquired) before the child can acquire any forms of theword class noun, if the semantic bootstrapping hypothesis is correct. Moreover,it is also assumed that children construct the repertoire of categoriesconserva-tively, meaning that they tend to map quite specific semantic categories ontolexical types and generalise across types slowly (see Pinker 1989; and Bowerman1987). Gleitman (1990) has, however, countered that children acquire conceptsat the same time that they are acquiring grammatical classes creating a logicalproblem with respect to the order of acquisition. How can children acquirelexical classes based on semantic classes if they have not yet acquired thesemantic categories? She also suggests that specific semantic subclasses have tobe acquired on the basis of a mapping from distributional properties of words insentences. Rather than working from concepts to word classes, the child appearsto be working from syntactic frames to semantic fields. Verbs belonging tospecific semantic fields tend to occur in the same syntactic frame. Thus, verbsexpressing MOTION in English tend to occur in frames of the NP V (PP) (PP)sort, e.g.The scent of matthiola blew from one end of the garden to the otherwhileverbs expressing CAUSATION tend to occur in frames of the NP V NP VP sort,e.g.The insecticidal soap made the thrips disappear. Gleitman has argued that achild who can identify such frames has learned a vital cue to the semanticclassification of new words. To learn concepts in this way, learners would have


to be sensitive to the location of specific forms in syntactic strings and to thesemantic field of at least some verbs occurring in them. Hearing a novel form ina known frame would involve assigning the form to the relevant semantic fieldand then attempting to figure out the specific semantic properties of the word. Inthe case of a child hearing something likeThe toy soldier zipped from one end ofthe field to the other, we can hypothesise that the child would assignzippedto theclass of verbs of motion and be driven to distinguish it from all others in termsof the feature MANNER OF MOTION since most verbs of motion are distin-guished in terms of this feature. In the case of a child hearing a novel syntacticframe, we must assume that the child would be driven not to assign it to theclass of verbs of MOTION but rather to project a novel semantic subclass,following a “Difference in syntactic frame means a difference in meaning”learning strategy. To the best of my knowledge, the developmental sequencingof semantic and syntactic bootstrapping has not been worked out and the specificcontribution of each to early development remains unclear.

As for prosodic bootstrapping, Morgan (1986) has argued that prosodicpatterning provides the learner with an initial segmentation of the stimuli whichcan simplify the acquisition of morphosyntactic properties by grouping formstogether prosodically which belong together syntactically. Kelly (1988a, b, 1989,1992) and Cassidy and Kelly (1991) have gone far beyond a prosodic “packag-ing” argument to hypothesise that there are important differences in prominencepatterns among the morphosyntactic classes of English which a child could useto learn those classes. Thus, the major lexical classes (noun, verb, adjective,particle) bear prominence while the exponents of the various functional cat-egories on the whole do not.14 A child who had figured out that some functionalcategories are stressless might then be predisposed to assign novel stresslesssyllables to extant functional categories and not to the major lexical classes,while assigning novel stressed syllables to the extant lexical classes and not to afunctional category. Other potentially useful prosodic cues include the fact thatthe typical prominence patterns of nouns and verbs differ, with two-syllablenouns typically showing prominence on the first syllable (in accordance with thestress patterns of the Germanic foot) while two-syllable verbs typically showprominence on the second syllable (in accordance with the stress patterns of the“Romance” vocabulary of English). Adults are also sensitive to the relevantpatterns and can identify them in nonce forms (Kelly 1988a, b). In both cases,for learning to take place on the basis of prosodic bootstrapping, children wouldinitially have to be capable of analysing the acoustic speech stream in terms ofsyllables and patterns of syllable prominence, and use variations in such patternsto mark off the edges of prosodic words. They would then have to be driven to


map these different prosodic patterns onto distinct morphosyntactic classes,following a basic learning strategy: “Difference in prosodic prominence equalsdifference in morphosyntactic class.” The representation of syllables and syllableprominence would obviously have to have been acquired at an earlier stage ofacquisition, before word classes are encoded, to be used to guide the learner intothe morphosyntactic representations.

Spelt out in such detail, the prosodic bootstrapping hypothesis raises someobvious problems, namely, why children should be driven to map prominencedifferences onto different morphosyntactic classes but not differences infundamental frequency, syllable structure, vowel lengthening or any otherarbitrary prosodic distinction. Note that children learning Chinese and other tonelanguages must be willing to map different tones onto different word classes, sowhy don’t children learning English do the same? The only response possiblewould appear to be that there is massive counterevidence available in the stimuliprovided to English-learning infants, but such a response would require empiricalinvestigation. The same analyses of the speech to children would also have todemonstrate that all of the other possible prosodic distinctions which might bebootstrapped onto morphosyntactic classes are also contradicted by the input tolearning mechanisms. At the moment, rather than constraining learning mechan-isms, the prosodic bootstrapping hypothesis would appear to increase the numberof options that they must compute. At most it can be argued that the computationtakes place at one level of analysis “lower down”, that is to say, in the phonol-ogy, and that once learning takes place there, then what has been acquired canassist learning at the morphosyntactic level. Gerken, Landau and Remez (1990)and Gerken (1996) have, however, countered that children do not need to wait onthe emergence of their prosodic representations to begin to learn lexical cat-egories. Their counteranalysis is similar to that of Gleitman’s critique of semanticbootstrapping in that they claim that children show a precocious ability to domorphosyntactic distributional analysis, thus demonstrating that children canencode morphosyntactic classes and patterns right from the very start of thesyntactic stages of linguistic development. In short, morphosyntactic developmentproceeds at the same time as prosodic development and does not appear to bedevelopmentally dependent on it.

One can attempt to cut through the L1 developmental debates, which at themoment are inconclusive, by focusing on their logic. The various appeals tobootstrapping predispositions are an attempt to define a priori cues to morpho-syntactic classes based on the hypothesis that the child encodes semantic orprosodic categories first. The a priori correspondences between prosodic cat-egories and morphosyntactic ones or between semantic categories and morpho-


syntactic ones eliminate the need for the child to induce all morphosyntacticcategories by computing morphosyntactic distributional cues. The counter-arguments appear to be based in part on the empirical observation that the childhas precocious knowledge of the morphosyntax at the time when she is attempt-ing to produce speech. At the very least it would appear that young childrenduring first language acquisition are simultaneously sensitive to the basicprimitives of the various levels of analysis (minimally phonetic, phonological,morphosyntactic and semantic) and are capable of representing cues to categoriesand establishing correspondences across the levels very rapidly. This suggeststhat children are indeed driven to characterise the stimuli they get in terms of thetypes of categories made available by UG and by a universal semantics and thatthey may have established many of the necessary morphosyntactic distinctionsbefore they begin to produce 2- or 3-word utterances. However the debates as tosemantic and prosodic bootstrapping are resolved, we need only keep in mindthat the various proposals rely on the existence of detectable cues for a particularmorphosyntactic analysis, cues which are not properties of the speech stream.Rather, they are properties of analysed representations intermediate betweentransduced stimuli and conceptual representations. They emerge from theconstruction and analysis of prosodic categories like syllable and feet (orprosodic words) or from the construction and analysis of conceptual categories.They may operate from the bottom-up or from the top-down but in either casethey are abstract mental constructs. Beyond that, given the considerable cross-linguistic variation we find in category types, it would appear to be necessary toassume that cue learning relevant for category construction is guided by thevalidity, and conflict validity of cues in much the way the Competitors say it is,once it is granted that cues are part of mental representations constructed byparsing procedures.15

Now let us consider the problem of category learning in SLA. L2 researchpresents a striking contrast to the L1 literature in that category learning has notbeen treated as a central problem for the theory to explain. Rather the idea ofbootstrapping has been largely ignored and the topic of a priori mappingcorrespondences tends to get subsumed by the transfer literature. In other words,if the learner were automatically and necessarily mapping categories of the L1onto the phonetic forms of the L2, as, for example, the Full Transfer/Full AccessHypothesis of Schwartz and Sprouse (1994, 1996) claim, then there would benothing else to say about bootstrapping. Whatever may be the value of the FullTransfer/Full Access Hypothesis, it does not constitute a theory of categoryformation. On the assumption that L2 learners are capable of learning novelsyllable types, novel morphosyntactic frames or novel patterns of word structure


(an assumption which hardly seems farfetched), we require a theory which sayshow they do it. I know of no relevant research studies in SLA which address theissue of how categories are formed in the context of constraints imposed by UG,although there is research on category formation done within other approaches towhich I return shortly.

The view adopted here is that category formation is one area wheregrammar-learning exhibits properties shared with other cognitive domains.Linguistic categories are prototypes and exhibit family-resemblances, meaningthat categories are formed from exemplars which resemble one another morethan they resemble members of other categories. Categories are not constructedon the basis of necessary or sufficient conditions of membership. In everycategory there are core instances which are easy to classify as well as peripheralinstances where we cannot decide (Jackendoff 1983; Taylor 1989, 1994). Just aswe may feel that an apple is a “good” exemplar of the category FRUIT so wemay feel that a word referring to an animate agentive countable individual is abetter exemplar of the category noun than the expressionthere. Comparesentences likeJessica danced around the livingroomversusThere is someonedancing around the livingroom. We may not hesitate to classify the expressionJessicaas an instance of the category noun and resist classifyingthere as amember of the same category despite its position before the verb. Similarly,vowels make better syllable nuclei than nasals which make better syllable nucleithan fricative and stop consonants. Attempting to construct parameters for statinghow languages select among the set of categories derivable from the basic set offormal primitives is probably not the right tactic since it presupposes thatlinguistic categories are unique in all respects. In addition, P&P theory does aterrible job of characterising the prototypical properties of language. PerhapsOptimality Theory is the proper way to formalise the above-mentioned observa-tions since it allows characterisations drawn from the theory of formal descrip-tion to conflict. My own approach, however, is to ask what we can learn fromthe research in the Competition Model and other research focusing on cue-basedlearning in our attempts to understand category learning. Such research asks usto focus on the information which tells a learner where a category is to be found.

The Competition Model hypothesises that learners are actively scanning thestimuli for constant or recurrent properties. The learning mechanism detects theco-variation of properties in the stimulus (contingencies among stimulus events).The most reliable and available of detectable properties in the stimuli can, viaassociation, become cues for classes (Bates and MacWhinney 1989; McDonald1989). Suppose we were to adapt these ideas to a theory rooted in a universalistframework. In the UG-based model proposed here, the assumption is that the


learning mechanism scans stimuli and other forms of input, guided by thefeatures made available by UG for encodings of information in specific represen-tational systems. I specifically hypothesise that UG is expressed in the languageacquisition device in such a way that the transducers must take in certainfeatures. At each subsequent level of autonomous analysis, the learning mechan-isms will have at their disposition only certain representational primitives forencoding linguistic constituents. The learning mechanisms will induce certainclasses, using information from a lower level down, from a higher level up(including conceptual information) and from distributional patterns at the samelevel of analysis. Learning syntactic word classes must, under this view, begin insome a priori capacity to identify a phonological form or a concept as a likelyexponent of a given morphosyntactic feature or feature bundle. Accordingly, Iadopt the hypothesis that in first language acquisition, there are initial correspon-dence operations (the bootstrapping hypotheses discussed above), identifyingcategories across levels of analysis. Subsequently, the learning mechanisms mustlocate and label categories based on level-internal information.16

What are the implications of this for SLA? Given the prevalence of transfer,we cannot assume that learners bring a priori correspondence strategies of thesorts seen in first language acquisition. Despite much talk that “L1 = L2” in allits essentials (Dulay, Burt and Krashen 1982), we do not find adult L2 learnersinitially exhibiting N = ACTOR or V = ACTION correspondences. From theearliest stages, adults understand nouns which express other semantic roles, suchas EXPERIENCER, and they can express them too (see Klein and Perdue 1992).Nor do we find learners of English restricted initially to using nouns with amonosyllabic or bisyllabic pattern with stress on the first syllable. Indeed, it iswell known that the kinds of phonological simplifications exhibited in childspeech (with words consisting of either one or two CV syllables) are not foundin adult L2 interlanguage. Adults acquire words with various prosodic character-istics based either on the frequency of the forms in the stimuli or on their utilityto the learner. Afterall, if the form you need isWürstchen(‘sausage’), thenWürstchenit will have to be, even if L1 CV-syllable structures impose vowelepenthesis on the learner struggling to articulate it.

Is the Full Transfer/Full Access Hypothesis (FT/FA) the right way toconceptualise transfer? I think not, given that the FT/FA Hypothesis is definedover the interlanguage grammar and appears to be largely concerned withinterlanguage production. On its own the FT/FA may describe the fact of transferbut the theory in which it is embedded provides no account for the acquisition ofnew categories and indeed the hypothesis itself raises the question: Howcouldlearners acquire the L2? I think the Schwartz and Sprouse approach misanalyses


the problem of transfer. In the Autonomous Induction Theory, transfer isconceptualised in terms of the transfer of parsing and production procedures. Inthe case of speech analysis, the parsers are assumed to be tuned to cues definedfor rapid processing of the L1. This means that they will be sensitive to L1-spec-ific cues and especially sensitive to cues which are highly informative. They willalso ignore or filter out cues uniquely relevant to the classification of thecategories of the L2. In Chapter 1, I mentioned the work of James Emil Flegeand his collaborators who have been exploring the issue of segment perception,recognition and the acquisition of novel categories in an L2 phonology (see, inaddition to the works cited in Chapter 1, Flege 1987, 1993; Flege and Eefting1986, 1987, 1988). They demonstrate quite clearly that “matching models” ofperception are inadequate to explain speech perception because L2 learners arecapable of assimilating distinct acoustic information in the signal to the segmen-tal categories of the L1 phonology. Indeed, Flege has used this fact to argue thatexemplars of the L2 drawn from phonetic categories similar to those of the L1are harder to “hear” as distinct sounds than exemplars belonging to quitedifferent categories. These, it seems, are easy to “hear” as distinct sounds of theL2. Kuhl and Iverson (1995) have developed a theory of perception called theNative Language Magnet Theorywhich can account for Flege’s findings. Accor-ding to this theory, segmental perception is organised around sound categories-as-prototypes. Discriminating among sounds located near the central tendency isdifficult but improves as stimuli move further away in the perceptual “space.”This research raises the difficult problem of specifying what counts for learnersas “the same thing” and what counts as “different things”, a problem shared, bythe way, with other domains of cognitive psychology. Indeed, the existence ofequivalence classificationin speech perception raises the problem of how L2segmental learning could take place at all (Flege 1987). If it turns out to be amajor phenomenon in SLA, operating, for example, at all levels of representationvia the lexicon, then how do learners learn any aspect of the second language?As the literature on cognate recognition shows, this troubling question can indeedbe raised with respect to lexical items (Carroll 1992; Pal 1999, 2000).17

Cue-based approaches to category formation offer a way out insofar as cuescan conflict and differ in their validity. I think we have to assume that steadyexposure to L2 stimuli will involve varying exposure to the various cues to acategory. As the presence of different configurations of cues shift, the possibilityof novel resolutions to cue conflict will arise. Thus, a cue which will reliablypredict in English the presence of a voiceless stop in syllable-initial position, e.g.long-lag VOT, will not be present in Spanish L2 stimuli. Other cues will bepresent and the learning mechanism must learn over time which are the most


reliable and valid. In other words, to the extent that category classificationdepends on the availability of stable and unchanging configurations of cues, thencategory membership can be viewed as stable and unchanging. But if the cueconfiguration can change, and in SLA it clearly does, then category membershipcan change. When category membership changes, by definition, so do theboundaries of the category.

Another issue relates to the question of whether learners can be sensitive tocue types which are not relevant to the processing of the L1, presumably a sinequa non for L2 learning to begin. I have been exploring this issue in the contextof the acquisition of gender attribution (part of the acquisition of the nouncategory in French, see Carroll 1989). I assume that correspondence operations,like all parsing and production procedures, transfer automatically at the initialstage of L2 learning. Lexical items in Jackendoff’s theory of language aredefined as correspondences across the different autonomous levels of representa-tion. Not surprisingly, then, we predict that L2 learners will initially transferautomatically the lexically-stipulated correspondences of their first languagevocabulary. There is considerable support for this idea in the transfer literature,although Kellerman (1978, 1986, 1987) has shown that learners can quickly formideas about what willnot transfer from the L1. In the case of learners of an L2with gender whose L1 also has gender, the theory predicts that learners willinitially map in their speech production the gender features of the L1 word ontothe form expressing the same concept in the L2. The theory also predicts,however, that learners should be forced to construct novel morphosyntacticrepresentations wherever the input unambiguously signals a different genderfeature. So a German learner of French who has no evidence as to the gender ofthe wordbeurre (‘butter’) ought to attempt to sayla beurre in early stages ofacquisition because GermanButter is feminine. Given appropriate cues to thecorrect gender, however, German learners ought to restructure their lexicalrepresentations forbeurre. Restructuring need not mean immediate flawlessspeech performance since the learner has to suppress the feature of the Germanitems when speaking French, and this requires a lot of practice. Nonetheless,restructuring ought to be measurable somehow in the learner’s behaviour,including the ability to self-correct or to notice the discrepancy between what onehas said and what one ought to have said. But what of learners whose L1 doesnot include nouns morphosyntactically specified for gender subclasses? What ofEnglish learners of French? The theory predicts that they will also initiallytransfer the contents of their lexical entries and they will also transfer anycorrespondence operations they have. In English, the only way to interpretgender is as a semantic distinction based on the reference of nouns in context


and relevant only for pronoun selection (Mathiot 1979). We might then ask ifanglophones are especially sensitive to semantic distinctions in initially attempt-ing to learn French gender. This was one of the questions investigated in Carroll(1999a). The latter very limited study suggests that initial-state learners areindeed highly sensitive to the potential role that referential categories can play ascues to gender classification. More interesting, however, was the finding thatthey are also somewhat sensitive to morphological structure as a gender classifi-cation cue. In the latter case, the distinctions cannot be transferred from the L1so they must be part of the way in which the learning mechanisms encodelinguistic distinctions. Either the distinctions are just part of the way in which thelanguage faculty analyses gender distinctions, or else they are readily learnable.Either way, the research suggests that learners can learn novel categories givenminimal amounts of relevant information.

Let me now summarise the conclusions of this section. Universal Grammaris hypothesised to provide a range of representational features from whichcategories at various levels of analysis can be constructed. In addition, it isassumed that there are a variety of functional and formal constraints on how theycan combine. Nonetheless, the major role in constraining the acquisition ofcategories would appear to fall on the theory of language acquisition. Someconstraints may arise in first language acquisition from bootstrapping proceduresif learners are predisposed to equate morphosyntactic categories initially witheither prior semantic or prosodic categories. In SLA, the major “bootstrapping”procedure may well be lexical transfer. In both types of learning, however,categories appear to be acquired on the basis of properties of the stimuli learnershear. Consequently, we anticipate that cue-based learning will play a critical rolein defining the ways in which categories are acquired.

2.3 Universal Grammar: formal universals

Let me now turn to a discussion of formal universals. Formal universals arethose universals which constrain the ways in which the units of the language cancombine. For example, a constraint on the formation of phrases is that everysyntactic phrase must include a lexical category of the same type (Jackendoff

1977; Stowell 1981; Emonds 1985). Let us call this constraint theHead Con-straint. It considerably reduces the types of connections between lexical itemsand phrasal categories since it allows only (3.2a) below and precludes (3.2b).

(3.2) a. NP

X N Y


b. *NP

X V Y

where “X” and “Y” stand for variables, strings which can includeanything including no category.

The Head Constraint coupled with specific properties of lexical items, an appropri-ate theory of phrase structure, say X-bar theory (plus a projection mechanismand licensing conditions, etc.) is supposed to explain the facts of (3.3).18

(3.3) a. Exhaustion is not a good thing.b. *Exhausted is not a good thing.

A noun phrase must contain a noun as the central syntactic element. Semanticallyrelated expressions belonging to other syntactic categories cannot replace thehead. Thus, a verb cannot stand for a noun as the head of a noun phrase.

In the P&P theory, properties of lexical items are presumed to be stored inthe mental lexicon, including descriptions of the basic semantic types expressedby words. I have already noted that phrases are composed of functions and theirarguments. Chomsky hypothesises that the lexicon includes a specification of theargument structureof lexical items such as verbs (corresponding to the tradi-tional intransitive and transitive distinction).19 He also hypotheses that the lexiconlists the semantic orθ-roles which a function can assign to its arguments. SeeJackendoff (1972: Ch. 2, 1985) and Grimshaw (1990). Properties of lexical itemscan project into phrasal categories, at each of the sub-levels of the morphosyntax.General properties of UG, which comprise X-bar theory, determine that phrasesare organised into functional types, namelyheads, complements, specifiers, andadjuncts. These functions are shown in graphic form in (3.4).

(3.4) a. Right branching (or left-headed) phraseXP

XP YP (adjunct)

ZP (speci er)fi X1

X0 WP (complement)

where X0 is the head and X1 and XP are projections of its featuresinto intermediate and maximal phrases


b. Left-branching (or right-headed) phraseXP

XPYP (adjunct)

ZP (speci er)fiX1

X0WP

where X0 is the head and X1 and XP are projections of its featuresinto intermediate and maximal phrases

Languages vary as to the relative order of lexical heads to their complements. Inearlier versions of generative grammar, it was assumed that children learnedphrase structure rules to capture such effects. Order is now deemed to resultfrom the setting of thehead direction parameter, a label I take from Flynn(1987).20 This parameter locates the complement to the left or right of the lexicalhead. A second parameter regulates the order of heads to adjuncts and specifiersto head (Chomsky and Lasnik 1995: 53). (3.4) illustrates opposing specificationsfor all three parameters. Other orderings are possible (adjunct, specifier, comple-ment, head; head, complement, specifier, adjunct; complement, head, specifier,adjunct; adjunct, specifier, head, complement, and so on). (3.5) expresses thehead direction parameter formally (Lightfoot 1991: 6)

(3.5) The head direction parametera. XP → {Specifier, X′}b. X′ → {X or X ′, (YP)}where the curly brackets indicate an unordered set

Now let us consider the matter of typological variation from the perspective oflanguage acquisition and P&P theory. If language acquisition is just the settingof parameters (plus the learning of the idiosyncrasies of lexical items), thenexternal influences on acquisition can be reduced to an absolute minimum.Chomsky observes:

… within the principles-and-parameters approach … language acquisitioninvolves the fixing of parameters, yielding what we may call the “corelanguage”, including the lexicon. (Chomsky 1991b: 42)

Phrasal order has, not surprisingly, been discussed extensively in the firstlanguage acquisition literature because it is one of the dimensions along whichlanguages vary. Clahsen (1988, 1990/1991), various studies in Meisel (1992),including Meisel and Müller (1992), Meisel (1994b), and Neeleman and Weerman


(1997) propose that word order is acquired in child monolingual and bilingualfirst language acquisition by setting relevant parameters. Part of the argumenta-tion for parameter setting in FLA relies on the fact that first language acquisitionof the relevant phenomena takes place very rapidly and children seem to cogniseright from the start the relevant relationships between position, finiteness andsubject–verb agreement. While children learning German may start out usingverbs in first, medial or final position, they statistically prefer final position evenbefore they manifest finiteness or tense distinctions in their own speech (Clahsen1982, 1988; Meisel and Müller 1992). But more importantly, their developmentexhibits a clustering of phenomena which have no logical dependency since oncethey acquire agreement they never put non-finite verbs in second position(Clahsen and Smolka 1986; Meisel 1994b). Finally, child learners are apparentlynever unsure of the position of verbs in embedded clauses; once they reliablyexpress sentential complements, verbs appear in final position.21 It is preciselythis clustering of unrelated phenomena and the speed with which childrenrestructure their grammars which gives the P&P theory appeal and justifies theclaim that parameters have deductive consequences in acquisition. I will returnto these facts in the next section.

Languages also vary as to the extent to which they require phonetically speltout subjects. TheExtended Projection Principlerequires external arguments ofthe verb, in the sense of Williams (1981), to be instantiated in sentences. Thus,it follows that all languages have subjects in all sentence types. The pro-drop ornull subject languages, like Italian or Greek, where the subject appears to bemissing, permit the external argument to be expressed in the syntax by an emptycategorypro which behaves referentially like a simple personal pronoun and isassigned a referential value by pragmatic principles. In recent versions of P&Ptheory, referential categories are assumed to be licensed by features of theagreement system. “Strong” agreement licenses apro subject and personalpronouns are only used in cases of contrast focus. Thus, we get the followingcontrast between Greek and English.

(3.6) a. piyen+i me to aftokinito.go+3 with car‘he’s going in the car.’

b. aft+i piyen+i me to aftokinito3+pronoun go+3 with car.‘He’s the one going in the car’

c. He’s going in the car.d. *’s going in the car.


This type of variation has been studied in both first and second languageacquisition. Perhaps the best known L1 study is that of Hyams (1986). Sheargued that the tendency of early English child language to lack subjects couldbe attributed to the need to set the relevant parameter. Children would start outwith the same parameter setting as children learning Italian (that is to say, set tonull subjects) and would then reset the parameter when they discovered expletivesubjects likethere. Meisel (1990a), using data from learners of French andGerman, argued against this analysis, noting that it fails to account for the factthat children differentially omit subjects according to person, or that they leaveout other categories as well. Bloom (1990) has also noted that children omitvarious categories and that the fact of omission alone does not motivate aparameter-setting analysis.

In SLA, the acquisition of obligatory subjects has also been investigated, seeWhite (1984, 1985b), Hilles (1986) and Phinney (1987). It is argued that earlystages of the acquisition of English where, say, Spanish L2 learners omit surfacesubjects can be explained in terms of the transfer of the L1 parameter-setting.This would mean that Spanish learners assume that English allowspro to appearas the subject of a tensed sentence. When the learners start using phoneticallyovert expressions exclusively to fill subject position, they are said to have re-setthe parameter.

For the moment, let us lift our heads from the technical details. We see onexamining the literature that it is in the area of formal universals that P&P hashad its impact on SLA theorising. The grammars of the L1 and L2 are conceptu-alised in terms of different parameter settings in those cases where phenomenabelonging to the same sub-system of the grammar are organised differently. Itis hypothesised that parameter-settings transfer and thus are utilised when L2learners attempt to speak the L2, or make acceptability judgements or performother tasks in which they must deploy their linguistic competence. Parameter-settings must be reset (in those cases where the L1 and L2 differ) before thelearner can exhibit behaviour more in conformity with that of native speakers.When learner grammars change, they are said to exhibit parameter-resetting andthis is said to be “explained” by P&P theory.

3. Well, that looks good! So what’s the problem?

In this section, I would like to examine more critically the claim to “explanation”of P&P theory in SLA. I take it that explanation involves more than that the datacan be made to be consistent with the theory. In other words, we will grant that


the parameter-resetting account of development explains how second languagesare acquired if it excludes grammar types which are not exhibited, if it attributesthe right properties to the interlanguage grammars (e.g. predicts and describes theerror types which show up in the interlanguage), and if it predicts the right stagesand sequences of acquisition, including the prior acquisition of phenomenaserving as necessary triggers to the resetting of the parameter.

3.1 UG and the problem of representational realism

Part of the problem of knowing what to make of parameter-(re)setting as anexplanation of SLA is in figuring out if the explanations are put forth as anaccount of the nature of representation in interlanguage grammars, or as anaccount of development. My reading of the literature is that parameter-setting isoffered as a solution to the developmental problem of language acquisition; it issupposed to be part of a transition theory. In other words, learners learn whatthey learn because they have reset a parameter, and they could only learn whatthey learn in this way. I suspect that some researchers believe that UG is literallyconstraining dynamic acquisition processes, or even that parameter-resetting itselfis such a process. To make sense of such claims requires that we figure out theplace of UG in the functional architecture of the language faculty.

Chomsky’s own views on the psycholinguistic status of UG and grammarsare easily misconstrued. Sometimes when he discusses them, he is referring onlyto the cognitive distinctions speaker/hearers make. Thus, occasionally, when hespeaks of knowledge of a generative grammar being “psychologically real”, hemeans that the distinctions modelled in his theory in a propositionally explicitway accurately characterise distinctions observable in human behaviour, e.g. viaacceptability judgements or in assessments of synonymy, and so on (see, e.g.Chomsky 1982: 27–8). In other cases, Chomsky seems to be suggesting that theways in which grammarians encode the distinctions are relevant for psycho-grammars, that is to say the mechanisms which parse and produce utterances. Itis important to understand that these are quite different characterisations and thatthe distinction matters for the functions we attribute to the rules and representa-tions we propose as part of the learner’s knowledge. Matthews (1991) makessome interesting comments on this point.

While on their intended construal, grammars true of a speaker/hearer arepsychologically real, it would seem an open question whether the linguisticconstructs to which grammars advert, including rules, representations, and thecomputations that figure in syntactic derivations, are psychologically real.Chomsky (1980: 197) argues that we are justified in attributing psychological


reality to the constructs postulated by a grammar true of [the] speaker/hearerIn effect, the psychological reality of these constructs is assumed to beinherited from that of the grammar. But this assumption seems arguable. Itmight be objected that in the absence of specific evidence for their existence,these constructs must be assumed to be artifacts of the particular way in whichthe function computed by the speaker/hearer is specified, and as such cannotinherit the psychological reality of the grammar in which they figure.(Matthews 1991: 195).

Matthews is making the point that just because grammars encode psychologicallyrelevant distinctions which are observable in speaker/hearer behaviour (and henceare psychologically real) does not mean that the rules or representations attribut-ed to the grammars must be psychologically operational. In other words, we canconstruct formal grammars which include derivations without assuming thatspeaker/hearers construct derivations in real time. Similarly, we can constuctgrammars to cover exactly the same behaviours, this time allowing them toinclude formal rules. It does not follow that speaker/hearers are computing thesame rules in real time as they listen to and produce speech. The same holds ofparameters. We may legitmately characterise differences across the world’slanguages in terms of parameters and parameter-setting without thereby commit-ting ourselves to the claim that learners compute parameter-settings as part of theacquisition process. We might assume that parameters are merely convenientdevices which are part ofour specification of the function-computing grammarsand could be expressed in a variety of ways in psychogrammars. Talk ofparameter-setting would thus be very loose metaphor and we would not want tobuild a theory of acquisition around the claim that learners are literally settingparameters as one of the operations of encoding mental representations.

There is, however, a second interpretation of psychological reality, whatPylyshyn (1991) has calledrepresentational realism. Representational realismcommits one to the view that the cognitive mechanisms one’s theory invokes(rules, representations, principles, parameters, etc.) are explicitly part of thecognitive computations. Let us consider another example. Early work in the L1acquisition of English claimed that children acquire a rule of plural formationsince children could be shown at a given stage to behave differentially towardsa nonce form likebick and a second formwug pluralising the former with avoiceless sibillant /s/ and the latter with a voiced one /z/, entirely in conformitywith generalisations statable over the adult language (Berko 1958). Such a rulemight look like (3.7).


(3.7) The plural ruleNoun + Plural morpheme = Noun + /z//z/ → [−Voice]/ −Voice _____

−Cont.

Since the children could not have encountered the nonce forms in question in thestimuli they got from parents and other caretakers, they could not have learnedthe correct pronunciation ofbicksorwugsby prior exposure. Since the children’sresponses were systematic, there had to be some more abstract source of know-ledge they were drawing on. Berko claimed that English children learned alinguistic rule. Understanding talk of rule-learning in a way consistent withrepresentational realism would mean that the learner learns certain formsindividually at the beginning, and then formulates an algorithm based on theregular case (cat/cats, dog/dogs, bunny/bunnies). This algorithm, perhapssomething much like (3.7), would then be used to generate all plural forms inproduction. It would follow that regular plural forms of nouns would never belisted in longterm memory. On an interpretation of the data which is not commit-ted to representational realism, talk of rules would not commit one to the ideathat children have an algorithm in their mind/brains which they use to createplural forms in real time each time they produce one. The plural “rule” might beconstrued as a computational process used only to create plural forms for wordsheard only in the singular. Once created, such forms could be listed in longtermmemory alongside plural forms extracted from the speech stimuli. Or, we mightunderstand the rule as something which basically treatswugas a variant ofbugwithout recourse to any internalised morphophonological algorithm. This processmight be calledanalogyin a structural representational system. It is an implicitprocess in the view of classical connectionism. As Rumelhart and McClelland(1986, 1987) have shown, one can train a learning mechanism to output regularmorphological forms without recourse to explicit structural algorithms. Theconnectionist network can also handle nonce forms. One can thus get theappearance of rule-governed behaviour without postulating rules as part of themental apparatus. Rule-governed behaviour can also be accounted for by ageneralisation over all of the plural forms the child has memorised one-by-one.By this I mean that the learner might have learned each word that she knowsindividually based on exposure to specific input, represented each plural formheard separately, and then have analysed the plural forms and abstracted ageneralisation about the regular plural which is itself stored as information inlongterm memory. Such generalisations are calledredundancy rulesand are notassumed to be on-line operations involved in either normal parsing or speechproduction. Usage involving learned forms would normally involve “looking up”


stored representations and not computing a representation of the plural. In thecase of novel expressions previously not encountered, the redundancy rule couldbe invoked to create the plural forms. In short, there are a variety of differentmechanisms which could be invoked in a psychogrammar which give theappearance of rule-governed behaviour without necessitating the postulation ofstructural algorithms as real-time computations.

This example should make clear the implications of representational realism.For the representational realist, rules are part of the psychogrammar used toparse and produce speech. The representational realist therefore invokes anexplicit connection between grammatical representation and theories of process-ing. Is Chomsky a realist when it comes to UG? Yes, definitely, since he statesthat UG, the initial state of knowledge of the human child prior to experience, iscoded in the genotype (Chomsky 1980: 83). Is Chomsky also a representationalrealist? I have found no clear evidence for this and a good deal of evidence tosuggest the contrary.23 Chomsky does state that the steady state knowledgesystem, what I am calling here the I-language, is represented in the mind/brain(Chomsky 1980: 83) and hence can be assumed to be involved somehow inmental computation.But Chomsky does not state that principles and parametersare algorithms or functions mapping one representation onto another. On thecontrary, he states only, in a variety of works greatly idealising the nature ofacquisition, that UG can be considered to be a function mapping experience ontothe steady state. This, it seems to me, does not commit him to saying that UG ispart of the computations of the psychogrammar, directly consulted or “accessed”every time some stimuli is analysed, or even every time some rule is formed.Such a position leaves entirely open the ways in which UG comes to constrainthe language acquisition process. Universal constraints on linguistic cognitionmight be realised in the structure-building processes of the parser. Berwick andWeinberg (1984) characterise subjacency in just this way. Or, they might berealised in the operations of the LAD. Berwick (1985) has made some proposalsalong this line. Dresher and Kaye (1990), and Dresher (1999) go even furtherand argue that the operations of any learning algorithm cannot be independent ofthe contents of the parameter theory. Other possibilities are imaginable. Chomskyhimself has said virtually nothing on this issue.

What about SLA P&P researchers? Do they view UG as an abstract andidealised characterisation of the initial state of knowledge prior to any experiencewith language? Do they view it as part of the genotype, being instantiated in themature organism in the properties of the L1 grammar? Or, are they representationalrealists who regard UG as a store of information which can be “accessed” during theacquisition process? I have found no explicit discussion of this critical issue.


Some of the core SLA writings prevaricate. Sometimes they describe UG asmerely a set of abstract constraints on linguistic cognition.24 Sometimes theliterature, however, appears to regard UG as a dynamic acquisition mechanism,“accessed” when the learner constructs mental representations. Observe that thesecond position necessitates representational realism. My interpretation of theextensive debates about whether adult L2 learners have “direct access” to UG ormerely “mediated access” via their knowledge of the L1 (Clahsen and Muysken1986, 1989; Bley-Vroman 1990; Duplessis et al 1987; White 1991b; Epstein etal. 1996) is quite simply that they make no sense unless at least some L2generativists are adopting a representational realist stance. This debate makes nosense under an interpretation of UG whereby it is merely a characterisation ofthe initial state of knowledge, in the genes, prior to exposure to linguistic stimuli.It makes no sense since (i) there is no way to assess in adult L2 learners whattheir knowledge state was prior to exposure to linguistic stimuli, and (ii) there isno difference under this view between “direct access” to UG and “indirectaccess.”25 See Meisel (1991) and Schachter (1991) for additional discussion. Inwhat follows, I shall therefore assume that the P&P-in-L2 position is notclaiming that language cognition, prior to any exposure to linguistic stimuli,conforms to the constraints and restrictions described by the P&P theory, sincethis claim has no special consequences for SLA development. I shall insteadassume that it refers to the claim that principles and parameters are mentallyrepresented in such a way that they can and do constrain and restrict languagelearning, can be directly “accessed”, and are causally related to the linguisticstructures which learners encode.

3.2 Can parameters be biological constructs?

One major assumption of P&P theory is that linguistic development is understrong biological control. I stated that UG was assumed to be universal andinnate. It is, by hypothesis, a characterisation of what the infant knows inadvance of experience. Postulating a biological basis for language still leavesopen a wide variety of possible interactions with environmental stimuli. It makessense at this point, therefore, to discuss parameter-setting in terms of whatSaleemi (1992: 32) has called threemodesof learning, which is misleading inthat the first two modes involve no learning at all.

(3.8) a. maturationb. selective learningc. observational learning


Observational learning corresponds to induction. It will be taken up in Chapter 4,so I defer description until then. Maturation involves biological change followinga genetically determined timetable. Since all cognition takes place in the brain,cognition is regulated by biological processes, indeed cognition is carried out bybiological processes. It is plausible, therefore, to assume that cognitive develop-ment might be regulated by biological growth and maturation. Felix (1984,1986: 114), and Borer and Wexler (1987, 1992) have proposed that certain lingu-istic principles mature.26 Bertolo (1995) has extended this idea and hypothesisesthat parameters could follow a maturational schedule. It must be the case,however, that if maturation is involved in the behavioural emergence of princi-ples and parameters, then that emergence must coincide with or follow on somespecificchange in neurological structure.27 Changes in brain function would thencause changes in cognitive function or cognitive capacity, in this case, theappearance of certain syntactic constraints in the child’s grammar. What isimportant for my purposes is that “learning” in this instance does not involvespecific sorts of stimuli determining the contents of linguistic representations. Itwould be incorrect to say that maturation does not involve environmental effectsbecause the environment can always have an effect on the ways in whichbiological growth unfolds (Geschwind and Galaburda 1987). What must be true,however, is that if the environment is having an effect on linguistic develop-ment, then it is entirely via its effects on the biological system.

I shall have little more to say about maturation in this book. Whatevermight be the accuracy of the claims about the maturation of linguistic principlesin primary language acquisition, they will be of no relevance to adult SLA sinceadult learners must be presumed to possess mature brains and central nervoussystems. Indeed, were it to be demonstrable that a given grammatical phenom-enon was acquired by both groups of learners with the same pacing and order,I would take this to be prima facie evidence that the phenomenon in questioncould not result in primary language acquisition from maturation.28,29

The second mode of learning,selective learning, involves changes in themental states of the learner which are largely initiated by environmental effectsbut which are also constrained genetically and which take place within biologi-cally prescribed limits. Lightfoot (1989, 1991) claims that parameter-setting is aninstance of selective learning.

Selective learning involves the implementation of domain-specific mechan-isms. They might be perceptual, that is to say, mechanisms attuned to only aspecific type of environmental stimuli, or they might be representational, that isencoding the stimuli in highly specific ways. Research on animal cognition hasprovided the best evidence for selective learning. Wiesel and Hubel (1963, 1965)


have shown that visual perception in cats will not develop normally unless thefelines get highly specific sorts of stimuli, and this within a short period follow-ing birth. The normal adult feline visual system is supported by neural connec-tions which must be stimulated during a critical period. In the absence of theappropriate stimulation, the connections wither. Studies of the development ofbird calls have provided similar results for certain species — deprived of relevantstimuli some birds develop no calls, while other species develop highly distortedcalls, and still others develop normally (Marler 1987; Hauser and Marler 1992).Lightfoot cites some of the same literature, so he clearly intends parameter-setting to be construed as a phenomenon of the same type. I return to the properinterpretation of the ethology literature directly.

Because Lightfoot takes parameter-resetting to be selective learning, he iscommitted to the claim that parameters are neurologically expressed. This meansthat once a parameter is set, it corresponds to a specific brain state or specificneurological structures. This has obvious implications for the claim that SLAinvolves parameter-resetting. First of all, we must ask: Are we talking about thesame parameters? Judging from the generative L2 literature, the answer is clearly“Yes” — there is only one head direction parameter, for example, or only onenull subject parameter and a learner with a given setting might have to acquirethe other. Now, it follows, under the selective learning view of parameter-setting,that resetting a parameter might entail L1 aphasia, as a consequence of alteringthe neurological structures supporting the L1 parameter. The prediction ispatently wrong. There is no unlearning of the L1 as a consequence of acquiringan L2 (although the two knowledge systems clearly interact, and can be simulta-neously activated in the bilingual brain).30 Alternatively, one gives up the claimthat the same parameters are involved in L1 and L2 acquisition, again keeping inmind the hypothesis that a parameter corresponds to a particular neurologicalstructure. Selective learning would then lead one to expect that L2 cognitionwould have to be instantiated in different brain structures or neural pathways.Unfortunately, there is also no compelling evidence to suggest that the L2 isstored or processed in quite different parts of the brain from the L1 (seeGalloway 1981; Jacobs 1988; Obler 1993), or supported by distinct neurologicalstructures, although I know of no studies specifically examining the neurology ofparameter-setting in SLA. From this it follows either that there is no parameter-resetting in SLA, or else that parameter-setting is not selective learning. P&Ptheory is now up the proverbial creek without the proverbial paddle. If parame-ters in SLA are not instances of selective learning, and parameters in L1 acquisi-tion are, then it is simply false to claim that the parameters of L1 and L2acquisition are thesameparameters. If they are not the same, their status in SLA


is entirely unclear and it might turn out to be true that the linguistics literaturewould have nothing at all to say about the parameters needed for SLA. If weinsist that the constructs must be the same, then there simply is no parameter-resetting in SLA. Finally, if we reject Lightfoot’s claim, probably the mostsensible route to take given current research which shows that language process-ing involves the activation of large areas of the brain in distributed patterns, thenwe dislodge P&P theory from its biological pedestal, and we’re left with ametaphor which simply asserts that language development can be described as:“something happens in the grammar of the learner.”

3.3 The SLA P&P theory has no model of triggers

Since language variation in the P&P theory is explained largely in terms ofparameters, along with the theory of parameters must come a theory of howparameters are set. This involves establishing sets of triggers for each parameterand for each setting of a parameter. This means that for every type of variationidentified within the theory of grammar and linked to parameter-setting, therewill be some trigger at the same level of representation, a lower level ofrepresentation or at a higher level of representation which will signal to thelearning mechanism that the language instantiates a given setting. Part of thelanguage acquisition process, therefore, must be identifying the relevant triggersfor, e.g. head direction, and then spelling out under what circumstances theparameter will be set. This means that the learning mechanism must be able todistinguish expressions which instantiate potential heads of a given syntacticphrase from expressions which cannot, and must be able to distinguish relevantcues for the head direction parameter from irrelevant cues. In the example inquestion, the learning mechanism must recognise thatread a bookis a suitablecue for fixing the head direction parameter in English but thata book readerisnot. In short, there must be an interface theory which connects grammaticalrepresentations to particular sorts of stimuli. That interface theory must clearlybe part of a theory of language processing.31

Analysis of triggering links P&P theory directly to characterisations ofstimuli and input and has the potential to provide much needed clarification ofthese constructs. It is obvious from Lightfoot’s (1991) discussion of triggers, forexample, that they can only be abstract mental constructs and therefore cannot bepart of the speech signal. Since the triggers have to be derived from the process-ing of the speech signal, it follows that the theory of acquisition has to be embeddedin a theory of speech processing which permits us to explain how the speech signalcan be transformed into abstract mental representations in the first place.


In addition, Lightfoot makes some very specific proposals regarding the natureof triggers, namely that they have to be locatable within root sentences “plus abit” (essentially a binding domain). This hypothesis precludes learners lookingfor triggers in embedded sentences, greatly restricting the nature of the input tothe learning mechanisms.

His discussion of the acquisition of verb position is provocative andimportant for one of the claims he makes is that the relevant trigger for verbposition in embedded clauses isnot the position of the verb itself, thus provingthat the most obviouslogical evidence may not be the necessary trigger(Lightfoot 1991: 44–56). Instead, Lightfoot argues that particles, their proximityto their verbal bases, and the fact that at least some of them occur uniformly atthe end of main clauses may be the critical triggers for object–verb position inembedded clauses and the raising of tensed verbs to V2 in matrix clauses. Thus,Lightfoot cites the examples in (3.9) as potential triggers for verb position inDutch (3.9a) and German (3.9b):

(3.9) a. Jan belt de hoogleraar opJan calls the professor up

b. Franz steht sehr früh aufFranz gets very early up(Lightfoot 1991: 53, his example (9))

He also cites (3.10) as an example of Dutch “motherese” which would providea child with main clause evidence for embedded clause verb position.

(3.10) Jantje koekje hebbenJantje cookie have‘Jantje has a cookie’

He might have cited pairs of utterances like those in (3.11) which typically occurin sequence in German parental speech, providing the child with very clearevidence of the variable position of verb stems and their particles and therelationship of finiteness to verb position. This example also illustrates a secondtrigger Lightfoot discusses, namely the variable position of the sententialnegation marker with respect to the verb.

(3.11) Fass das nicht an! Nicht anfassen!touch that not not -touch-

‘Don’t touch! Don’t touch!’

If we hypothesise that the child comes to the task of cognising that negation musthave scope over the verb in the sentence, then this knowledge, in addition to


helpful cues like (3.11) would lead the child to assume verb raising and a traceafter the particle in simple imperatives — [[[Fass]Verb]Comp … [das nicht ant]VP].

A third trigger involves the position of modals or auxiliaries with infinitives.

(3.12) a. Jan moet de hoogleraar opbellenJan must the professor up-call-

‘Jan must call the professor up’b. Franz muß sehr früh aufstehen

Franz must very early up-get-

‘Franz must get up very early’

Lightfoot’s discussion provides an explanation of why children can encode verbsin final position even in the absence of encodings of embedded structures.Moreover, the theory of triggers plus the theory of parameters, provides anaccount of the rapidity with which children discover the relationship betweenfiniteness (or tense) and V2. They are not, it would seem, constructing hypoth-eses about verb position and testing them carefully for approval or correction bytheir parents. It is therefore somewhat surprising that Lightfoot’s analysis inparticular, and the issue of triggers and how they are identified more generally,has been virtually ignored in the SLA literature. L2 learners apparently attend tothe ambiguous nature of the Dutch and German input based on assumptionsrooted in the L1 word orders (Clahsen and Muysken 1986; Meisel 1991, 1997,in preparation; Haberzettel 1999, in preparation). In other words, speakers ofSVO languages (like Spanish, Portuguese or Italian) assume that German andDutch are SVO languages too, presumably by attending to the evidence of mainclauses. But we have seen that this evidence is in fact inconsistent — subjectscan appear to the left of the verb but so can many other types of constituents.Moreover, if such learners do indeed analyse German and Dutch as SVO on thebasis of the position of the tensed verb, it must mean that they are not drawingthe proper information from sentences with sentence-final particles, modal +infinitive sequences, or post-verbal negation. The obvious question is: Why not?If verb-raising is linked to such triggers by UG, then L2 learners cannot beidentifying the relevant types of sentences as triggers. If they cannot identify thetriggers, it follows that they cannot be setting the relevant parameter regardlessof the actual position of verbs in their own speech. Turkish learners of Dutch andGerman, in contrast, appear to attend to the position of verbs in final position.But recall that Lightfoot specifically argues that the necessary triggers must befound in a main clause. Consequently, if Turkish learners treat the position of theverb in embedded sentences as the relevant evidence for underlying object–verborder, they cannot be relying on the same trigger as infants. Once again, if


triggers are specified by UG, it would follow that Turkish L2 learners of Dutchand German are not identifying triggers and not resetting a parameter.

There are numerous difficulties involved in defining triggers for parameters(Lightfoot 1991: Ch. 1; Clahsen 1990/1991; Valian 1990a, b, 1993). First of all,it must be decided on a principled basis if triggers are to be defined in terms ofstimuli, or in terms of input, as defined in this book. In other words, are triggersobjective properties of the environment, like the Competition Model’s cues, orproperties of mental representations? The logic of UG suggests that it must bethe latter, although this position has never been explicitly argued and is inconsist-ent with the way in which many acquisition researchers talk about input. Quiteto the contrary, to the limited extent that there has been discussion of suchmatters, it has sometimes been claimed that triggers must be frequent features ofthe environment. Such claims make it seem as if triggers are part of the speechthe learner is exposed to — not the consequence of an analysis of the stimulus.Even Lightfoot’s in depth discussion of triggers works from unanalysed sen-tences to draw conclusions about parameter-setting rather than from the analysisof the strings provided above in examples (3.9), (3.10) and (3.12). A moreaccurate treatment would define the triggers with respect to representations like(3.13) and a novel stringfass das nicht anwhich cannot be analysed by theparsing procedures which would derive (3.13).

(3.13) VP

Spec of VP V′

V

an+fassen

nicht

If the child is constrained to analyse the verb as in the scope of the negation andindeed cognises the position of the sentence final particlean then (3.13) togetherwith the string fass das nicht ancould provide the evidence for verb raising.Other possible analyses plus novel unanalysable strings are imaginable as triggersforcing grammatical restructuring.

Whatever position is adopted, there will be important consequences for theuse of P&P theory in SLA. If triggers are environmental contingencies, one canimagine defining a given parameter uniquely regardless of the nature of thelearner. If, however, triggers are input (analysed representations) then what mightbe a trigger for an infant acquiring the L1 could simply cease to be relevant for anadult acquiring an L2 since the representational systems may be quite different.


If triggers are defined over mental representations and properties of parameters,then environmentally determined properties might turn out to be irrelevant oreven undefinable.32 Do we assume that triggers must be readily detectable, ascues are assumed to be (Bates and MacWhinney 1989: 57; McDonald 1989: 376)?Must triggers also have the properties that valid cues are assumed to have? Orcan triggers be associated with the occasional but cognitively significant event?Can parameters be set only by triggers defined on input derived bottom-up fromstimuli, as we might infer from Schwartz’ writings? Or can triggers be definedas well from the conceptual system? To date, there has been no serious discus-sion of such matters in the SLA P&P literature. Consequently, there can be noclaim that we understand how parameters are, or could be, re-set.

3.4 How does one set a parameter in the face of ambiguous stimuli from twodifferent languages?

It is not clear how a parameter could be set in the face of ambiguous or contra-dictory stimuli and/or input (Valian 1990b). Thus, both L1 and L2 learners ofEnglish will hear sentences with subjects and sentences without, but they mustnot conclude from this that English has the null subject parameter set to a plusvalue. This observation raises difficult questions about the timing of parameter-setting. In the abstract learnability proposals of Chomsky, this issue need not beaddressed, since Chomsky factors out the temporal dimension of languageacquisition and assumes simultaneous acquisition of linguistic competence. Thetemporal dimension is, however, one of the primary aspects of a transitiontheory. I noted above that triggers might correspond to robust and possiblyfrequent stimuli. One might hypothesise therefore that parameter-setting orparameter-resetting can only occur after some minimal exposure to relevanttriggers has occurred. There is nothing implausible about such a proposal,however, it is nonetheless true thatrobustnessand frequentremain undefinedterms. Similarly, it is not clear why parameter-setting should occur only once(Randall 1990, 1992). This deficiency has a particular manifestation in SLA.SLA theorists often talk as if the learner’s two languages were in two distinctand non-interacting “containers” (Romaine 1989: 235), meaning that one candefine linguistic knowledge for each language quite separately from the other(except, of course, when it is convenient to assume interaction, as when talkingabout transfer or code-switching). The presumption is erroneous. Grosjean (1985,1989, 1995), in particular, has urged us to abandon what he calls “monolingual”or “fractional” views of linguistic competence in bilinguals and to adopt insteadthe idea that the bilingual’s knowledge systems are integrated in such a way that


they cannot easily be decomposed into two separate components (see also Green1986). This he calls the “wholistic” view of bilingualism. From a wholisticperspective, it is not clear why all of the stimuli the learner is exposed to,regardless of how the external observer might label it, shouldn’t count astriggering data. In other words, it isn’t obvious why data the linguist labels as“English” shouldn’t combine with data the linguist labels as “Italian” to serve astriggers for a single parameter-setting. Notice that it will not do to invoke theadult learner’s metalinguistic awareness that she is learning distinct languages. Inparticular, it is not clear in a modular system why the learner’s beliefs aboutwhich language she is hearing should affect the status of triggers defined forUG. Therefore, we can ask: Why shouldn’t hearing two sets of linguistic stimuliwith conflicting values for a parameter induce Randall’s pendulum effect, wherethe learner sets and resets the same parameter with every new set of input? Whyshould the learner assume L1 stimuli are permanently characterised and only theL2 stimuli can be subject to parameter-resetting? Obviously, the same problemsarise more acutely when dealing with different parameter settings for differentregisters or varieties of the same language, as the discussion of parallel systemsin Chapter 2 made clear. Finally, note that parameter-(re)setting alone does notentail gradual, stage-like acquisition of language (Crain 1991: 601). If it doesn’t,what does? Surely the answer to this question is at the heart of a transitiontheory of SLA. There are no answers to these questions to be found in the SLAP&P literature. Until there are, it can make no pretences to explanation of thestage-like nature of SLA acquisition.

P&P theory thus not only needs to be linked to models of processing, itneeds a sophisticated theory of adult bilingual cognition. Given the radicallydifferent cognitive systems of young infants and mature adults, it seemssomewhat naive to assume “once a trigger, always a trigger.” And yet, this mightbe one consequence of adopting both representational realism and the hypothesisthat second language acquisition is “just like” primary language acquisition inthat it is “accessing” the same information.

3.5 The deductive value of parameters is now questionable

It is important to keep in mind that the original idea behind parameters was notmerely to explain formal variation across languages; that could be explained bypostulating any number of cognitive objects and mechanisms, including thephrase structure and transformational rules of earlier versions of generativegrammar. Rather, the point was to explain variation without resorting to induc-tion. Parameter-setting, it was originally claimed (Chomsky 1981b: 37–45,


1991b: 41; Hyams 1986: 5; Williams 1987: viii; Valian 1990b: 120) has deductiveconsequences; by learning phenomenon W, phenomena X, Y, and Z are alsoautomatically specified and organised in the learner’s grammar. Parameter-settingthus offers itself as an alternate account of contingencies in the structure ofrepresentations, or ultimately of contingencies in the structure of events. In thecase of the earliest formulations of the head direction parameter, fixing the linearorder of the head with respect to the complement was said to determine the orderof specifiers as well. They appear on the opposite side. The head directionparameter therefore was to have consequences for the location of quantifiers,adverbs, negation markers, and a host of other elements. It was also to determinethe branching direction of the language as a whole since setting the headdirection parameter for one category type had implications for the head directionof other categories. English is a head-first language, which makes it a right-branching language. Japanese is a head-final language, which makes it a left-branching language. Flynn (1983, 1987, 1989a, b) and Flynn and Espinal (1985)tried to exploit this particular difference across languages and connect it tocertain deductive consequences for SLA. In particular, Flynn tried to make thecase that branching direction has consequences for the interpretation of pronounsand other anaphoric elements appearing in adjunct clauses since these phenomenacrucially involve the construct c-command.33

C-command is the basic component in the definition of scope.34 I can mosteasily illustrate by discussing specifier scope, an intuitively obvious notion. Thedetermination of specifier scope depends upon c-command guaranteeing that thestring the big men and womenis ambiguous between a reading where only themen referred to are big and one where both the men and the women referred toare big. This ambiguity follows from the fact that linear order and c-commandcan interact in interesting ways with conjunction. Since the conjunction of NPscan include an adjective phrase either inside or outside of the NP, the adjectivephrase can modify either the NP it is next to, or both conjuncts. See (3.14).Structurally, the adjective phrase can c-command bothmenandwomenin (3.14b)but not in (3.14c). In contrast, the stringthe men and big womenis unambiguousand has only the reading that the women referred to are big. See (3.14d). It canbe seen there that the adjective can only c-command the NPwomen.


(3.14) a. the big men and womenb. DetP

Det NP

AdjP NP

bigthe NP conj NP

men and womenc. DetP

Det

the

NP

NP conj NP

and womenN′AdjP

big N

mend.

NP

AdjP N′

big N

women

conjNP

men and

NP

DetP

Det

the

In a right-branching language, the prediction is that the string equivalent tomenbig and women thewill be unambiguous while the string equivalent tomen andwomen big thewill be not.

To return to the empirical issues investigated by Flynn, we should note thatc-command also regulates other relations such as relations between a pronounand a possible antecedent. Thus, to count as an antecedent for a referentially


dependent pronoun, a DetP must c-command it. What Flynn tried to show wasthat the ability of Spanish and Japanese learners to correctly produce or compre-hend complex sentences involving adjunct clauses and forwards or backwardsanaphora, e.g.,When hei entered the office, the janitori questioned the man, or Themani answered the boss, when hei installed the television, depends upon thebranching directionality of the L1 of the learner (because of the c-commandconstraint on anaphora), and ultimately on resetting the head direction parameter.The first conclusion is probably correct, the second probably not.35 In otherwords, it probably is true that the correct construal of anaphora depends on thebranching direction of the morphosyntactic representations of sentences. It is notat all obvious that correct construal depends on the resetting of the head directionparameter, probably because no such thing exists. In the last chapter, it wasnoted that grammarians have retreated to the hypothesis that parameters are“lexical”, in the sense that they are to be restricted to specifications made in thelexicon involving functional categories (Borer 1984; Chomsky 1986, 1988,1991b: 42; Ouhalla 1991; Tsimpli and Rousseau 1991a). The lexicalisation ofparameters has made Flynn’s specific empirical claims uninterpretable since thespecification of complement position with respect to a verb, say, or the stipula-tion of specifier position with respect to an X′ category is unrelated to theposition of adjunct clauses.

White (1990/1991) investigated a different version of the theory, namelyPollock’s (1989) parameterised analysis of verb-raising, but came up with mixedresults and no real conclusion as to its utility in characterising what her learnerswere doing. More problematic, however, is that she made no attempt to demon-strate that changes in interlanguage grammars related to phrase orders aretriggered by prior changes in the learners’ representations of the licensing factors(Case, Agreement,θ-marking, etc.). Since the entire theory of parameters hasbeen reduced to differences in the characteristics of the functional categories, itfollows that if parameter-resetting is to occur, it has to be triggered by theacquisition of the relevant functional categories and their properties.

Criticism of the parameter-resetting agenda as a solution to the develop-mental problem of language acquisition has focused on precisely this issue.Above I mentioned the literature studying the first language acquisition ofGerman which shows a clustering of effects related to the mastery of verbposition. I noted that many studies with both monolingual and bilingual childrenreveal that children cognise a link between V2 position and agreement (orfiniteness) and show no confusion about the differing position of verbs in matrixand embedded sentences despite the ambiguous nature of the stimuli that they areexposed to. In Chapter 2, I mentioned Meisel’s careful comparisons of the


acquisition of word order phenomena among bilingual infants and adult L2learners (Meisel 1991, 1997, 1998, in preparation). His research of the develop-mental sequences followed by both groups demonstrates that they followdifferent developmental paths. This is awkward for anyone claiming that theyare setting or resetting the same parameter, but perhaps not fatal. Differentdevelopmental paths might be explained by other intervening (if as yet unstudied)factors. The “cruncher”, however, comes from the fact that children developcorrect word order patterns, as predicted by the theory, following on the acquisi-tion of finiteness and tense distinctions, while adults alter word order patternsquite independently of morphological distinctions. Indeed, while many of thelearners studied ultimately acquire verb-final position in German embeddedclauses and V2 position in main clauses, almost none of the learners studiedacquire the finiteness and tense morphology of German verbs. While there havebeen some attempts to apply the parameter-resetting analysis of word order to thesame or similar data sets (Schwartz and Tomaselli 1990; Schwartz 1991; Eubank1992), there has not been any satisfactory explanation of the disparities in thedevelopmental sequences in L1 and L2 acquisition, or of a specific and uniformtemporal ordering in the acquisition of these unrelated phenomena in L1 acquisi-tion (both monolingual and bilingual) and the absence of a temporal relationshipin adult SLA. If the reason for invoking parameter-setting in L1 acquisition isprecisely to explain why finiteness or tense should be related to the acquisitionof verb order, then claiming that adults are setting the same parameter on thebasis of the same triggering events ought to lead to the prediction that we findthe same clustering of phenomena. The absence of the same clustering effects inL1 and L2 acquisition is a serious problem for the P&P theory in SLA.

It is appropriate to insist on the importance of this problem for a develop-mental theory. In Chapter 2, it was noted that parameters are interesting foracquisition precisely to the extent that phenomena cluster in languages and indevelopment. Grimshaw (1985), Travis (1989: 264), Meisel (1991) have allpointed out that a theory of parameters where there are almost as many parame-ters as there are dimensions of variation is of little interest for a theory ofacquisition. While in principle UG could contain as many stipulations as wemight like to invent, there are important computational costs involved even insetting small numbers of parameters (Gibson and Wexler 1994). A theory ofparameter-setting with hundreds of independent parameters to set is computati-onally intractable and likely to be difficult to define in terms of the necessaryand empirically plausible triggers.


3.6 What if there were no parameters in a theory of UG?

Crain (1991) offers a radically different perspective on the fact of primarylanguage development. On the one hand, he rejects parameter-setting as anexplanation of the developmental problem of language acquisition. He also arguesagainst the idea that principles of the grammar mature. And, following Chomsky,he is assuming that there is no need for a theory of induction. Instead, he arguesthat the formal universals are present basically right from the start so that one canspeak in first language acquisition of “virtual simultaneous acquisition.” Crainargues that if the formal universals are not manifest in children’s performance onvarious tasks, this is rather a fact about performance. As a fact of performance, itrequires that one make explicit the relationship between the psychogrammar andattention, memory, parsing, and production. We do not have any such theories atthe present time, so testing children’s knowledge in the face of performanceconstraints is difficult. Nonetheless, Crain and other L1 researchers are pushingback the moment in development where one can say with some certainty thatchildren cognise certain linguistic principles, making children’s grammars morelike adult ones (Chien and Wexler 1990; Grimshaw and Rosen 1990; McDaniel,Cairns and Hsu 1990; McDaniel and Maxfield 1992; Grodzinsky and Kave 1993/1994; Crain, Thornton, Boster, Conway, Lillo-Martin and Woodams 1996).Crain’s position with respect to UG has the virtue of being extremely parsimoni-ous because it eliminates parameter-setting as a mechanism of selective learning,and it relieves one of the necessity for looking for independent biologicalevidence for the emergence of such late “maturing” phenomena as knowledge ofbackward anaphora. While this does not obviate the need for induction indevelopment, in particular to account for category-learning, it does greatlyrestrict its domain of application. See Goldin-Meadow (1991), Slobin (1991) andSmith Cairns (1991) for commentary and criticism of Crain’s proposals.

Crain’s position is of obvious interest for SLA since the failure to observeUG constraints in child linguistic behaviour is attributed to the operation ofimmature faculties and mechanisms not fully controlled by young children. Themechanisms include the “horizontal faculties” which interact with language,namely attention, and memory. If these are the sources of failure to observe UGconstraints in L1 acquisition, such failure should not be observed among adultlearners. If any group of learners should manifest something close to instan-taneous acquisition, it ought to be adults, everything else being equal.

Clearly adults learners do not manifest anything like instantaneous acquisitionof an L2 in their production, as every major study has documented (Cancino,Rosansky, and Schumann 1974; Cazden, Cancino, Rosansky, and Schumann


1975; Klein and Dittmar 1979; Clahsen et al. 1983; Huebner 1983; Klein andPerdue 1992; Perdue 1993; see Meisel, in preparation). These studies are,however, mostlynot directly concerned with the display of UG principles. Asnoted above, many L2 studies whichdo investigate UG principles give mixedresults, indicating that older children and adults are doing different things fromwhat is required by the target language, and different from what children aredoing (Thomas 1989, 1991, 1993; Finer 1991; White 1990/1991). Whether adultL2 learners manifest instantaneous acquisition of UG principles via perceptualand recognition data has yet to be empirically established; the argumentsadvanced here in favour of knowledge of c-command, structural dependency andother abstract principles are all indirect.

Nonetheless, it turns out to be the case that the question of when learnersmanifest knowledge of UG is troubling mostly for parameter setting theory. Ithink all of the SLA literature is compatible with the claim that the autonomousrepresentational systems which encode language and which embody UG prin-ciples are instantaneously available for adult second language learners. This doesnot mean that learners do not need time to induce L2 specific categories toachieve native-like knowledge of the L2, but it does mean that encodings musttake place in the “right” representational systems. That just leaves the parameterspart. Unfortunately, the little research available which speaks to this issuesuggests that parameters are not instantaneously available.

3.7 What might it mean now to say that UG is “innate”?

Making sense of the P&P literature, and interpreting evidence for or againstimmediate “access” to UG involves understanding the claim that UG is “innate.”What this actually means, however, is not clear. Smith Cairns (1991: 614) pointsout that ethologists define innate knowledge in the same way as Chomsky hasdefined UG, namely, as what is present in the species in the absence of experi-ence. How they identify it, however, is different from the way linguists identifyprinciples and parameters. For example, innate birdsong is identified as that songwhich emerges when an individual is kept isolated from other members of thespecies. We know from studies of human isolates (Curtiss 1977, 1982, 1988) thattheir speech does not manifest the properties attributed to UG, a fact which hasnot been taken to show that the characterisation of UG is wrong but rather thatthere is a sensitive period during which UG must be stimulated by relevantexperience in order to emerge. (This sensitive period being explainable in termsof selective learning.) A second approach to innate animal cognition has been toidentify behaviours which have no known environmental input. This also


excludes human language. Smith Cairns rejects the label “innate” and insteadcharacterises human linguistic cognition in terms of a developmentally fixedbehaviour. She then goes on to reject a blueprint metaphor for the relevantdevelopmentally fixed behaviour we see in first language acquisition in favour ofa recipe one. She writes:

There is no one-to-one mapping between genes and bits of the body, but thegenes constitute a set of instructions for carrying out a process. One cannotlocate baking powder in a cake, but its action affects the whole cake. We wouldbe well advised to adopt the recipe metaphor with respect to universal grammaras well. It is not a preformed blueprint of human language, devoid of content.Instead, it is a recipe for the construction of a grammar of a human languageas such grammar develops in response to a child’s linguistic environment… Onthis view universal grammar is expressed as the result of the developmentalprocess, not something that exists prior to it. (Smith Cairns 1991–614–5)

If UG is part of a recipe for the development of a grammar, then the question toask is: What are the procedures which are followed in “baking the cake” suchthat the effects of UG become apparent in the resulting psychogrammar? Thisplaces the onus for explanation on the interaction between UG and the processesbuilding linguistic representations. Note too that this view of UG is fundamental-ly incompatible with the hypothesis that adult L2 learners “access” UG whenconstructing their interlanguage grammars.

Goldin-Meadow also takes issue with the standard view of UG being innate.She points out (Goldin-Meadow 1991: 619) that a constraint observed in a child’sknowledge system can be internal to the child at some point in time withoutbeing internally regulated on the ontogenetic time scale. She adds that nothing isgained by linking UG to a genetic program; the genetic code is the wrong levelof description. Rather, if UG guides the learner’s search of the environment forrelevant data it is via a process she calls “canalisation.” Citing work by Gottlieb(1991), she points out (Goldin-Meadow 1991: 620) that canalisation can beenvironmentally caused. Exposure to a given stimulus can make an organismmore sensitive subsequently to that stimulus type and less sensitive to otherstimulus types. Canalisation gives a very nice account of the development ofearly phonetic categories. I mentioned earlier that it would appear as if allpossible linguistically relevant phonetic distinctions are either available at birthor very shortly thereafter, including those which do not appear in the neonate’sinput (Eimas 1974, 1975; Eimas et al. 1971; Jusczyk 1981, 1985, 1992). More-over, despite the fact that stimuli are highly variable, infants can form equiva-lence classes based on the segmental units of speech, and indeed manifest a rangeof categorisation procedures for the perception of speech sounds (Eimas 1985).


This is a classic case of the infant cognising information for which there is nodirect evidence in the input. There is still much debate about the species-specificity of speech processing capacities. Eimas is clearly leaning to somethinglike a language-specific capacity. Jusczyk (1985) argues the contrary position thatthe data can be explained on the basis of general auditory mechanisms andprocesses. Jusczyk (1992) makes a different case, namely, that the non-linguisticauditory system must be interacting with a language-specific faculty in order toaccount for the rapid specialisation and reorganisation of the input into linguisticcategories. In other words, the infant’s representational system is not merelyprojecting categories onto the input, that is after all what it means to say that “allpossible linguistically relevant phonetic distinctions are available at birth”, butprojecting in a differentiated way in response to the stimuli.36 What happenssubsequently in the second half of the first year? As we saw from the researchby Eimas, Jusczyk, and Werker, the infant quickly represents and becomessensitive to just those features which are in the stimuli and becomes desensitisedto those which are not. This is where canalisation becomes relevent for it canexplain how and why the enfant rapidly attunes to just those distinctions whichare in the environment.

Goldin-Meadow also discusses a definition of innateness as meaning that anindividual is “developmentally resilient” (Goldin-Meadow 1991: 620) and learnsa language despite the limitations of the stimuli they hear. She writes

… children routinely go beyond the sentences they hear, although not beyondthe linguistic system to which they are exposed; that is, children do not inventthe system de novo, they just induce it from data that do not appear to besufficient to justify (let alone compel) that induction.(Goldin-Meadow 1991: 620).

She then cites evidence from studies of hearing-impaired children whose hearingparents have not exposed them to any conventional sign language. Such childrennot only develop gestural communication systems, those systems have some ofthe structural properties of other conventional languages (Goldin-Meadow andMylander 1984, 1990a, b).

To summarise, the view of parameter-setting as biologically based, inparticular that it is innate needs refinement. It clearly is not knowledge which ismanifest in the absence of experience, as many generativists would have it,encoded in the genes, since environmental deprivation leads to tragic conse-quences — the absence of basic structural properties of grammar (Curtiss 1977).Primary language acquisition appears to manifest instead canalisation meaningthat there is a constant interaction between the child’s initial representational


capacities and the environment, resulting in a rapid specialisation for certainproperties of the speech the child hears. I conclude from this that Crain mayindeed be correct in that the representational system is at some point instan-taneously available. As Bickerton (1990) puts it: “The brain just does it”,meaning that the brain just makes the representational capacity available andchildren are driven to encode essential properties of languages in their grammarsin ways consistent with UG. But if the brain is “just doing it”, then this leaveslittle room for a selective learning account of linguistic variation.

The implications of this for SLA seem fairly straightforward. We mustreject a selective learning interpretation of parameter-setting for L1 acquisition,which would appear to be a good thing since parameters in SLA cannot involveselective learning. However, this leaves us uninformed as to what parametersreally are. Canalisation entails that the learner is initially sensitive to all relevantdistinctions and involves the increasing insensitivity of the learner to universalproperties of language not manifested in the stimuli.One major differencebetween L1 and L2 acquisition therefore would be that only the former manifestscanalisation. If parameter-setting is recast as canalisation then, once again wemust conclude SLA does not involve parameter-resetting. There is no evidencethat adult L2 learners have available a full range of universal distinctions whenthey begin learning the L2, and gradually become sensitised to just those in theL2 input. Rather, they impose the features and categories of the L1 phonologicalsystem on the stimuli. It seems reasonable to regard L2 phonetic, phonologicaland morphosyntactic acquisition as a case ofrecategorisation.

As to whether adults are developmentally resilient, the jury is still out.Much of the literature on the so-called ultimate attainment issue (Oyama 1976,1978; Patkowski 1980; Newport 1990; Johnson and Newport 1989, 1991) takesit for granted that adults do not regularly go beyond the input they get to acquirean L2. Indeed, much of this literature takes it as self-evident that adults routinelyfail to acquire a second language despite the input.37

4. Summary

In this chapter, I have refined the idea, introduced in Chapter 2, that an explana-tory theory of language acquisition must consist of both a property theory and atransition theory. I have done this by arguing that language acquisition theoriesmust explain two distinct problems. The first is the representational problem —how humans come to be able to represent or encode their languages in the waythat they do. Most approaches to SLA have simply ignored this problem.


The generativist approach, including the P&P approach to SLA, has faced it headon, arguing that the human mind/brain comes equipped innately with theappropriate representational systems. What innateness might mean for languageremains, as we have seen, a controversial issue. But even if we set the controver-sies aside and take at face value the claim that UG solves the representationalproblem, this still leaves unsolved the developmental problem of why one mentalgrammar changes into another. We have seen that the notion of trigger is crucialto an account of parameter-setting but remains largely at a pre-theoretical level.Most acquisition researchers have been content to ignore the questions: What isa parameter? What are the triggers for parameters? How are parameters set? Ananswer to the first question, due to Lightfoot, is that parameter setting is a formof selective learning. This hypothesis would provide the P&P theory with morecontent but unfortunately, it makes the prediction that parameter-resetting isirrelevant to SLA. If parameter-setting is selective learning, then L2 learnerscannot be “resetting” the same parameter. What the term “parameter-resetting”might be referring to is then anybody’s guess.

We also examined the concept of canalisation. Canalisation entails thatlearners have available distinctions not present in the input and quickly becomedesensitised to all others. The work on speech perception in L1 acquisitionsuggests that it may plausibly be described as canalisation; some phoneticfeatures which are available to the neonate are either lost absolutely during thefirst year of life or become unavailable in speech processing mode as speechprocessing becomes finely attuned to the cues relevant to the recognition of L1words. Additional important research on SLA suggests that adults “hear with aforeign accent”, to use an apt metaphor of Jay Keyser’s (1985), lending supportto the claim that canalisation defines low-level aspects of speech perception. SLAstudies on the development of an L2 phonology show nonetheless that canalisa-tion will not explain all aspects of L2 development. Speakers of Japanese whoseL1 has no complex onsets can acquire languages like English which does. Thereis no research to suggest that such learners cannot process these structures,whatever difficulties they might continue to have with the perception andproduction of particular phones like [r] and [l]. Similarly, there is no evidence tosuggest that an L1 speaker of a language without a separate category of modalverbs, cannot acquire English modal verbs. So it would seem that the mere factof differences in categorial typologies across languages does not entail thenarrowing of the ability to represent phonetic and morphosyntactic categories. Itmight be that some categories are extremely difficult to encode (gender amonganglophones comes to mind) but we have no convincing evidence to date thatadult learners cannot encode gender distinctions.


I also raised the metatheoretical problem of the status of parameters in apsychologically real theory of grammar. I noted that there are no theoreticalgrounds for adopting a dynamic view of parameter-setting as a mechanism oflanguage acquisition.

Where does this leave us? Still with the problem of defining the geneticorigins of parameters. Still with the problem of defining triggers for specificparameters. Still with the problem of relating those triggers to stimuli. Still withthe problem of stating when there has been enough exposure to a cue to triggerparameter-resetting. Still with a fractional view of bilingualism which requiressome statement of how resetting a parameter in the L2 affects parameter-settingin the L1. Basically what the SLA P&P literature has offered us is a metaphorand not a transitional theory. I would suggest that the metaphor has outlived itsusefulness. P&P theory does not explain how or why the initial acquisition of aspecific language system begins, how it changes over time, or why acquisitionstops. Currently, it explains nothing about the restructuring of the learner’spsychogrammar given particular sorts of stimuli, input or evidence. With anundefined central construct, we are hardly on good footing to develop anexplanatorily adequate theory of SLA.

Notes

1. Jackendoff (1983) mentions three other modes of description: biological, functional architectureand phenomenological. I do not mean to suggest that these other modes of description shouldnot be pursued in SLA as well. But I do believe they play second fiddle. Functional architecturedescriptions will be partly dependent upon what one’s structural and process models are, andperhaps also on one’s neurological models. As for the other two modes, I will largely ignorethem. Eubank and Gregg (1995) have shown the difficulties in trying to get causal explanationsfrom biological stories, especially at the neurochemical level. As for phenomenological stories,I find them very interesting and even essential to understanding certain issues such as what alearner at a given stage can “hear” (as opposed to detect), but take a strict non-interactionistposition when it comes to the question of whether properties of mind cause behaviour. I assumehere that intentionality, purpose, and consciousness are by-products of brain activity; they donot cause it. Phenomenology must enter into our explanations somewhere (it would be bizarreif I learned Mohawk when I intended to learn Italian) but my intentions will not explain why,e.g., I initially perceive my L2 as a continuous stream of noise. Phenomenological accountscannot possibly explain why the beginning learner finds it impossible to answer the question“How many words are there in that sentence you just heard?”, while the question is normallya trivial one for the same individual when the sentence heard is one of the L1. In short, we willseek explanation at the level of structure and process, and ultimately at the level of brainstructure and function.

2. This situation is actually more confounded in that many authors use the metalanguage ofprocessing to describe structural issues, as we shall see.


3. This proposal should not be taken to mean that I am unaware of all the problems inherent in the“computational” approach to mind (also known asfunctionalism), especially the problem ofwhat a mental state might be. For relevant discussion, see Putnam (1989).

4. The constituent “E” is used here as in Banfield (1982). In the theory of mappings betweensyntactic structures and conceptual structures adopted here, referential categories map universal-ly onto syntactic phrases. The occurrence of referential nouns in a learner’s interlanguage thuslicenses the inference that he is also encoding NPs. See Jackendoff (1983) for more discussion.

5. Unlike Schwartz and Sprouse (1994, 1996), I do not assume that the initial stage of productionof the interlanguage is the mature state of the L1 (including lexical and functional categories)transferred to the interlanguage grammar. If we assume that at the time our hypothetical learnerpasses frommeBritishtome be British, he is not yet producing any markers of tense, then therewould be no reason to assume that he is encoding utterances as Tense Phrases. See Eubank(1993/1994) on the Full Transfer/Full Access hypothesis. I note in passing that by the time thelearner is capable of making complete sentences in the L2, he has normally acquired a certainamount of the specifics of its grammar. This is not to deny that L1 production schemata arebrought to bear in attempting to speak; the evidence for that is overwhelming.

6. Keeping in mind the point made in Chapter 2 of the need to flesh out the minimal assumptionsof discussions focusing on the truly universal aspects of language with mechanisms fordescribing the marked, peripheral, idiosyncratic and learned aspects of language.

7. I regard this as an unfortunate occurrence. SLA researchers have been reluctant to investigatethe formal properties of other theories of generative grammar, or even the formal motivation forparticular analyses within P&P. It often appears that particular analyses are adopted onlybecause “it’s the latest thing”, while other promising analyses are abandoned because they arenot. This gives a peculiarly ad hoc quality to P&P work in SLA. Psycholinguists can hardlyafford to take such a naive attitude to theoretical linguistics. SLA would benefit from athorough airing of the empirical and formal motivation for particular analyses, especially as theyrelate to language acquisition and language processing. Given the widespread assumption thatexternal data can be used to test linguistic theories, there is certainly room in the field forresearch papers of a purely formal (as opposed to an empirical) type.

8. For example, eliminating formal redundancy is a major driving force of formal generativeresearch, something which would strike most psychologists as an odd thing to impose on atheory of mind since there is ample evidence that psychological systems, including language,exhibit considerable redundancy, and that redundancy aids learning (Ritter 1995).

9. Kevin Gregg (p.c.) insists that for generativists these two terms are synonomous. I am not sosure that the reduction is legitimate. Certainly, under the usual idealisations that Chomsky hasmade, especially in the last 15 years, Gregg is correct. If “language” is nothing other thangrammar, and “grammar” consists only of those aspects of structure which are invariate, thenUG and the LAD can be treated as the same thing with no loss of explanatory value. However,formal discussions of learnability (Pinker 1979; Berwick 1985; Dresher and Kaye 1990; Clark1992; Gibson and Wexler 1994; Bertolo 1995; Fodor 1998a, b, c) incorporate a number ofconstructs, e.g. the Subset Principle, the Triggering Learning Algorithm, the Single ValueConstraint, the Greediness Constraint, etc., which are all part of the learning theory, and notpart of UG. Moreover, once we move from the idealisations of learnability theory and starttalking about the acquisition of psychogrammars, and, in particular, once we grant thatpsychogrammars contain all sorts of learned phenomena, then it seems to me that Chomsky’searly distinction between UG and the LAD is legitimate, and indeed required. I take the viewthat Chomsky intends UG to be part of the LAD, that part responsible for what is universal.The LAD itself will account for much else.


10. In Minimalist syntax, this view of the grammar is dramatically altered through the eliminationof D-structure (Chomsky 1995: 186–91).

11. It is important to keep in mind that these features and units belong to the linguistic cognitivesystem. The same features and units are put to work in different ways in distinct phonetic andphonological systems, precluding any determinism of a strictly anatomical or perceptual sort.This fact emerges from a careful reading of the phonetics and perception literature but isillustrated in quite dramatic fashion by the literature on the phonology of sign languages.

12. What a universal theory of categories should look like is very much an issue on which theoristsdivide. There is controversy as to the typology of major categories, there is even morecontroversy as to the typology of functional categories. Recent work has seen an explosion offunctional categories as some researchers seem determined to project onto syntactic categoriesevery possible morphosyntactic distinction observable. The basis for devising a typology isanything but clear. See Hoekstra (1995) for relevant discussion.

13. One exception to this claim is provided by Underspecification Theory where the traditionalunordered phonetic matrices of structuralist and early generative phonology (see Chomsky andHalle 1968) are replaced by ordered matrices which take the form of tree structures consistingof sub-segmental constituents. In such a case, postulating a featural distinction at, e.g. a Dorsalnode cannot be done in the absence of a higher Place node. This gives the elaboration of thesegmental contrasts a certain deductive nature. See Clements (1985), Sagey (1986), Hayes(1986) for early proposals and Clements and Hume (1995) for a state-of-the-art review.

14. As is well known the class of prepositions in English is mixed. Many (above, across, away,behind, below, beneath, beyond, over, under, etc.) have one stressed syllable even when not infocus positions. The status ofof, to, for, up, on, and the other one-syllable prepositions iscomplex. In some contexts, they are clearly functional categories, in others they appear to havereferential content.

15. Note that this adaptation is hardly trivial since we have no direct access to the mentalrepresentations that hearers construct of the speech stimuli they hear and therefore have nodirect access to the frequency of cues in the environment. We will only be able to makeguesstimates as to the frequency of cues-as-mental-constructs based on counts of the presenceof stimuli in texts.

16. One nice consequence of this proposal is that it helps to give some more precision to the debateabout the temporal nature of learning (contrast Klein 1991a, b, with Hyams 1991). While thecorrespondence mappings might be assumed to be instantaneous or at least very fast, learningwhich cues the language makes available will take time since this acquisition involves inductionover the presentation of many instances of stimuli.

17. These remarks reveal nothing about the nature of sound perception or sound production. AsFlege, Frieda, Walley and Randazza (1998) make clear, perceptual processing could involverecognising segments in any one of several domains (syllable, word, etc.) rather than learningto recognize some abstract construct like the phoneme. The same goes for speech production.Targeted segments might be phonetically and motorically organised around production domainslarger than the phone.

18. A radically different picture is presented in Chomsky (1995).

19. A monadic or single-argument predicate like SLEEP will be expressed by an intransitive verbsleep. A dyadic or two-argument predicate like KICK will be expressed by a transitive verblike kick.

20. I do not adopt Flynn’s description of the head direction parameter, which proved to be an


improper interpretation of P&P theory. Flynn (1987) was basically a reworking of her doctoraldissertation which was attempting to explore experimentally ideas not fully worked out at thetime in the theory of grammar (Flynn 1983). Unfortunately, by 1987 the idea that there is asingle parameter at work in determining the order of adjuncts, specifiers and complements hadbeen superceded by other proposals. To be precise, Koopman (1984) and Travis (1984) derivedasymmetrical aspects of constituent order (needed for German verb order in main clauses whereit occurs in “second” position and embedded clauses where it occurs finally) from two parame-ters, one regulating the position of the head to its complement, and a separate parameterinvolving the direction of case-assignment. Hoekstra (1984) also treated the same type ofphenomena in terms of two parameters, one involving direction of government. Travis (1989),noting that there were still too many ordering possibilities permitted by previous analyses,proposed three separate parameters to explain constituent order: a head direction parameter, adirectionality parameter for semantic role assignment, a directionality parameter for Caseassignment, with the restriction that these be ordered with respect to one another. Once asubdomain direction is specified, say direction of Case, no other setting is possible. Thisanalysis makes the parameters dependent on one another. Kayne (1994) decided to dispense withthe whole thing and argued that all languages order heads, complements and specifiers in theorder specifier, head, complement. In his analysis, variation in surface orders across languagesderives solely from differences as to which elements move to the left, to higher positions.Under Kayne’s view there simply is no parameter-setting. Before leaving the problem of thetheoretical foundations of Flynn’s SLA work, I should point out that there are also methodo-logical problems and problems of data interpretation (see Bley-Vroman and Chaudron 1990).

21. Even the apparent exceptions support this statement. Müller (1993, 1998) reports on a bilingualchild Ivar who misanalyses the complementiserfür as a preposition and subsequently takes anidiosyncratic and slow route to the acquisition of sentential complements. This has dramaticconsequences for his acquisition of the proper position of finite verbs in embedded sentences.

22. Müller (1994) provides arguments that parameters can not be reset and draws on evidence fromthe acquisition of word order and complements.

23. Not the least of which are his statements that current work follows directly on, and preservesthe essential ideas of his earliest publications, and this despite considerable differences in themechanisms and formal expression of the theory.

24. White (1989b) can be read this way; White (1998) is an explicit rejection of representationalrealism. So also is Schwartz (1998).

25. The papers in Second Language Research 12(1), 1996, edited by Eubank and Schwartz, whichall purportedly deal with the L2 initial state and at the same time refer constantly to access toUG illustrate this point. None of these papers is compatible with a view of UG where it is theknowledge system of the pre-linguistic individual.

26. See Chomsky (1969) for an early exposition of the same idea.

27. According to the maturational hypothesis, principles of the language faculty may be absent notonly from the child’s behaviour but also from the earliest stages of the child’s grammar. Therelevant representational capacity will not manifest itself until the language faculty matures andthe representational capacity can be expressed. Unfortunately none of the authors have madeany effort yet to link their maturing principles to some independently documented neurologicalor biological transitions. This deprives the “UG Matures” hypothesis of much of its interest.

28. This is one topic where research into SLA could shed light on the nature of primary languageacquisition, a relationship we hardly see exemplified in contemporary research on languageacquisition.


29. Flynn (1987: 188) makes the same observation but fails to draw the obvious conclusions.

30. A similar problem arises in certain models of connectionist learning since learning is realisedas specific connections among nodes (MacWhinney 1995).

31. There is a small but important literature in learnability research, e.g. Clark (1989, 1992),Dresher and Kaye (1990), Wexler (1990), Gibson and Wexler (1994), Fodor (1998c) andDresher (1999) which addresses the question of how triggers connect to parameters. It isn’tobvious, however, how to connect the results of these studies to the data of first languageacquisition and even less clear how to connect them to SLA.

32. Trahey and White (1993: 185–6), in one of the rare discussions of the triggers relevant forresetting a parameter, state that the virtual absence of inflection on English verbs and variousword order phenomena are sufficient to identify Agr as weak. From this discussion, we mayconclude the triggers are to be understood as properties of intermediate analyses of stimuli. Inthis particular case it would appear that learners would have to be able to encode theabsenceof inflectional morphemes where they might otherwise be hypothesised to occur. This appearsto be an appeal to indirect negative evidence (Chomsky 1981a: 9).

33. The basic idea is probably sound; branching direction probably does have consequences for theinterpretation of anaphora, but since the phenomena is so complex, and the interpretivevariables still not well understood, it stands to reason that the investigation of other simplerphenomena would have served Flynn’s purposes better.

34. C-command is a relation between two nodes in a structure such that node A c-commands nodeB when the first branching node dominating A also dominates B (Reinhart 1976, 1983: 18).See (i)

(i) W

A X

Y B

The first-branching node dominating A in (i) is W. W dominates X, Y, and B. Hence Ac-commands B. It also c-commands X and Y. The first branching node dominating B is X. Xdoes not dominate A so B does not c-command A. The node X, however, does. C-command isa crucial construct in the P&P theory of grammar. See Reinhart (1983) for discussion andexemplification.

35. It seems to me that all of Flynn’s subjects would have had to have “reset” their head directionparameter just to be able to parse the stimuli. Differences in the comprehension of sentencescontaining anaphora among the various groups could not, then, be attributed to the hypothesisthat some (the more advanced learners) have reset the parameter while others have not. Flynnalso speaks of learners “working out” the deductive consequences of parameter-resetting whichsuggests that she has not quite grasped the function of parameter-setting within her own theory.By definition, parameter-setting does not involve inferencing or even large amounts ofcomputation. Inferencing takes place outside of the language faculty. To suggest that learnerscan do problem-solving related to parameter-setting seems to suggest that learners somehow canexplicitly analyse the contents of UG and/or the contents of their interlanguage grammars. Thereis no evidence for such a claim and it runs counter to the very logic of UG-based accounts ofacquisition. To assume that inferencing plays a central role in parameter-resetting is to emptythe theory of explanatory interest as an alternative to induction.


36. Note that it is not claimed that the perceptual system which makes the universal phoneticfeatures available is part of UG. On the contrary, it is assumed to be part of a universal butnon-language specific system. However, the cognitive system for language makes particular useof the phonetic features, organising them into linguistic categories to drive the development ofthe L1 phonology.

37. This assumption is, however, unwarranted because there has been no investigation of thepotential for native-like ultimate attainment in the face of controlled native-like input. SeeChapter 4 for further discussion. Other views of the ultimate attainment issue can be found inLong (1990), Birdsong (1989, 1991, 1992), Sorace (1993), Ioup, Boustagui, El Tigi, andMoselle (1994), and White and Genesee (1996).

C 4

The autonomous induction model

1. Introduction

In Chapter 3, I began to define the termsacquisitionandlearning, focusing thereon maturation, selective learning, and canalisation. In other words, I concentratedon how knowledge structures might arise on a strictly biological basis. Inparticular, I made the obvious claim that maturation of grammatical principles orparameters, parameter-setting as selective learning, or the tuning of the learningmechanism to specific forms of stimuli via canalisation as a result of the loss of,e.g. neuronal connections, should be irrelevent for adult SLA since the neurol-ogical system in which learning occurs is by adulthood stable and no longer“growing.” Were it to turn out to be the case that parameter-setting had to beunderstood in these terms, we could dismiss it outright as a mechanism of adultL2 learning. In this chapter, I shall focus on acquisition and learning in theconventional sense, namely as instance-based learning, observational generalisa-tion, or instance-based retrenchment from a too general generalisation, all formsof induction. I will introduce a formal theory of induction based on proposals byHolland, Holyoak, Nisbett, and Thagard (1986) in their bookInduction: Process-es of inference, learning and discovery.1 In the interests of readability I amreferring to this theory as theInduction Theoryand limiting page references tothose places where I am quoting or paraphrasing closely. At the same time, I willadapt this theory to my own purposes, making it conform to the hypothesis thatlinguistic cognition is realised in autonomous representational systems. My ownproposals, as should be clear by now, will be referred to as theAutonomousInduction Theory.2

One objective of the chapter is to show how induction can be constrainedin various ways. It is not too provocative to characterise the metatheoreticaldebate between proponents of UG and inductivist approaches as saying: “Eitherit’s UG at work, or there are no constraints.” This is basically the argumentmade in Archibald (1991, 1993) who concludes that parameter-(re)setting in the


learning of L2 stress systems must be at work because “crazy rules” do not showup in the interlanguages of his subjects. Flynn (1988a) makes similar claims, asdo Finer (1991) and Thomas (1991) who speak of the absence in SLA of “roguegrammars.” See Epstein et al. (1996) for examples of the type of bizarre genera-lisations that induction is supposed to lead to. Rogue grammars are grammarswhich fail to manifest essential properties of natural language grammars. Theyare, in addition, grammars which manifest properties which never occur innatural language grammars. The basic assumption of critiques of inductionappears to be that rogue grammars are a necessary by-product of induction.Arguments on behalf of the P&P theory are thus grounded in a rejection ofinduction: Induction ought to lead to rogue grammars, there are no roguegrammars, so UG must be “accessed” during the SLA process. The critiques donot carry through, however, in that being unconstrained is not an essentialproperty defining induction. We shall see below that such claims arise from afailure to take into consideration advances in cognitive psychology which dealspecifically with induction. Secondly, we shall have to distinguish carefullybetweeninduction, as a kind of learning, occurring in a wide variety of cognitivedomains, andinductive reasoning, which takes place in the conceptual systemand is habitually associated with problem-solving, hypothesis-formation andhypothesis-testing. Important constraints are imposed on induction by locating itwithin autonomous domains and by characterising inductive learning in terms ofthe operations and primitives of specific representational formats. In Section 2,I will present the basic assumptions related to Jackendoff’s Hypothesis ofRepresentational Autonomy. This will provide the necessary background to thepresentation of the theory of autonomous induction in Section 3. Further discus-sion of the constraints problem will be deferred to Chapter 5.

2. The language faculty in outline

In Chapter 1 (Section 2.2), I briefly introduced the notion of modularity andargued for aninteractivemodel of speech processing in which information canflow both bottom-up from the signal to the conceptual system and top-down fromthe conceptual system to the morphosyntax and phonology. In this section, I wishto argue, however, that there are severe limitations on how information encodedin conceptual structures can interact with grammatical representations relevant forparsing or speech production. I will present the details of a modified modularapproach, termedRepresentational Modularity, by Jackendoff (1987: Ch. 12,1992: Ch. 1, 1995: 5). In contrast to the views of Fodor and Schwartz, to be

THE AUTONOMOUS INDUCTION MODEL 121

examined in Chapter 7, in which the language faculty constitutes a module, thetheory of Representational Modularity proposes instead that a particular type ofrepresentation can be modular. The language faculty has several autonomousrepresentational systems and information can flow in only a limited way from theconceptual system into the grammar via correspondence rules which connect theautonomous representational systems.

2.1 Representational Modularity: The hypothesis of levels

In Jackendoff’s theory of mind, there are various cognitive faculties, eachassociated with a chain of levels of representation from those which interfacemost directly with stimuli, called the “lowest” — using the spatial metaphor Iadverted to implicitly in Chapter 1, to the “highest”, defined as those whichinterface with conceptual structures. The chains intersect at various pointsallowing for the possibility of information encoded in one chain to influence theinformation encoded in another. These proposals are reproduced in (4.1) as thehypothesis of levels.

(4.1) Hypothesis of levelsa. Each faculty of mind has its own characteristic chain of levels of

representation from lowest to highest.b. These chains intersect at various points.c. The levels of structure at the intersections of chains are responsible

for the interactions among faculties.d. The central levels at which “thought” takes place, largely independent

of sense modality, are at the intersection of many distinct chains.(Jackendoff 1987: 277)

The last point is critical for the theory of learning presented here. Rather thanviewing conceptual structures as the endpoint of processing, the Jackendovianmodel places it in the centre of much of the action. It is the place whereinformation of various sorts converges, possibly to be re-organised beforeconnecting back to the various faculties where the information can be acted on.

The faculties are described as having chains of levels of representation. InChapter 1, I made use of such a chain in discussing speech processing in thelanguage faculty, noting that speech perception and comprehension appear torequire a chain of processing consisting of at least low-level auditory analysis(both peripheral and central), acoustic-phonetic analysis, phonological analysis,lexical activation, lexical selection and lexical integration, morphosyntacticanalysis, semantic analysis/pragmatic inferencing and integration. This picture of


things gives us about six levels of representation. There could well be more.Each level of representation has a unique set of formation rules (partly learnedand partly the result of UG providing certain primitives) which derives thecategories of that level and their principles of combination. These levels ofrepresentation are incommensurate. They are therefore all linked by correspon-dence rules which translate information from one autonomous representationalsystem to another. I show Jackendoff’s picture of the faculties in Figure 4.1.

(spatial transformations)

retinalinput

→ primalsketch

→ 2 1/2Dsketch

↔ 3Dmodel

(inferences) ?

phonologicalstructure conceptual

structuresegmental phonologymetrical gridprosodic treeintonation syntactic structure

(body representation)

?auditory input

??rhythmicstructure

musical surface groupingtime-spanreduction

prolongationalreduction

metrical grid

motor output

haptic,vestibular, etc.input

Figure 4.1.The organisation of all levels of mental representation (Jackendoff 1987: 248)


In this model, the language faculty includes the auditory input, motor output tothe vocal tract, all of the components of the phonetic, phonological, syntactic andconceptual structure, and their correspondence rules (Jackendoff 1987: 247).Only some aspects of the language faculty, however, are modular, namely theautonomous representational systems and the associated processors. For empiricalevidence and argumentation that precisely this kind of architecture of the mindis required, see Jackendoff (1983, 1987, 1997) which summarise a broad rangeof findings from cognitive psychology.

With respect to the autonomous representational systems of the languagefaculty, Jackendoff (1987: 258) has proposed that there must be atranslationprocessorfor each set of correspondence rules linking one autonomous represen-tational type to another. Indeed, he suggests that there is a separate processor foreach direction of correspondence during, e.g. speech processing. That means, forexample, that there will be two translation processors for the processing of inputlinking the phonological and the morphosyntactic levels of representations, onefor the translation “upwards” of phonological units into morphosyntactic ones,and a separate processor for the translation “downwards” of morphosyntacticunits into phonological ones. Each level of representation is regulated as well byan integrative processor which integrates into a structure all of the informationthat it gets from the translation processor. Note that it is the integrative pro-cessors which processing theory habitually refers to, building sentences, prosodicconstituents or conceptual structures. Each of these processors is a module. Allfunction automatically, unconsciously, and outside of our intentional control.

(4.2) The Representational Modularity HypothesisEach translation processor and each integrative processor is a module.

The claim in (4.2) is a claim about “information encapsulation” (Fodor 1983: 37).It is not a claim that each processor can be localised in the brain. Note that thesemodules are all domain specific. They deliver information only in highly special-ised formats, and they have access only to information in their specific inputformat. No processors match up more than two levels (Jackendoff 1987: 263).This has obvious consequences for my proposed model of feedback and correc-tion because it entails that information in the conceptual system directly relevantto linguistic formcan only be linked to phonological representations via s-struc-tures, or via the lexicon. The proposals are spelt out in (4.3–5).

(4.3) Bottom-up processorsa. Transduction of sound wave into acoustic information (via peripheral

and central auditory analysis).b. Mapping of available acoustic information into phonological format.


c. Mapping of available phonological structure into syntactic format.d. Mapping of available syntactic structure into conceptual format.

(4.4) Top-down processorsa. Mapping of available syntactic structure into phonological format.b. Mapping of available conceptual structure into syntactic format.

(4.5) Integrative processorsa. Integration of newly available phonological information into unified

phonological structure.b. Integration of newly available syntactic information into unified syn-

tactic structure.c. Integration of newly available conceptual information into unified

conceptual structure.

The bottom-up and top-down processors convert one type of representation intoanother. The integrative processors build representations. The processorsdescribed in (4.3) and (4.4) are thus the correspondence processors. The integra-tive processors are those described in (4.5).

For Jackendoff, it is also true that belief fixation and thought is modular inthat it appears to be domain-specific and involves the creation and integration ofspecific types of information in longterm memory. Thus, even though there is aprocessor for conceptual structures, it is not functioning like a central processor.I will provide some support for this viewpoint below, and more in Chapter 7.

In the case of the grammar, the overall organisation is as shown in Figure 4.2.

This model shows the exact relationship between the conceptual structures level

Phonological formation rules Syntactic formation rules Conceptual formation rules

Phonological structures(PS)

Syntactic structures(SS)

Conceptual structures(CS)

PS–SS correspondence rules SS–CS correspondence rules

Lexicon

Figure 4.2.The organisation of the grammar (Jackendoff 1997: 100)

of processing, where meanings are computed, and the rest of the grammar. We seethat the points of contact are quite limited. Conceptual structures can communicatevia correspondence rules with s-structures and the lexicon, which itself is a setof correspondences. S-structures can in turn communicate with phonologicalstructures. The lower levels of phonetic processing appear, in contrast, to be


input systems in Fodor’s (1983) sense, meaning that they are isolated from theconceptual system and cannot be put into correspondence with concepts.

The model of processing is, as I have emphasised, partially interactive,meaning that information can flow in both directions. This is illustrated inFigures 4.3 and 4.4.

The interactive nature of processing forces on the theory the differentiation of

In speech understanding, each part of each level of representation from phonology up isderived by virtue of correspondences with neighbouring levels (Interactive parallel). Thenumbers “1”and“2” refer to twodistinctunitsbeingprocessed.

2

conceptual 1

2

syntactic 1

2

phonological 1

acoustic 1 2

Figure 4.3.Processing Hypothesis for perception (Jackendoff 1987: 101)

correspondence processors and the integrative processors, which automaticallyattempt to incorporate in working memory all incoming information from thevarious other translation processors, one from each level, into a single “mostcoherent” whole (Jackendoff 1987: 258). Jackendoff hypothesises that therepresentations from all levels except the most peripheral must also be availableto be stored in longterm memory since information from all levels gets encoded


in lexical entries. The model also incorporates a selection function that restricts

In speech production, each part of each level of representation from syntax down is derivedby virtue of correspondences with neighbouring levels. Once again, the numbers “1” and“2” refer to two distinct constituents.

conceptual 1

2

syntactic 1

2

phonological 1

2

motor1 2

Figure 4.4.Processing Hypothesis for production (Jackendoff 1987: 109)

the number of structures under analysis and that at each moment during process-ing marks one candidate as the best (Jackendoff 1987: 259). The selectionfunction, which is domain-specific, replaces a domain-general executive function.

Now that we have a clear picture of the functional architecture of the mind,including autonomous representational systems, we can consider the implicationsfor induction. Since the conceptual system interfaces with a variety of faculties asFigure 4.1 shows, inductive learning guided by the contents of conceptual structurescan occur across faculties. Since the conceptual system interfaces with language,this means that inductive learning guided by meaning can occur in the languagefaculty too. However, since conceptual structures can only communicate with thelevels of the grammar via the correspondence rules, induction will only occur atthe points of contact, which are s-structures, prosodic structures, and the lexicon.


2.2 The intermediate level theory of awareness

The picture outlined above is, however, relevant only for implicit or unconsciouslearning. Jackendoff’s theory of mind forces an even more restrictive position onus with respect to the explicit learning habitually associated with consciousnessor awareness. So far, I have been discussing the problem of induction andfeedback and correction largely in abstraction from considerations of awareness.I will hypothesise that inductive learning can involve both implicit and explicitlearning since this is what the empirical evidence suggests. What of feedback andcorrection? To my knowledge, the relationship between feedback, correction,metalinguistic instruction and awareness has not been sorted out. See Hulstijn(1997) for relevant discussion. I am prepared tentatively to assume on the basisof the data presented in Chapters 8 and 9 that the deployment of negativeevidence mayrequire awareness. This has important implications. Jackendoff(1987) argues that awareness is modality specific and leads to the projection ofsingle interpretations onto our phenomenological mind. The former property isexplained by the modularity of the mind. The latter property, he hypothesises(Jackendoff 1987: 285) is accounted for by assuming that the selection functionoperates in working memory in such a way as to project only a single set ofrepresentations. That what we are aware of seems to us to be especially vivid, heexplains in terms of the increased and more detailed processing of stimuli whichresults from attention. On the basis of a discussion of linguistic images, i.e. theinner voice which talks to us without our actually using the motor-articulatorysystem, he suggests that the only level of representation which presents itself toawareness is thephonological level(Jackendoff 1987: 288).

I have focused first on linguistic imagery rather than speech perception orproduction because the linguistic structure in this case seems so purelygratuitous. Why should thought be accompanied by syntactic and phonologicalstructure? The answer comes from the nature of short-term memory: as soonas a conceptual structure is deposited into short-term memory, the fast pro-cesses of the language modules automatically translate it, insofar as possible,into linguistic form. It may seem even more strange, perhaps, thatawarenesscomes clothed in phonological form. Yet this seems to be the case — we hearthis inner voice speaking to usin words. (Jackendoff 1987: 288–9. Emphasisin the original.)

The particular phonological form which is projected into awareness is preciselythat representation selected by the selection function as the best one.3 Nowconsider what this means for a theory of feedback and correction. When a nativespeaker (NS) becomes aware that a learner has made a mistake, that mistake will


necessarily be encoded in phonological structures. The NS will be aware that thelearner has done something wrong. Errors will be characterisable (by us theobserver) as the selection of the wrong phonological form to express a givenlexical meaning, or erroneous sequencing of prosodic words, or the mispronunci-ation of a prosodic word.4 In other words, the what which a NS can notice andbe aware of will be whatever is encodable in a prosodic representation. It followsthat the NS will not notice or be aware of anything consisting of the morpho-syntactic contents of the learner’s representation of the erroneous sentence (thedegree of embeddedness, the categorial features, the improper binding of anantecedent-trace). Introspection certainly suggests that this view is correct(although, once again, the question must be answered by serious empiricalresearch). It also follows that when the NS corrects, and the learner attends tothe correction, she will only be aware of the same sorts of information, namelyinformation represented in phonological representations. One crucial conclusionfollows: to the extent that feedback, correction, and metalinguistic instructiondepend on awareness, they cannot have any effect on the acquisition of grammati-cal information available exclusively to themorphosyntactic representations, or toinformation in conceptual structures. I will call this the awareness constraint onnegative evidence.

(4.6) The awareness constraint on negative evidenceWhen we process learners’ errors in speech, or when learners’ processfeedback and correction from native speakers, the only levels of represen-tation that either we or they can be aware of are phonological representa-tions. Consequently, the only information that either we or they can pro-cess is the information encoded in phonological representations.

We can make a number of predictions regarding the effectiveness of these kindsof input on SLA. These are shown in (4.7).

(4.7) Predictions regarding the effectiveness of feedback, correction and meta-linguistic information on conscious learninga. Phonetic representations should be completely impermeable to feed-

back and correction.b. The phonological information stored in lexical entries, i.e. the linear

order of segments and syllables, but not the content of segments,should be permeable to feedback and correction.

c. Feedback, correction, and metalinguistic information should be able toinfluence how we hear integrated phonological representations.


d. They should not be able to influence the linear and hierarchical pat-terns of s-structures except insofar as these are directly encoded inphonological representations.

e. They should be able to influence the morphosyntactic informationstored in lexical entries, e.g. s-selection and c-selection properties ofindividual words to the extent that these are associated with phono-logical forms.

f. They should not be able to influence semantic properties of linguisticunits except insofar as these are instantiated in phonological forms.

We have seen that the lower levels of parsing seem to be unavailable to reflec-tion or awareness; this leads directly to the prediction in (4.7a), namely that noamount of being told “It sounds like […]” should be able to influence ourperception and learning of the acoustic features of acoustic-phonetic stimuli(more specifically, the details of intonation, stress, or segments) independently ofwhat our perceptual systems will process bottom-up anyway. Again, the predic-tion must be tested in a controlled fashion, but it does appear to be consistentwith the experiences of both classroom learners of foreign languages and theirlanguage teachers. Predictions (4.7b) and (4.7c) are that learners will be able tonotice or learn from feedback or correction the order of prosodic constituents,that is to say, e.g. prosodic words, or larger prosodic units. It is important tokeep in mind in this regard, that while prosodic words often correspond tomorphosyntactic words, there are many cases (classic problems ofjuncturecometo mind of the “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream” sort), wherethe two levels of representation are quite distinct. We predict therefore, thatfeedback and correction will not be usable for learning the order of syntacticunits in precisely such cases. Thus learners will not be able to learn fromfeedback and correction such things as the leftward or rightward direction ofsyntactic attachment, although the leftward or rightward direction of cliticisationmight be learnable through phenomena like ellipsis, deletion and so on whichinvolve the omission of prosodic words (and their cliticised “guests”), cf. *Bill’sbreeding dahlias but Jane’s alliumsvs.Bill’s breeding dahlias but Jane alliums.

Prediction (4.7d) states explicitly that the contents of morphosyntacticrepresentations will not be learnable from feedback or correction. This will betrue especially of morphosyntactic distinctions which are encoded only throughthe integration of lexical information in s-structures. However, since argumentstructures, and subcategorisation properties can all be associated with thephonological forms of the arguments and their subcategorised expressions, whichcan in turn be encoded in lexical entries, it is possible that these could be learnedvia feedback and correction. It follows that properties like membership in a given


word class, semantic roles or semantic role and case assignment functions mightbe learnable on the basis of feedback and correction to the extent that these canbe directly mapped onto the phonological representations of a word. Thus, forexample, learners might be able to learn from feedback and correction thataccusative case in a given Latin declension ends in -umor thatsinkbut notthinkbelongs to the same conjugation class asdrink (at least, in standard varieties ofEnglish).5 Where case or word class cannot be instantiated in specific phonologi-cal distinctions, then it should not be learnable via feedback and correction.

I will return to the accuracy of these predictions in the Chapter 8, althoughit needs to be stressed that in the absence of an explicit theory of feedback andcorrection, little research has been done which directly tests these predictions.Consequently, it will be impossible to explore (4.7) in any significant detail inthis book. Let us now turn to the details of the theory of induction.

3. Induction and i-learning

In this section, I will introduce the Induction Theory of Holland et al., which hasserved as the basis for the development of the Autonomous Induction Theory. Inparticular, I will be attempting to place an interpretation on the Induction Theoryin which certain of its components are operating autonomously within the theoryof modularity just described. This is a serious departure from the Holland et al.theory, and it should be acknowledged up front. In my view it is a necessarydeparture in order to truly constrain the Induction Theory, which in its presentform will not explain linguistic cognition, be it L1-based or L2-based. To be ableto distinguish between induction as defined by the Induction Theory andinduction as defined by the Autonomous Induction Theory, I shall refer to thelatter construct asi-learning.

3.1 Basic properties of induction

Holland et al. (1986: 1) define induction as

… all inferential processes that expand knowledge in the face of uncertainty

which distinguishes induction from canalisation since the latter does not involveinferencing and eliminates representational capacity rather than expanding it. Itclearly distinguishes induction from parameter-setting too in that the latter doesnot involve the creation of knowledge in the face of uncertainty. The readershould keep in mind that parameters are associated with specific triggers and that


the availability of a trigger in the input ought to automatically result in thesetting of the parameter in a precise way.

In the Induction Theory the inferential procedures have three essentialproperties. They operate

(4.8) a. within a larger framework of problem-solving cognitive activities;b. through the activities of one or possibly more than one nonspecial-

ised, cognitive subsystems,c. based on feedback regarding the success or failure of predictions

about the environment generated by the learner(Holland et al. 1989: 9).

I shall argue that this notion of induction is too limited in that it locates allinduction, and therefore all categorisation, in the conceptual representationalsystem. It seems to confound inductive learning with inductive reasoning. SinceI want to be able to say that instance-based learning, categorisation, overgenerali-sation and the retreat from overgeneralizsations all occur in other, autonomoussystems, these kinds of learning cannot be tied to representations in the conceptu-al system. Rather, it would be best to see induction as

all cognitive processes which expand knowledge in the face of uncertainty

regardless of the representational system in which the expansion of knowledgeoccurs. It is nevertheless worth noting here that this revised definition is consist-ent with the view espoused earlier that acquisition involves the coming-to-encode-information-in-a-representational-system. Cognitive processes whichinvolve the novel encoding of information in a representation are preciselyinductive processes.

3.2 Induction as asearchthrough asearch space?

Holland et al. (1989: 10), borrowing a metaphor from now classic work onproblem-solving by Newell and Simon (1972), describe induction as problem-solving. Problem-solving in turn is defined as a search through a mentallyrepresented space. The “problem” for the learner is to fix the current representa-tion of a stimulus so that it is consistent both with analysed stimuli outputted bythe perceptual systems and input to processors derived from stored informationwhich is believed with considerable conviction to be true. In formal terms, theproblem is equated with four things: the initial state of the organism, one ormore definable “goal states”, which are equated with the end state of theorganism, a set of operators which are defined in such a way that they can


convert one state into another, and finally a set of constraints that determine theproperties of an acceptable solution. Problem-solving is modelled in this way asthe transition from the initial state to an end state. See Figure 4.5.

As Figure 4.5 makes clear, there might be many possible solutions to a given

Goal 1

Goal 2

Problem state Goal 3

Goal 4

Goal 5

Figure 4.5.Problem-solving as the transition from an initial “problem state” to a“goal state”

problem. Clearly, a theory of learning must make clear how a learner “selects”among them. We shall see below that the classic problem-solving approach toinduction breaks down because it cannot provide a unified solution to thisselection problem for all cognitive domains.

Figure 4.5 can be characterised as a static approach to induction, consistentwith the aims of property theories. We can re-cast the model in Figure 4.5 interms of a temporal metaphor to express the temporal dimension of learning. SeeFigure 4.6.

Intermediate State 1 End State 1


Initial or Current State Intermediate State 3 End State 3



Time i Time i + 1 Time n

Figure 4.6.Problem-solving as the transition from an “initial state” to an “intermediatestate” and to an “end state”


This is an extremely simple view of the possible relations between the initial,intermediate and end states, but it will do for expository purposes. The Newelland Simon model postulates that the current state is systematically compared tothe end state in the presence of feedback. On the basis of an interpretation of thefeedback, differences between the current state and the end state are identified.Feedback thus plays an essential role in enriching the information the learnergets from the perceptual systems and in moving the learner from one mentalstate to the next. Problem-solving would not be possible without it for it initiatestransitions among the internal states of the device. Given information fromfeedback about how well a given intermediate state “fits” as a solution, one orseveral operators are selected which will reduce the differences between it andan end state. The application of the operators converts the initial or current statedirectly into some end state or into an intermediate state. If the applicationproduces a state identical with the end state intended (if they match), theinduction has been successful, and computation ends. If the application producesan intermediate state, by definition one which does not match the intended endstate, then further sub-goals are defined which will help to reduce the differ-ences, and the operators are then re-applied until the goal is attained or somefailure criterion is reached.

It should be obvious that the Newell and Simon model is general enough tolend itself to an analysis of everything from how to move a 1.4 metre wide sofathrough a 1.3 metre wide space to figuring out how to drive from Berlin Mitteto the autobahn without passing by a roadworks or a major construction site.Will it work for language acquisition? Definitely, not, for precisely the reasonsraised in discussions of “rogue grammars”; it simply is too unconstrained. Itshould be pointed out, however, that the model is recognised as inadequate as amodel of conventional problem-solving. Holland et al. (1989: 10–2) criticise itbecause it depends upon general methods such as means-end analysis. Thesemethods are implausible as models of human cognition, as investigations ofknowledge and problem-solving in particular domains have revealed. Holland etal. point out that research on expert and novice differences in solving problemshas shown thatexpertise is crucially dependent upon the development of domain-specific representations and processes. Similar conclusions follow from researchon reasoning tasks which shows that a person’s familiarity with a domain affectshis ability to make valid inferences (Wason 1966, 1968, 1977; Johnson-Laird andWason 1977a; Nisbett 1993a, among many others). Finally, research on concept-ual development in children reveals that change and conceptual reorganisationdoes not apply “across-the-board” but rather is domain-based and domain-specific (Keil 1979, 1989). A child’s ability to handle conceptual problems, such


as classifying living entities as, e.g. cats or skunks, based on external appearance(shape of the head and tail, colour of the fur, etc.) or non-visible biologicalproperties (such as the ability to have kittens or skunk babies), is determined bythe child’s “theory” about those entities (Carey 1985; Murphy and Medin 1985;Keil 1989; Markman 1989). These theories develop at different rates andmoments in time and exhibit domain-specific ontologies. Holland et al. (1989: 11)conclude (and I concur):

At a global level, then, problem-solving appears to be a process based ondomain-specific knowledge, if that is available, or reliance on general methods,if it is not.

These different kinds of empirical results all point in the same general direction:human problem-solving is defined by complex conceptual representations whichguide inferencing and these complex representations are specific to particulardomains of knowledge. Such results have important consequences for SLAtheorising. First of all, they are compatible with the claims by generativists thatknowledge of language constitutes a special domain of knowledge to which“general problem-solving strategies” are largely irrelevant. This is because suchdomain general problem-solving strategies are largely irrelevant to other domainsof cognition too. I will return to this issue in Chapter 5. Secondly, it wouldappear that the SLA debate (pro-UG/anti-induction versus pro-induction/anti-UG)presupposes that there is only one model of induction, namely the Newell andSimon type, and only one view of cognition, namely that it consists of somegreat undifferentiated mass to which general problem-solving strategies canapply. Even those who argue that language is unique tend to assume that what isleft over from cognition once one subtracts the language faculty is still somegreat undifferentiated thing. Views of cognition which have emerged fromresearch in cognitive psychology over the last 20 years suggest a quite differentpicture: human cognition consists of a number of autonomous representationaldomains, and even within what I have been calling conceptual representations —that level of representation which is an interface between vision, language, non-linguistic audition, touch, etc., inferencing and problem-solving proceed on thebasis of domain-specific encodings. Such a view of cognition requires a newtheory of induction.

The Newell and Simon model is also indequate in that it does not constrainthe creation of the goals or endstates. This failure is connected to the problematicview of cognition just discussed. It is this fact which has, in part, led to thebelief in linguistic circles that induction is necessarily unconstrained. It is thisbelief which motivates arguments that induction cannot explain language


acquisition because it leads to “crazy” results. The Newell and Simon model alsodoes not adequately constrain the nature of the operators. Consequently, it mustbe abandoned and replaced with a better theory of induction. Some of theseproblems are directly addressed in the Induction Theory of Holland et al.Induction involves changes to mental representations made by operators. Thereare a set of procedures in the learning mechanism for selecting one or moreoperators to apply, in some particular order, to the initial or current state. We canthink of the procedures as a set of functions. As we shall see,the selection of theoperators is partially constrained by the activated mental representations of thecurrent state. This means that no function can be selected which does notcorrespond to part of an already activated mental representation. In the Auton-omous Induction Theory, this translates in the following way: I-learning func-tions will be triggered when a parse of a given string fails. As noted in Chap-ter 1, language learning begins when parsing cannot proceed to analyse currentinput with the extant parsing procedures. The constraint limiting the functions toactivated mental representations of the current state means that the “search” fora solution to a given problem, e.g. how to classify and attach the next word in amorphosyntactic parse, cannot extend beyond the entities currently activatedwithin the relevant autonomous representational system. If the learning mechan-ism is dealing with the formblik in the context of a successful analysis ofI sawthe the search for a successful solution to the classification will be constrainedby the preceding representation and classifications relevant to the activatedwords. If the grammatical system already includes a representation of theinformation that there is a high probability that the next word followingthewillbe a noun, the learning mechanism will favour a noun classification. As weknow, this could turn out to be the wrong analysis, since determiners in Englishcan also be followed by adverbs such asveryand adjectives such asround. Thesolution is not, however, “crazy.”

In the Induction Theory, the functions can transform representations byrecategorising various elements, by constructing or activating new representa-tions, and by constructing or activating associations or analogies. Holland et alsuggest (1989: 12), therefore, that the search space metaphor be re-worked as asearch through a set of alternative categorisations which can compete as possiblesolutions. The more successful a given solution is in solving a specific type ofproblem, the more likely it is to win out over its competitors. In adapting theInduction Theory to an autonomous cognition, it is best to drop the problem-solving metaphor and the search metaphor altogether since they actually interferewith our ability to understand language acquisition. These metaphors attempt anexplanation at the wrong level of abstraction, and suggest, erroneously, that


categorisation and induction are to be defined in terms of intentions and actions.This not only leads to the mind/body problem, or explaining how the brain canhave intentions and perform actions, it also raises the thorny problem of attentionin learning. We have seen that many aspects of language are not dependent onthe learner’s ability to notice and think consciously about the distinctions whichare to be learned. Moreover, we are assuming here that attention and awarenessinvolve the projection of phonological representations. I also take a radicallydifferent position on what the representations involved in i-learning consist of,and therefore, of what the functions are doing. The notion of competition,however, is central to the Induction Theory and will be retained here. As theexample just discussed illustrates, learning English requires that the parser beable to select both a Det N, a Det Adj and a Det Adv analysis when confrontedwith a string the + some novel form. The learning mechanisms must constructsuch parsing procedures and develop production schemata for encoding suchstrings as well. As noted in Chapter 3, in the discussion of the various bootstrap-ping hypotheses, exactly how the learning mechanisms do this is at present notknown in either L1 or L2 acquisition. Given our present state of knowledge, wemight reasonably assume that learners rely on cues from a lower level ofrepresentation, e.g. the phonological level, or a higher level of representation, e.g.the conceptual level, or on distributional information at the same level ofrepresentation, e.g. the morphosyntactic level. Information from all such levelsmight therefore compete as the solution in analysing a novel form.

3.3 Domains of knowledge as mental models

Holland et al. (1986) attempt to formalise inductive reasoning procedures withinthe framework of a mental models (MMs) model of cognition (Johnson-Laird1983). Induction is then defined as a set of procedures which lead to the creationand/or refinement of the constructs which form MMs. What are mental models?

MMs are temporary and changing complex conceptual representations ofspecific situations. They comprise both explicit representations as well as theconceptual representations which exist implicitly in an organism’s mind/brainin that they can be generated from a currently activated set of conceptualrepresentations.

MMs, according to Johnson-Laird (1983: 397), are semantic entities which represent

… objects, states of affairs, sequences of events, the way the world is, and thesocial and psychological actions of daily life. They enable individuals to makeinferences and predictions, to understand phenomena, to decide what action totake and to control its execution, and above all to experience events by proxy;


they allow language to be used to create representations comparable to thosederiving from direct acquaintance with the world; and they relate words to theworld by way of conception and perception.

MMs are necessary to explain why problem-solving is domain specific. Problem-solving takes place within the limits imposed by a given mental model, whichwill include, for example, default assumptions about what is typical or normal inan event, in the absence of contradicting information. Canadians have a mentalmodel of a which includes the information that it involvesfood consumption, the food normally being served at a table on dishes andconsumed with the aid of cutlery, some time shortly after one normally gets upin the morning. The food served might include a broad range of items such asfresh or stewed fruits or juice, breads, toast, muffins or pastries, hot or coldcereals, pancakes or waffles (with maple syrup), eggs and bacon, coffee or tea,and so on. It will not include cold cuts or highly seasoned raw ground meat (aswill a German MM of a ) nor will it include boiled rice orpickled fish (as will a Japanese MM of a ).6 Like otherconcepts, is a prototype. A typical might consist oforange juice, a bowl of Red River cereal, a fried egg and bacon and a cup ofcoffee, consumed from china sitting down at a table, with fork, knife andspoons. But a event will not cease to be one if it deviates from thisscenario in some way. Pancakes eaten in a sleeping bag on the ground, outdoors,by a lake, is still an instance of within a Canadian mental model. Soperhaps too is cold pizza eaten standing at the open fridge door, with the fingersand directly from a cardboard box at 1 p.m., if it is the first meal of the day afterrising. Classifying such an event as a event, however, involvesactivating “enough” properties of the event type in a classification decision.Generational differences among Canadians are to be noticed as to whether pizza“counts” as breakfast. For my parents’ generation, pizza barely constitutes a meal.As such it deviates too much from the prototypical breakfast, and the relevantclassification will not be made and perhaps disputed when others make it.

Mental models are relevant to accounts of SLA. We should assume that theyplay a large role in the acquisition of vocabulary, in particular, in defining whatan expression could mean for a given learner in a given situation. I havepreviously suggested that we explain nothing when we say that learners “trans-fer” meanings of the L1 to the acquisition of L2 vocabulary if we have no theoryof meaning worthy of the name. We will move towards an explanation if we canbe precise about what MMs a learner has for a given event, as well as how thoseMMs guide inferencing in the face of evidence which is both compatible andincompatible with the L1-based MMs. Research on concepts will define what


possible and plausible interpretations will be available for a learner and will alsoadd some much needed content to claims that learners find the meanings ofutterances “transparent”, when specific words are used in context.7 There are,however, additional ways in which MMs can contribute to a theory of SLA.Bley-Vroman (1990) has asserted that L2 learners are guided by certain assump-tions in using the L2, namely that the next language they learn will have certainbasic properties of the language they already know, e.g. words for objects, meansto formulate questions, expressions for negation, etc. In the AutonomousInduction Theory, we can be more precise about what Bley-Vroman’s claimmight mean. Given previous experience, including language instruction, learnerswill have developed a mental model of what a natural language is and will usethis mental model, including its default representations, when inferencing andproblem-solving with the L2. One specific area where this mental model will beuseful is in the interpretation of feedback and correction dealing with thelearner’s own utterances. I will return to this point in Chapter 10. There are otherexamples. It is well-known that L2 learners often assume that every word in theL1 will have a lexeme in the L2 (Blum-Kulka and Levenston 1983). Thisassumption can be derived from a mental model of language, the postulation ofsuch a MM then being used to explain why learners are often surprised whenthey discover discontinuities across language lexicons (the “What do you meanthere’s no word forshallowin French?” phenomenon, or the giggling that occurswhenever Europeans and non-native North Americans are confronted withtranslations of Eskimo words). It will also explain why they look for a form inthe L2 dictionary solely on the basis of the existence of a given L1 word, whythey ask native speakers “What’s the word for …” and so on. This said, thelimitations of the mental models as a constraint on L2 acquisition must beacknowledged. Since the MMs are constructions in the conceptual representa-tions, there is no reason to assume that the MM of language will constrain thenature of phonetic, phonological or morphosyntactic representations. For that, oneneeds other mechanisms.

I have chosen here to recast the formalisms of the Induction Theory interms of the formalisms of Conceptual Semantics, which offers a sophisticatedtheory of word meaning (Jackendoff 1983, 1985, 1987, 1990b). Holland et al.(1989: 12) instead prefer to characterise MMs as schemas. They observe (Hollandet al. 1989: 12)

The premise underlying the schema notion is that information about the likelyproperties of the environment is stored in memory in clusters that can beaccessed as large units and that can serve to generate plausible inferences andproblem solutions.


Although schemas can be large and complex, they do not have internal structuralrepresentation. Schemas do not have “syntax.” This is precisely what is wrongwith them, since there is ample evidence from linguistic semantics that concept-ual representations are more than clusters of concepts linked by networks(Jackendoff 1983, 1990b). I shall reject the inadequate conceptual theory adoptedby Holland et al. and propose that an MM is a complex of propositions, consist-ing minimally of referential units and referential types (e.g. EVENT, THING),predicates and predicate types (e.g. ACTION, STATE, ATTRIBUTE), quantifiers(e.g. ALL, SOME, ONE), and including structured and complex correspondentsto perceptual representations, for example the two-and-a-half-D representationsof visual perception and object recognition (Marr 1982; see Eysenck and Keane1995: Chs 2 and 3), and certain auditory perceptual representations. In sum, wecan think of an MM as a complex of conceptual structures. I will retain the idea,however, that conceptual structures can be stored and accessed as large units.Clusters of conceptual information will arise as a consequence of categorisationand rule activation. These clusters will be stored in longterm memory. Theability to simultaneously access clusters of information will ultimately serve asa constraining feature of the theory.

MMs will be created by rules which construct simple and complex proposi-tions. Within Conceptual Semantics,categorisation judgementsare accomplishedformally by certain basic epistemic rules. These rules are inferential rules suchas those in (4.9a, b). Rule (4.9a), for example, expresses the inference that agiven instance belongs to a class if and only if it in fact is an instance of thatclass. It lies behind the categorisation judgement in (4.9b) which might be arepresentation of the statementYumYum is a catand which involves the two-placed semantic function IS AN INSTANCE OF.

(4.9) a. STATE TOKEN IS AN INSTANCE OF ([TOKEN]i, [TYPE]j,)

↔

TOKEN INSTANCE OF ([TYPE] j), i

b. STATE TOKEN IS AN INSTANCE OF ( , ) THING TOKEN

YUMYUM THING TYPE CAT

c. THING TOKEN

YUMYUMINSTANCE OF ( ) THING TYPE

CAT


d. STATE TOKEN IS AN INSTANCE OF ([TOKEN]i, [TYPE]j,)

↔

TYPE EXEMPLIFIED BY ([TOKEN] i), j

e. THING TYPE

CAT

EXEMPLIFIED BY ( ) THING TOKEN YUMYUM

The representation in (4.9b) is a description of the process which permits us tomake a categorisation judgement about some already identified entity, hereYumYum, my Dad’s cat. In other words, the process allows us to say that somegiven individual or is a member of a category. In the sentenceYumYumis a cat, the proper nounYumYumrepresents a, namely. It isasserted that belongs to the (or , if youprefer). But this conceptual structure can be true only if it is so that the shortfurry beast my Dad callsYumYumactually instantiates the TYPE, and that weare willing to assent to this. Our assent means being able to associate theparticular token with whatever complex of properties defines the concept . This requires the existence of an operator INSTANCE OF,shown in (4.9c), which maps TYPE constituents into features of TOKEN constitu-ents, and which presupposes the category membership of the TOKEN. So if othermembers of the category possess properties like , , , , , , and so on, then will have to be at least partially characterisable in these terms too. If thefurry beast in question lacks enough of the relevant properties, or has completelyweird properties like and , the classification will berejected.8 The relevant inference rule is shown in (4.9d). The representation in(4.9e) shows an operator EXEMPLIFIED BY which maps a TOKEN into afeature of TYPE, and which is activated when new examples are added to the listof the TYPE concept. So if one’s experience ofs has been limited to Felixand Fluff, operator (4.9e) will permit the concept to be extended to include. See Jackendoff (1983: 77–94) for further discussion.

This story is fine as an example of how one categorises a novel object whenmaking a categorisation judgement. It also captures the standard claim that thecategory or will emerge as the sum of the categorisation representationsinvolving the same but different, with more weight being given toproperties which are represented more often. Thus, we develop our notion ofwhat a cat is, not merely by exposure to the idiosyncratic properties of Yum-Yum, but also by exposure to Fluff, Ginger, Felix, and the countless nameless


neighbourhood cats, who may share some but not all of the properties of myDad’s beast. This is at least the story that Holland et al. tell. But this storycannot be the whole story. First of all, as we will see in the next chapter,children start out with conceptual systems considerably richer than many havebeen willing to grant. This means that there is less conceptual i-learning thanpreviously thought in the sense that certain categories or features appear to beavailable a priori. If this is correct, we can conclude that the development ofcategories is guided by such a priori information, and that this information isspecific to the domain of knowledge. We might say, therefore, that certainprimitive MMs are available to humans as part of their biological endowmentand that these guide the construction of basic categories.9 As I have suggested,cognition appears to consist of a variety of domains and we need a theory oflearning which is consistent with this perspective. Secondly, as previously noted,category formation in the Induction Theory is assumed to occur in the conceptualrepresentations. In a theory adopting autonomous representations, categorisationmust occur as a result of operations occurring within the autonomous systems. Itcannot be the case that all categories of the grammar emerge from the operationsresponsible for categorisation judgements. It is a terrible mistake to confoundthese two types of mental operation.

3.4 Condition–action rules

The propositions in (4.9) can in principle be rendered in other formats withoutloss of information. The basic format of the Induction Theory is the condi-tion–action rule, which I adopt here. These are formalised computationally in astandard way asproductions, whose computational properties are well under-stood.10 See Simon and Kaplan (1989: Section 1.3), for further discussion. Theserules consist of two distinct parts formally and functionally, as seen in (4.10).

(4.10) If Condition A holds, then implement Action B.

On the lefthand side of the rule appears a condition, which has the form “Ifsuch-and-such.” The condition is some mental representation which will becurrently active in the system. It becomes active either by being constructed bythe rules which construct representations, by being activated from longtermmemory, by being constructed by the mechanisms which construct perceptualrepresentations, or by some combination of all three. In the theory of i-learningadopted here, it is hypothesised that i-learning in the grammar takes place whenparsers fail to assign an analysis to a string. We can now make this hypothesismore precise. When a parse fails at a given point, the parse will consist of an


activated representation containing the constituent to be classified or attachedplus other expressions which have been parsed successfully up to that point. Thei-learning mechanisms will thus operate on this representation plus any otherslinked to it. The constituent to be parsed will therefore appear in the lefthandside of a condition–action rule of the i-learning system. Learning will take placewhen a novel action is implemented, e.g. attaching the expression in a parse ata given level of representation, assigning it a morphosyntactic feature, or puttingit in correspondence with a unit of another level of representation. Constrainingthe theory involves limiting the actions which the right hand side of the condi-tion–action rule can perform.

In the Induction Theory these actions can be quite diverse, ranging from thealteration of representations to the activation of the various processing mechan-isms. The formalism will permit, for example, the explicit encoding of instruc-tions to the speech processors, as shown in (4.11).

(4.11) a. If Speaker intends to make a speech utterance, then activate Speaker’ssentence generator.

b. If Speaker intends to make a speech utterance, then activate all pre-compiled syntactic strings in memory.

Specifically, in the Induction Theory the condition–action rules fall into threetypes:system operating principles, categorisation statementsor empirical ruleswhich describe the environment and its likely next states, andinferential rules,which are defined as domain-independent rules for changing the general knowl-edge base.11 System operating principles are innate and therefore are neitherlearnable nor teachable; they run the performance system. The rules in (4.11)would be an example. While it might sometimes be useful to characterise theoperations of the processing mechanisms in such terms, I will avoid doing this,assuming rather that the internal system operations take place independently ofthe rules determining the content of cognition. In any event, all cognitive modelsmust have some mechanisms which drive the computational system, and the exactform they take in the Autonomous Induction Theory is irrelevant for my purposes.

Categorisation judgements will involve the implementation of two distinctmechanisms, namely mechanisms to create new condition–action empirical rules,and mechanisms to revise the strength of these rules. The representations andinference rules in (4.9) illustrate some of the basic constituents of a categorisa-tion judgement. We assume, consistent with Holland et al. (1989: 179–204), thathumans possess a rich set of conceptual primitives which enter into categorisa-tion judgements. The rule creation mechanisms will therefore deploy theseprimitives and conceptual structures in the development of empirical rules.


I hypothesise specifically thatthe rule creation and rule emendation functionsinvolved in categorisation judgements alter conceptual structures in quite specificways: adding constituents, deleting constituents, indexing, deleting indices, etc.They also create new mental models by adding relevant conceptual structures tothese complexes. I stated above, however, that categorisation and the making ofcategorisation judgements are two distinct types of processing. Categorisationjudgements are made in the conceptual system. Categorisation of grammaticalentities involves analysing input in terms of the primitives and categories of thedifferent autonomous representational systems. It involves, as we have seen, inpart selecting particular cues as more or less informative for classifying anygiven instance of a thing. The format of condition–action rules is general enoughto be used for this function too. However, we have already seen that cues to acategory located in a higher or lower level of representation will be deployed bythe correspondence function: Category X at levelm = Category Y at leveln. Wecan phrase correspondence rules in terms of condition–action rules. As anexample, we might formulate the cue that a prosodic word with two-syllables andstress on the second syllable cues the grammatical class Verb as: If the morpho-syntactic item M currently active corresponds to a prosodic word [σWσS], thenassign M to the word class [−N, +V]. It has to be kept in mind, however, that acondition–action rule involved in classifyingkick as a verb or [p] as a consonantis not operating at the level of conceptual structures but rather operating at thelevel of morphosyntactic representation or at the level of phonological represen-tation respectively.

Categories are seen here as complex and derived entities, exhibiting a richvariety of properties. Over time, cues will emerge which are tied to theseproperties (Jackendoff 1983). Some cues will be represented as more typical,reflecting the frequency with which these cues are associated with an instance ofthe category. Clusters of typical cues will in turn be more informative than asingle typical cue or clusters of atypical cues. Cues compete in an analysis of astring. To the extent that a stimulus instantiates several cues in a cluster, and theparsing system is already able to recognise and deploy those cues, then it will beable to analyse an element as a member of a category. In Chapter 3, I referredto the notion ofequivalence classificationintroduced by Flege (1991) andinvestigated by Flege and his colleagues in a number of studies. Recall thatequivalence classification occurs when an L2 stimulus which has specificproperties is assimilated to a phonetic category of the L1 which has slightlydifferent properties. The theoretical problem is that things which are “different”(stimuli of the L1 and the L2) are treated as if they were “the same thing.” Anexplanation for this phenomenon emerges once we grant that linguistic categories


are indeed complexes of properties (or prototypes). Lacking one property maynot be enough to force the creation of a new category if the stimulus has enoughproperties which win the competition to be relevant cues. When a stimulusexhibits several atypical properties, then the likelihood of equivalence classifica-tion occurring is accordingly reduced. Only at this point, must learning takeplace, meaning that the learning mechanisms will encode properties of the itemcurrently being parsed and store them as cues to a novel category.

Let us now consider the implications of one important constraint on thetheory of i-learning:Categorisation rules do not create primitives; they exploit theprimitives provided by the autonomous representational systems. What does thismean? Formally, it means that categories are expressed or represented in termsof the symbols made available at a given level of analysis — phonetic featuresin the case of segments, morphosyntactic features in the case of word classes andphrases, conceptual features in the case of concepts. The parsers identify thepresence of a category during a given parse on the basis of a variety of cueswhich compete. Cues and formal representation together define categories.Sincecategories are such complexes, rules creating new categories are doing so bycreating new combinations of cues to specify the presence of a specific formaldescription. They create new constituents by combining or recombining primitivesor derived features. Learners learn new categories but they do not do so random-ly or in an arbitrary or “crazy” way. In fact, we have good reason to suppose,given the existence of equivalence classification as a general phenomenon of L2learning, that category creation will take place in an extremely conservativefashion, learners mapping L2 stimuli onto L1 categories wherever they can.

Inferential rules were the third type of condition–action rule of the InductionTheory. They regulate the categorisations. I list the major types below in (4.12)with examples from Holland et al. (1989: 43). I do not mean to suggest that thislist is exhaustive; presumably detailed empirical investigation will suggest others.Each type serves to constrain the nature of rule creation. It would be bettertherefore to think of them as constraints on rule formation and not as rulesthemselves. In what follows, I will abandon the term “inferential rules” in favourof the term “constraints on rule formation.”

(4.12) Constraints on rule formationa. the Specialisation Constraint: If a prediction based on a strong rule

fails, then a more specialised rule that includes a novel property asso-ciated with the failure of its condition and the observed unexpectedoutcome as its action is created.

b. the Unusualness Constraint: If a stimulus or input has an unexpectedproperty, then that property will be used in the condition of a new


rule, if rule generation is triggered in close temporal proximity to theoccurrence of the stimulus or input.

c. the Law of Large Numbers Heuristic: If S is a sample providing anestimate of the distribution of property P over some population, thena rule stating that the entire population has that distribution will becreated, with the strength of the rule varying with the size of S.12

d. the Logical Implication Constraint: Given the rule “To do X, first do Y”,the rule “If one does not do Y, then one cannot do X” will be created.13

The condition stated in (4.12a) states that when an expected outcome associatedwith a rule which is otherwise strongly confirmed fails, then one makes minimalchanges to “save” the rule. This constraint means that rules which function quitewell most of the time will not be abandoned at the first bit of disconfirmingevidence. Rather, one develops situation-specific “rules for the occasion.” Theminimal changes involve coming up with a more situation-specific rule as partof the condition which will not be satisfied by the general rule. The actionconsists in re-representing the current situation. (4.12a) has as a consequence thatthis specific rule will now apply instead of a general one. It should be seentherefore as a general formula for recovering from an overgeneralisation on thebasis of positive evidence. Every instance of the failure of a generalisation,inferrable or derivable from positive evidence, can lead to the creation of morespecific empirical rules. Overgeneralisation is a readily observable part of first(Brown 1973; Bowerman 1978; Mazurkewich and White 1984) and secondlanguage acquisition (Wode 1981; Carroll and Swain 1993). Consequently,(4.12a) must play a part in explaining how learners retreat from overgenerali-sations given appropriate input. This condition should also strike a chord amonggrammarians; it can be seen as relatable to the Elsewhere Condition in phonol-ogy (Kiparsky 1973). The Elsewhere Condition states that when two phonologi-cal rules can apply to the same structural description, the more specific oneoperates. In the terminology of the Induction Theory, the Elsewhere Conditionpresupposes that two phonological rules can compete to apply. The ElsewhereCondition then regulates the triggering of the rules. If this comparison between(4.12a) and the Elsewhere Condition is legitimate, then it would appear that thelatter, invariably assumed by linguists to be specific to language, is not. It wouldappear to be a more general property of cognition that specific rules apply in theplace of valid more general ones. The Elsewhere Condition says nothing abouthow general and specific rules are created in the first place, it merely regulatesthem once they are part of a grammar. It is necessary therefore that any theoryof language countenancing learned rules include a learning theory for languageincorporating something like the Specialisation Constraint.


The Unusualness Constraint in (4.12b) also makes a link between rulecreation and other operations of the cognitive system. It is really referring tosaliency. Saliency is often discussed as if it arose from objective properties ofstimuli, as if, in other words, it were part of the stimuli. I take a different view.Saliency is a result of the fact that our perceptual systems are guided by innateor acquired tendencies to record certain stimuli (babies crying is a good exam-ple). Our attention is attracted to events, actions or objects in situations whichour MMs lead us not to expect. A former flatmate Susanne Rohr decided to puta lifesize cardboard cutout of Bill Clinton in the front hall of our flat. It startledthe devil out of me the first time I saw it. It continued to startle me for weeksafterwards. It is hard to argue that the presence of “Bill” was inconsistent withmy mental model of the flat because I knew “Bill” was there. One can argue thatmy default representation of the flat entrance was stronger and more readilyactivated than the newer competing model. It might also be that I had a stimulus-specific representation of “Bill” which was disturbed by the fact that “Bill”tended to take on a different appearance (sometimes he was wearing a hat,sometimes he was not wearing a hat, etc.). The constraint in (4.12b) is designedto capture this kind of response. Our attention will be drawn to and we will tendto incorporate unexpected aspects of a represented situation which are inconsis-tent with our default representations. Only repeated reconfirmation of the newrepresentation (“Bill” is still there) will lead it to win out over other representations.

The Unusualness Constraint amounts to the claim that our cognitive systemsare so organised that we treat discrepancies between unexpected elements in ourcurrent mental states and our MMs as problems with our MMs, and not problemswith our perceptual systems. Thus, we treat unexpected elements of a situation,say “Bill” lurking in the front hall, as being a problem of wrong belief; we donot say, normally, “I need new glasses” or “I must be hallucinating.”14 (4.12b)thus makes a link between attention and representation. It accordingly expressesthe fact that saliency is not a property of the environment, nor of the perceptualsystem but something which will be derived from the functions and/or represen-tations of the cognitive systems. It is a derivative of the processing of the input.Bill Clinton in the front hall is a salient event in the context of a life led withouthim. Hillary must have a different perspective.

Now consider the construct of unusualness in the context of autonomousrepresentational systems. There is good reason to suppose that speech perceptionsystems become attuned to the cues which are most relevant for recognisingwords. Jusczyk (1993) proposes that cue-based learning guides the application ofattentional resources so that the speech processing systems ignore cues which areirrelevant for distinguishing among the distinctive features of a language’s


segmental system. Word recognition in English depends on being able todistinguish voiced from voiceless stops. It does not require being able todistinguish coronals articulated with the blade of the tongue from coronalsarticulated with a retroflex tongue position. In processing speech, anglophonescan discard the cues used for segmental classification of these distinct sounds.15

Equivalence classification can thus be seen as arising because of acquiredattentional biases which lead the processors to discard information which isirrelevant for certain classification functions in the L1 (here word recognition).But the research on feature detection discussed in previous chapters has shownthat “unusual” cues, such as those relevant for detecting and representing clickscan break through any attentional bias. Clicks are irrelevant for the recognitionof English words too. However, these sounds do not appear to possess enoughphonetic features of English consonant categories to be assimilated to any of them.They are just too “unusual.” We might therefore see “unusualness” as a propertyinherent to stimuli which survive the acquired biases of the processing systems.

The constraints in (4.12c, d) have a somewhat different status. These areabstract rules of reasoning which may be learned rather than being innate. Thispoint is controversial; certainly Piaget claimed that the Law of Large NumbersHeuristic is not learned. Nisbett, Krantz, Jepson, and Kunda (1983) and Nisbett(1993a), however, have claimed that we learn rules of inferencing involvingstatistical properties of samples and populations. If Nisbett and his colleagues arecorrect, then (4.12c) may well be part of a number of learned rules connected viapragmatic reasoning schemas to the individual’s mental model of.16 Forexample, Holland et al. (1989: 230–54) address the difficult issue of the confir-mation of information and argue that it is constrained by rich MMs about entitiesin the world. Part of the knowledge inherent in these MMs will be knowledgeabout how much individuals and instances of a can vary on some givenproperty. This knowledge can be seen as part of the knowledge of what consti-tutes a typical instance of a category.17 In the theory developed here, we have todistinguish knowledge of the preference rules associated with particular cues fora category, knowledge which is explicitly encoded in conceptual structures, fromthe cognising of typicality conditions on categories, something which emergesfrom the competition among the processing procedures used in categorisation.We have no reason to assume that speakers of English have explicit representa-tions of what constitutes a typical instance of a voiced consonant or of a modalverb and yet the processors can and do distinguish among the typical andatypical cases.

Holland et al. also claim that we can estimate the variability of events. Theyremark (Holland et al. 1989: 232)


To estimate the variability of events, it is necessary to establish, at least tacitly,the reference class for the events, that is what kind of events they are. Moregenerally, as Thagard and Nisbett (1982) put it, “our confidence in inferring ageneralisation ‘All F are G’ depends on background knowledge about howvariable Fs tend to be with respect to Gs. This knowledge is based on F beinga kind of K1, G being a kind of K2, and on the variability of things of kindK1 with respect to things of kind K2” (pg. 380). When people believe that thekind of object in question is highly variable with respect to the kind ofproperty in question, they infer little or nothing from the observation thatseveral examples of a subkind have a given property. On the other hand, ifthey believe that a given kind of object is invariant with respect to a givenkind of property, or nearly so, then even a single example may serve toestablish a confident generalisation. (page 380 = page 56 in Nisbett (1993b))

This property of reasoning plays an important role in explaining why in somelearning situations, the presence of a single token of an unexpected thing canlead to knowledge restructuring while in other learning situations even multipledisconfirming instances have no such effect. Cultural stereotypes offer a perfectillustration of the second type of reasoning. No amount of exposure to fat Ger-mans evokes commentary from my neighbours, since extensive experience hastaught them that Germans come in all sizes and shapes. However, a singleinstance of a fat American tourist (preferably in shorts, runners, baseball cap, andWalkman) is sufficient to raise discussion about Americans being obese. Thestereotype is that Americans are fat, but Germans are not. A single fat Americanis sufficient to establish a confident generalisation while multiple instances of fatGermans are not.

The solution lies in the law of large numbers, coupled with real world knowl-edge about the variability of kinds of objects with respect to kinds of prop-erties. A “single instance is sufficient for a complete induction” when we takeit for granted [i.e. have an MM which requires it, SEC] that objects of the kindin question are invariant with respect to properties of the kind observed. Forexample, observing the colour of a sample of a new chemical element leavesus in little doubt about the colour of future samples. Myriads of concurringinstances do not convince when we take it for granted that the kind of objectis highly variable with respect to the kind of property observed. For example,observing a bird in the rain forest that is green does not convince us that thenext bird we see of the same type will be green because we do not assumeinvariability of colour for bird types.

Holland et al. add (1989: 235) that if the organism believes that chance has norole to play in the behaviour of an entity, or in its possessing certain properties,


then a strong inference is likely to be made. Learners learning an L2 are farmore likely to be surprised at differences between the L2 and the L1, thenpersons learning an L3 or an L4, who have already experienced the extent towhich linguistic systems can vary from one another. The MMs we develop fromexposure to the L1 appear to lead to just this sort of strong inference. Moreover,Holland et al. (1989: 248) observe that people generalise less about populationswith which they are familiar, an interesting if at first somewhat unexpectedresult. One might suppose that familiarity means greater knowledge and thereforea greater ability to predict the properties and behaviours of such populations.Holland et al. acknowledge that while this is true to some extent, it appears to bealso true that familiarity makes one aware of the variability inherent in apopulation (as in the case of fat members of one’s own society). A moderatedegree of generalisation is possible whenever a central tendency can be repre-sented (Holland et al. 1989: 248). Finally, note that statistical properties ofindividuals and events are relevant to the development of both an MM aboutthose things and to the tuning of autonomous processing systems. Humans sharewith other animals a remarkable sensitivity to the probabilities of occurrence ofpatterns in perceptual arrays, and patterns in analysed mental representations,including representations of language (Kelly and Martin 1994). As they point out,this is a domain-general property exhibited in the operation of domain-specificprocesses. But variability also has a role to play in inferencing and autonomousprocessing. Holland et al. (1989: 253) claim that events falling within an expectedrange of variability might not attract attention, and go unnoticed, however, thoseevents which fall outside of the range of normal variation would draw attentionand thus lead to the creation of emendations in the current representations. Inshort, the informativeness of events is determined in part by what we alreadyknow about objects in our experience, and what we know often is not the resultof direct experience but rather acquired indirectly through the retelling of ourculture. Similarly, the informativeness of specific features in classifying giveninput may depend on the range of variability of exemplars.

In the case of (4.12d), we are dealing with relationships among the actionparts of condition–action rules. If we interpret this formulation literally, then(4.12d) will constitute learned constraints on behaviour. But (4.12d) expresses amore general logical consequence of inference. It is moreover an instance ofdeductive reasoning. It is a logical consequence of the deductive ruleIf P, thenQ. Holland et al. (1989: 265–86) ask the question: Do ordinary people use formaldeductive rules to reason about ordinary everyday problems? After a review ofsome of the literature on reasoning tasks, some of which we cited earlier, theyconclude that people use pragmatic schemas to reason and not formal logical rules.


In the mental model view, reasoning is based on MMs constructed using “generallinguistic strategies for interpreting logical terms such as quantifiers, and specificknowledge retrieved from memory” (Holland et al. 1989: 269). In other words,we represent problems in terms of conceptual structures based on the linguisticproperties of the problems, and then use situationally-based representations tosolve them. The pragmatic schemas are knowledge structures at an intermediatelevel of abstraction in comparison to the formal rules of classical deductive logic.See Kelley (1972, 1973), Cheng, Holyoak, Nisbett, and Oliver (1986), and Chengand Nisbett (1993) as well.

While acknowledging the role of heuristics in solving syllogistic reasoning,or distinguishing valid from invalid inferences, and the types of problemsdiscussed in note 13, Sperber and Wilson (1986: 93–103) argue correctly that theempirical results do not show that humans possess no system of deductivereasoning. They make a case for at least a limited form of deductive reasoning,which includes one very important constraint (Sperber and Wilson 1986: 96–7),namely that inferencing does not include what they callintroduction rules. Anintroduction rule is any rule whose output representation contains every conceptin the input representation plus one more. The only deductive rules permitted arethose which eliminate concepts in representations. I will adopt both the hypoth-esis that deductive reasoning is possible and the constraint against the use ofintroduction rules in deductive reasoning. I will also adopt their distinctionbetween trivial and non-trivial implications.

A set of assumptions {P} logically and non-trivially implies an assumption Qif and only if, when {P} is the set of initial theses in a derivation involvingonly elimination rules, Q belongs to the set of final theses.(Sperber and Wilson 1986: 97).

Only non-trivial implications are involved in comprehension processes. Inaddition, Sperber and Wilson make a distinction between analytic (or deductive)and synthetic (or inductive) implications, the first being those which are necessaryand sufficient for grasping the content of a set of propositions involved in adeduction, the second being the implications which follow from the application ofat least one induction rule to a deduction (Sperber and Wilson 1986: 104).18 Iassume throughout therefore that deduction rules exist, that induction rules interactwith them, and that the distinction between grasping the contents of a propositionwhich is the result of an inference and the inductive implications of an inferenceis a valid one. I will make use of both types of inferencing in Chapter 10.


3.5 Competition among rules

I have said that a condition in a rule (the lefthand side) has to “fit” the currentsituation if it is to be able to alter current representations. A “fit” makes itpossible for a rule to compete for activation and firing. In the Induction Theoryquasi- or q-morphisms (instead of isomorphisms) are used, which means thatmultiple activations can occur which do not necessarily match, e.g. a representa-tion at a current or lower level of analysis. See Holland et al. (1989) for details.These multiple activations create dynamic options within the system which islooking for “the best fit.” In the Induction Theory, rules compete to fire. Thismeans that rules can be variably competitive. We have already seen two factorsrelated to the competitiveness of a rule: specificity (the Elsewhere Condition) andsaliency. Competition also depends on a rule’s strength. This was illustratedabove with the “Bill” example. Each rule is associated with a numerical value,its strength, which reflects how well it has done in the past. In other words, thesystem tracks how often a given rule has successfully applied. This is the formalrendition of the observed sensitivity humans exhibit to contingencies. Old rulesare stronger than new rules because their continued existence depends on theirbeing either fairly accurate representations of the stimuli, or at least “useful” tothe organism. This is yet another reason why induction need not give rise to“crazy” rules. At least some “crazy” rules will simply not function optimallywithin the mental model, nor be accurate representations of the stimuli or input.Strongly supported stored rules get triggered before weakly supported storedones, subject to the constraints listed above. This probably does not need to beindependently stated; rather we may assume that the repeated processing of agiven representation involves changes in its threshold of activation. In that case,we could derive the strength factor from the functional architecture of the mind,a desirable result.

Rules receiving support from other rules are more likely to be activated.This means that rules which will fire whenever some other rule fires will getadditional support each time that other rule is activated. Rules will fire inclusters. The consequence of this is that a single stimulus event or input couldhave multiple consequences in the system. By activating one rule in a cluster ofassociated rules, all of the others in the cluster will fire. Rules appearing inclusters are going to be more competitive than rules functioning alone. Note thatthe hypothesis that representations compete as possible solutions to a representa-tional “problem” is hardly novel. The Competition Model assumes as a centralpremiss that competition plays an important role in directing change within thesystem. Competition has also been worked into Optimality Theory. Indeed, we


may conclude that competition among representations has become a standardfeature of formal approaches to learning and learnability.

Let us consider now two examples, the first dealing with i-learning of agrammatical phenomenon on the basis of metalinguistic instruction, the secondbased on the bottom up i-learning of the same phenomenon. Suppose that aFrench L2 learner is told “The nounoiseau is masculine” and encodes thisinformation as in (4.13a). If the French wordoiseauis being processed, (4.13a)will be activated, but so will (4.13b), if it is part of the system, which could, inturn, activate (4.13c).19

(4.13) a. Ifoiseau= /uazo/ appears in a representation, thenoiseau= /uazo/ isMASCULINE.

b. If oiseau= /uazo/ appears in a NOUN PHRASE then itsDETERMINER AGREES IN GENDER.

c. If the SUBJECT NOUN PHRASE is MASCULINE, then a PREDI-CATE ADJECTIVE AGREES IN GENDER.

Metalinguistic instruction, for example, the contents of a grammar lesson will, byhypothesis, be encoded in conceptual representations like those of (4.13). Theseconceptual representations require the separate encoding of conceptual categoriesfor grammatical constructs like masculine gender, noun phrase, agreement, andso on. Each of these concepts will consist of a mental model involving anensemble of properties and predications. The concept MASCULINE NOUN can,however, only beunderstoodin terms of various cues for gender, e.g. the formof determiners and agreeing adjectives, the sex of the referent of a noun, and soon (Carroll 1989, 1995a, 1999). At its most basic, the category might simplymean thatoiseau= /uazo/ co-occurs withun = /oen/, or some other modifier.Thus, in contrast to the claims implicit in Krashen’s work contrasting metalingu-istic learning and naturalistic acquisition, and made explicit in Schwartz’ model,the information about the grammatical construct gender which is operationalisedin the parser and encoded in the lexical entries via gender features must cometogetherwith anymetalinguistic information explicitly represented in the conceptu-al representations for this is the only way that the concept GENDER can bemeaningful. There is no other way for us to develop a mental model of gender.Schwartz would be correct in claiming that correct parsing and production ofnoun phrases in French does not depend on having a metalinguistic representa-tion of GENDER; such claims are not in dispute. Rather, the point I want tomake is that it is wrong to suggest that one could have an accurate metalinguisticconcept GENDER independently of the cues used to identify it. These cues mustcome from stimuli which provide evidence for the construct.


Constructing a meaningful representation of the concept GENDER does not,of course, mean that one has constructed an accurate representation. Indeed, it isentirely likely that for many learners of French, the concept of MASCULINEGENDER is simply a listing of the forms which occur with certain exponents ofgender. I have argued in previous work (Carroll 1989) that French gender maybe a grammatical phenomenon which can only be accurately controlled if it isacquired bottom up, through the operation of the autonomous morphosyntacticrepresentational systems. This is because, for (4.13) to have any consequenceswhatsoever on the morphosyntactic representations used in parsing, the categoriesin (4.13) must correspond to categories and primitives available at that level.However, the modular nature of linguistic cognition places severe constraints onthe correspondences across representational systems. The sound form /uazo/ canbe put into correspondence with a morphosyntactic unit, or lemma in the senseof Levelt (1989), here (oiseau). Can the concept MASCULINE be put intocorrespondence with a morphosyntactic feature? Perhaps, in principle, but thiswould require a metalinguistic analysis of the entire system of nouns learned. InChapter 3, I mentioned work in which I showed that adult anglophones readilyidentify MASCULINE with the concept SEX category (Carroll 1999a). SinceFrench gender does not correspond to this concept, and, indeed, since themeaning of nouns is largely irrelevant to the functioning of this subsystem of themorphosyntax, this kind of semantic analysis leads learners in the wrongdirection. Other analyses of gender demand other correspondences. Tucker,Lambert, Rigault, and Segalowitz (1968) and Tucker, Lambert, and Rigault(1977) hypothesised that francophones encode gender in terms of the phoneticshapes of the ends of nouns. Might the concept MASCULINE be put intocorrespondence with phonetic cues to gender? In the theory articulated here, thiscorrespondence is excluded. The conceptual system and the phonetic systemoperate largely independently of one another, and while the conceptual systemcan link to lexical entries, it is hypothesised that these contain fairly abstractphonological representations of the pronunciations of words. The kinds ofphonetic schemata that Tucker et al. appear to have had in mind would not beencoded in those entries. Finally, consider that more recent analyses of languageswith binary systems treat gender as a privative feature on the marked nouns(Roca 1989). This means that gender attribution is just an arbitrary associationbetween a morphosyntactic feature and a lexeme or between a morphosyntacticfeature and a derivational suffix (Carroll 1989). The agreement system operateson the basis of a contrast between those elements marked with the feature andthose which have no marking, to which a default rule assigns a spellout of thedeterminers. Let us assume that this means, in the case of French L1 speakers,


that all feminine nouns would be assigned a feature [+Gender] in the mentallexicon. Masculine nouns would not be marked at all. Their representations, inother words, are underspecified, and a default rule will subsequently fill in anappropriate value. See (4.14).

(4.14) +N⇒

Masculine

−V Gender

If this is the correct way to analyse gender morphosyntactically for a languagelike French, there will be no identity of gender features to the concept MASCU-LINE because the former is not encoded directly anywhere in the lexicon. Inother words, there is no unit for the concept to correspond to. Since the corre-spondence rules do nothing more than establish an identity relation across thelevels of representation, there will be no possible correspondence between a unitof the conceptual level and a non-existent unit of the lexicon or of the morpho-syntactic level.

Let us now reconsider the same problem as a problem of autonomousi-learning. As stated previously, the fact that learned metalinguistic informationis encoded in conceptual representations and can have an effect on the morpho-syntactic or phonological systems in only certain cases does not mean thati-learning cannot occur independently within these autonomous systems. Wemight, for example, assume the rules in (4.15).

(4.15) a. If /oen/ appears in a string, project a Det.b. If Det appears in a string, project a DetP.c. If /oen/ immediately precedes NPi, attach NPi as a right sister to Det.d. If N appears in a string, project an NP.e. If /oen/- Det-INDEF. precedes /uazo/-BIRD in a string, encode

/uazo/-BIRD as [+N, −V].f. If /bon/-[−N, −V]-GOOD precedes /uazo/-BIRD in a string, encode

/uazo/-BIRD as [+N, −V].g. If /ynV/ appears in a string, project a Det.h. If /ynV/ immediately precedes NPi, attach NPi as a right sister to Det.i. If /ynV/ Det-INDEF. precedes /grenujV/-FROG in a string, encode

/grenujV/-FROG as [+N, −V, +Gender].j. If /bonV/-[−N, −V]-GOOD precedes /grenujV/-[+N, −V]-FROG in a

string, encode /grenujV/-[+N, −V]-FROG as [+N, −V, +Gender].···


Each of these rules involves linking the occurrence of a cue for gender withfeatural markings. The representation of masculine gender emerges as a contrastbetween those items encoded with a feature for [+Gender] and those which arenot. If enough such rules occur, the exact number being an empirical matter, thena generalisation will take place, i.e. that /ynV/ is a marker for feminine gender.The cues for masculine gender will then be the complementary set.

The occurrence of /ynV/ in a string will activate all rules in which itappears in the condition part, here (4.15g, h, i). These rules have various actionsand the carrying out of each one will entail activating the condition part of otherrules, whose actions will entail activating the condition part of yet other rules.And so on. So the activation of a single rule can have a “ripple effect” through-out the grammar. Linkages across the system can take place which createclustering effects. Although induction must be the mechanism explainingincremental learning, it is incorrect to assume that that is all that it can explain.

3.6 Clustering of effects?

It might be objected at this point, however, that when generativists talk about“clustering” effects and the “deductive” consequences of parameter-(re)setting,they are not talking about effects involving a single grammatical distinctiongeneralised across a number of contexts, but rather the claim is that learning oneaspect of the grammar has immediate consequences for different and completelyunrelated grammatical distinctions. Recall from previous discussion that learningthe particular setting of the head direction parameter for a given language issupposed to have immediate consequences for negative placement, for quantifierplacement, or for the relationships between adjunct clauses and anaphora. Theobjection would be well taken. However, as mentioned before, the deductiveconsequences of setting specific parameters has become, under intense scrutiny,more and more local, making the P&P theory less different from the Auton-omous Induction Theory than one might think. If there are no cross-systemicconsequences for learning tense or head direction, then the Autonomous InductionTheory can hardly be criticised for failing to explain them. Secondly, my responseis to say: What evidence is there for such broad superficially-unrelated clusteringeffects in SLA in particular? I think this issue is entirely open at present, but Iam not sanguine. To date no evidence has been amassed to show that L2 learnersknow a lot when they know a little, beyond what can be explained by the transferof acquired and universal knowledge. This means that there is no evidencesuggesting that “accessing” UG has deductive consequences for SLA. On thecontrary, there is evidence suggesting that adult learners fail to link phenomena


in the ways predicted by P&P theory. Let us review a number of studies whichhave implications for the claim that learning one part of the grammar has“deductive” consequences for other seemingly unrelated phenomena.

Let us consider first a number of studies dealing with the acquisition ofphrasal order by L2 learners. Hyltenstam (1977) presents detailed data involvingnegation, produced by learners of Swedish, which argues against rapid acquisi-tion and rapid restructuring and for lexically-specific restructuring.

What do the stimuli look like? In Swedish main clauses, the negativefunctor inte comes after the finite verb. In subordinate clauses, it is placed beforethe finite verb. In the terms of current generative analyses, one would character-ise the facts of Swedish by hypothesising that in main clauses the finite verbraises out of VP to some equivalent functional head with the negation remainingin situ before the VP. I shall assume that it raises to Comp, the usual analysis ofso-called “V2” ordering. See (4.16) which is taken from Platzack (1992: 65).20 Inembedded clauses, the verb remains in the VP, the assumption of Platzack beingthat the Tense feature lowers onto the verb.

(4.16)

objectti

NPV

V ′

VP

NP

tjtitjverbisubjectj inte

Neg

VP

I ′

INFL

SpecIP

IPCOMP

C′SpecCP

CP

Whatever the learners learned, it was not the various generalisations encoded in(4.16). Hyltenstam’s study shows quite nicely that the learners disregard theobvious and critical differences in the stimuli they get from native speakers andgeneralise the location of negation across both main and embedded clauses. In


other words, they are initially insensitive to the differences in order of thenegative marker and the verb in main and embedded clauses. This may be aconsequence of simplification in production. Alternatively, it might be the casethat they do not treat the variable position of the negator with respect to thefinite verb as a cue to underlying order when analysing input. At the first datacollection time, most learners were correctly ordering all finite verbs in mainclauses before the negative marker and incorrectly using the same order in theembedded clauses which suggests that the main clause data is taken as evidencefor ordering constituents rather than the embedded clause data. Secondly, thelearners also distinguished between finite auxiliaries and finite non-auxiliaryverbs, something Swedish does not do with respect to the location of negation.The learners tended to first locate the auxiliaries before the negative functor, onlylater extending the analysis to all finite verbs in main clauses. This means thatat the first data collection time, all learners correctly ordered auxiliaries beforethe negative marker in main clauses, but only about half of the learners raised allverbs in this context. Moreover, in the embedded clauses, most subjects incor-rectly ordered all verbs before the negative marker, and only the subjects distin-guishing between modals and main verbs got some of the embedded clauses rightbecause they did not raise the main verbs. Thirdly, only after they had generalisedthe class of raised verbs to the full set in main clauses, did they begin correctlylocating negation with respect to finite verbs in embedded clauses.

What conclusions does this study impose on us? Nothing in this datasuggests that the learners recognise that the variable position of the verb withrespect to negation in main and embedded clauses is a cue to underlying order.If learners are indeed “accessing” UG and, in particular, accessing a head directionparameter, then we might expect them to be especially sensitive to the criticaltriggers of that parameter. This the learners of Swedish were not. The entire dataset can be accurately described by hypothesising that learners take the mainclause order as the relevant cue for underlying order. Parameter-setting does notappear to play any role in explaining the direction of change either. Nothingsuggests that learners are restructuring their grammars on the basis of inclusivefeatures, e.g. [+V]. On the contrary, they appear to be reclassifying verbs intotwo sub-groups (raise/don’t raise) based on features of lexical subclasses. Indeed,one can describe the data set by claiming that learners impose an “English-style”analysis; the learners appear to be treating Swedish at first like contemporaryEnglish (auxiliaries and models raise), and then like middle English (all verbsraise), making minimal changes to their analysis by changing the grammar verb-by-verb. See Meisel (in preparation) for further discussion of this data.


Let us examine a second phrasal order study. White (1991a) assumes thata parameter related to verb raising explains the distribution of facts in (4.17).21

(4.17) a. Jean a souvent visité le musée.b. Marie regarde souvent la télévision.c. John has often visited the museum.d. *Mary watches often television.

Both English and French are underlyingly SVO. The difference here thereforedoes not hinge on setting the head direction parameter, but a second lexically-based one. The parameter in question requires all verbs in French to raise fromVP to INFL while in English, only auxiliaries raise. Resetting the parameterpresumably means reclassifying the class of [+V] elements which can raise. Therelevant cue is therefore the position of the adverb with respect to the tensedverb. If the adverb follows the verb, the verb has raised, if the adverb precedesthe verb, it has not.

White (1991a) studied two groups of francophone L1 ESL learners, onegroup of which were taught certain aspects of English adverb placement, theother being taught aspects of question formation. Her results clearly show thatthe subjects benefitted from instruction about adverbs, including informationabout where adverbs cannot occur in English, e.g., between the verb and thedirect object (*He sang immediately the song). However, her results also showthat learners did not acquire a difference between Subject Verb Adverb Object(SVAO) and Subject Verb Adverb PP (SVAPP) frames. If learners are learningwhich verbs are not raising in English then they should cognise that the firstorder is out but the second is fine.22 Moreover, no clustering effects wereobserved, even prior to instruction. White specifically emphasises that hersubjects do not cognise that the presence of SAV in the input entails the absenceof SVAO. Schwartz and Gubala-Rybak (1992), in a critique of the White study,conclude: This is not parameter-resetting. I agree. White’s learners are inducingthe relevant phrasal orders on the basis of positive and negative evidence.Grammatical restructuring of surface linear orders in SLA is, I would argue,largely the product of inductive processes.

Next, consider work by Hawkins, Towell, and Barzergui (1993). This study,like the White experiment, is an exploration of the Pollock phrase structureproposals, adverb/neg placement, and the parameter of opacity/transparency ofagreement. These authors investigated, using a cross-sectional design, howsubjects develop intuitions about acceptability as they acquire the L2. Subjectswere British university students studying French and were at two different levelsof proficiency. Acceptability judgements were elicited using a written test and


contextualised sentences. Results show that subjects were often unsure ofwhether a given stimulus was acceptable or not. They also show that subjectswere very accurate in judging the correct position of the adverbspas andsouvent. However, the subjects were not accurate in locating positions for thequantifiertous, an element whose location ought to be readily identifiable basedon universal principles and the resetting of the relevant parameter. No clusteringof the position of negation and position of quantifiers was observed, contrary tothe predictions of the parameter-setting theory.

Pishwa (1994) reports on a longitudinal study involving 15 Swedish L1children in a German L2 immersion school. Pishwa’s main objective is inshowing that her learners do not follow the putatively universal order given byClahsen et al. (1983) for the acquisition of German. See below. As should beobvious by now, Swedish and German both exhibit “V2” effects, that is to saythey manifest subject–verb inversion in topicalisations as well as questions. TheSwedish subjects show inversion right from the start of their acquisition ofGerman which makes their order of acquisition out of whack with that of otherlearners. Inversion occurs independently of the development of agreementmarking, so it cannot be claimed, as P&P analyses of verb-raising would have it,that verb-raising is triggered by Agr-S. More interesting from the perspective ofthe head direction parameter, is that the position of the verb relative to itscomplements is acquired following a typology of complements. First, theinfinitive is placed with respect to the complements that it directly assigns asemantic role too (the direct object, in other words). At recording (II) we find,therefore, data like the following in (4.18a, b) from a single subject Ulrika.(4.18c) is provided to show that the position of the infinitive in third positioncannot be explained in terms of the form of the non-finite form. Ulrika developsthe correct morphological forms slowly, as do all of Pishwa’s subjects. Many usethe third person singular marker “-t” for all third person verbs whether they pickout singular or plural referents.

(4.18) a. Ich will der Stein haben.‘I- want the-. stone have-’

b. Ich will fahre in Amerika.‘I- want travel in America’

c. Und dann hat habe Mutter und Vater gehen in die Haus‘And then have-3/ have mother and father go- inthe- house’

Pishwa reports, although she doesn’t give examples, that at stage two othercomplements also appear to the right of the verb. She claims that goal PPs,


which she callstelic, are the next to be placed to the left of the non-finite verb,and only then do other PPs (locative, instrumental, etc.) appear to the left. Inshort, these Swedish learners do not treat sentences like (4.18a) as cues thatGerman underlying word order is SOV. Moreover, if they are changing a parame-ter, it isn’t showing up in their production. The appearance of the ±tense distinc-tion in their production is not the signal for a general restructuring of the grammarnor is their any apparent connection between agreement and word order.

As Meisel (1991: 250) has pointed out, the ZISA study (Meisel et al. 1981;Clahsen et al. 1983) has provided some of the most robust data showing thatlearners from different L1 backgrounds pass through the same stages in acquir-ing and using surface word orders. Meisel also points out that these samesequences show up among both adults and children L2 learners of German(Pienemann 1981), and among both untutored and tutored learners (Pienemann1987, 1989). See Ellis (1989) for a review of a range of studies of the acquisi-tion of German which confirm the developmental order given. Meisel (1991,1997) uses ZISA data to show the absence of the predicted correlations betweenparameters and grammatical restructuring. Meisel’s studies are all the moreconvincing in that he systematically compares the acquisition of verb order andfiniteness and negation in adult L2 development to their L1 developmentincluding studies of the simultaneous acquisition of two languages. Meisel(1997), for example, examines the relationship between negation, verb placementand finiteness/tense/agreement. In primary language development, he argues, thelearning task involves analysing the negator as the head of a NegP or as amaximal projection. In German primary language acquisition,nein can appearnon-anaphorically and appears before the subject.nichtappears almost exclusive-ly in final position. See Clahsen (1988a). Both of these positions have beendescribed as clause “external.” Meisel (1997) argues that negative markers are atthis stage attached to the VP which also contains the subject. All other aspectsof the problem of locating negation with respect to the verb involves projectingthe appropriate functional categories. He points out

… child language data from different languages confirm the hypothesis thatNEG is initially placed externally. Structural analyses support the claim that itis adjoined to the VP containing the subject. It may appear to the left or to theright of the VP, but one can observe a strong preference for the positionfavoured by the adult target language, relative to the verb. As soon as onefinds evidence for a productive use of finite forms, NEG is generated in thehead of NegP, it is raised together with the verb. In other words the option ofanalysing NEG as a functional head or as a maximal projection adjoined to VPdoes not appear to represent a problem for the child. (Meisel 1997: 239)


Negators appear within the string only when the child has mastered the finitenessdistinction and verb raising. At this stagenichtalways follows the finite verb andprecedes non-finite forms.

Meisel then proceeds to analyse data involving the acquisition of French andGerman as L2s. The French data comes from Noyau (1982) and Trévise andNoyau (1984) who grouped their subjects into three different groups dependingon the preferred form of negative marking. Their groups I and II used bothVerb+pasandne+Verb+passequences. Group I used Verb+pasmost often whileGroup II usedne+Verb+pasmost often. Group III usedne+Verb+pasas well asne+Verb. Meisel examined data from two Spanish learners of French and foundno clear evidence for an early phase in which the negator is placed preverballyor externally. He also shows that internal negation first shows up in formulae andfixed phrases likesais pas‘I don’t know’, which may provide learners withimportant cues to the order of negation.

The German data come from the ZISA study and include cross-sectional andlongitudinal data. Negation is used only with a small group of verbs suggestingthat for these learners too memorisation of fixed phrases likeweiss nichtorversteh nichtis important. Learners in the early stages of linear ordering (SVO/Adv and Adv/Prep SVO) placed the negator before the verb. Learners in the laterstages (Adv VP and V-end) placed the negator after the verb. The learners in themiddle stages behaved in a mixed fashion with some using the order of theearlier phases, some the order of the later phases and yet others using both.Meisel points out that adult learners place the negator after the subject, externallyto a VP which does not contain the subject. Most strikingly, the acquisition ofthe placement of negation occurs independently of the mastery of finiteness,which makes it quite different from L1 acquisition. Finally, Meisel points outthere may not be any universal developmental order in the L2 acquisition ofnegation. Not all learners go through a stage where negation is placed externally.Clahsen et al. (1983: 148ff) characterise preverbal negation use as a learnerstrategy and not as a developmental stage.

This study thus clearly shows that there are no clustering effects involvingverbal position and the position of negation or adverb phrases such as thosepredicted by the parameter-setting theory. In particular, there is no raising ofelements triggered by the necessity of getting inflectional features. Or, turningthe problem around, learners do not assume that linear ordering indicates theneed for movement from an underlying position to get inflection.

We have mentioned the pro-drop or null subject parameter in several places.It has been claimed by many researchers in L1 acquisition to be triggered by theacquisition of tense, finiteness or agreement. Mechanisms vary in individual


studies and changes in linguistic theory have usually been followed by extensivereanalysis of child language data (cf. Meisel 1990a, 1994b, for discussion). Twoclaims, however, emerge. The first is that children’s language does not closelyreflect properties of the stimuli when it comes to the use of subjects. Even inlanguages where subjects in finite sentences are obligatory and where we canassume, given the studies showing that language to children is largely well-formed, that children are hearing large numbers of finite sentences with subjects,nonetheless, they produce substantial numbers of sentences without overtsubjects. The second claim (itself in dispute, as we have seen) is that children’sproduction of subjects begins to reflect the stimuli, that is they show obligatoryuse of subjects in finite clauses, only after they have acquired tense/finiteness/agreement.23 There is no evidence for this type of association in adult L2acquisition. Meisel (1991) demonstrates this using longitudinal data from theZISA project whose adult learners acquire patterns of obligatory subject useindependently of their acquisition of agreement. See also Meisel (1987) whichpresents ZISA data on tense marking, and Köpcke (1987) which analyses ZISAdata with respect to person and number marking.

Meisel (1991: 258) reports that mastery of verbal inflection is slow, highlyvariable among learners, not attained by certain learners, and does not proceedin a continuous fashion. Citing data from six different learners, Meisel showsthat there are four different patterns of learning. Some learners do not learnmuch of the verbal morphology. Some are able to use markers from early on.Some make progress slowly. Others make progress rapidly. Moreover, citingKöpcke (1987), Meisel notes that adults do not use specific inflections accordingto a semantic classification of verbs, as children have been reported to do. Inother words, these learners are not using aspect as an entrée into the morphol-ogy.24 What matters for the grammatical theory is the correlation of subject useand grammatical agreement between subject and verb. In L1 development,subjects become obligatory as inflection emerges. No such correlation is foundin Meisel’s data.

Some learners use subjects categorically, right at the beginning; they then startomitting them and finally supply them again in obligatory contexts. [Footnoteomitted, SEC] Others omit subjects frequently during early phases, but thefrequency of omission decreases over time. For both patterns, there are variantssuch that the number of uses or of omissions does not continue to increaseafter a while. These observations amount to saying that the emergence ofsubjects in the speech of L2 learners is a phenomenon totally independent ofthe development of agreement markings on the verb. (Meisel 1991: 264)

Andersen (1991) makes a similar claim. Hilles (1991) reports on cross-sectional


data with children, adolescents and adults, examining the acquisition of the samephenomenon. Correlations between use of inflectional suffixes and subjects werefound for the children and one adolescent, but not for the rest of the subjects.25

Clearly, then, the parameter-setting theory is making the wrong predictions forthe acquisition of obligatory subjects and agreement marking for adult learners.Adults are not using verbal morphology as a cue to the presence of subjects.

The studies just reported on all involve the analysis of spontaneouslyproduced production data. As a fallback position, one might argue that produc-tion data is not sufficient to show that adult learners do not “access” UG sincethey might have control problems. This would amount to claiming that thePrinciples and Parameters theory is simply irrelevant for the analysis of produc-tion data — an unhappy claim, but perhaps one that many might accept inpreference to rejecting the theory completely. However, Clahsen and Hong(1995) have done the right kind of study to dispel any hopes that the predictedcorrelations will emerge between, e.g. functional categories and category raising,or between agreement and the null subject parameter, in studies of comprehen-sion. Clahsen and Hong used a sentence-matching technique and measured theresponse times of subjects in making decisions as to whether a stimulus pair wasidentical or not. This technique relies on visual stimulus discrimination (subjectslook at sentences on a computer screen) and on classification. But notice, thatunlike acceptability judgement tasks, subjects do not have to classify a pair ofstimuli according to some explicit or implicit standard. They merely have todecide if the pair looks the same. Research with native speakers has shown thatresponse times to strings which can be chunked and analysed at a higher level(e.g. as words) are faster than stimuli which consist of arbitrary strings, and,moreover, that subjects respond faster to acceptable sentences than to unaccept-able sentences. This is the idea that Clahsen and Hong exploited. Tests withnative speaker controls showed that correct agreement and correct obligatorysubjects pairs both independently led to decreases in response times. Tests withKorean L2 learners showed group-level variability. Thirteen of 33 subjectssuccessfully discriminated both acceptable/unacceptable agreement pairs andsubject pairs. Clahsen and Hong note that these subjects’ results are ambiguousbetween a parameter-resetting explanation and some other account. Among the26 subjects who could discriminate the subject pairs, statistical tests showed nocorrelation between response times on those pairs and response times oncorrectly discriminated agreement sentences. The authors conclude that theirsubjects appear to have disassociated knowledge of these two subsystems of theL2 grammar. The conjunction of results from this experiment and from theproduction studies should, of course, be replicated. Nonetheless, one conclusion


seems to emerge: Adult learners do not manifest knowledge and control of thetypes of related sub-areas of the grammar predicted by the null subject parame-ter. It therefore looks as if the “right” theory of SLA ought to predict and explainthese kinds of dissassociations.

To sum up, a number of studies using a variety of analytical techiques andinvestigating several different parameters have failed to show that unrelatedphenomena cluster during development change, as they appear to do in primarylanguage acquisition. There is no reason therefore to believe that one needs morethan the kind of clustering permitted by the Autonomous Induction Theory. More-over, some of these studies also provide evidence that second language learning isslow, instance-based, or involves generalisations of a structural sort not illus-trated in first language acquisition. In short, they provide evidence for i-learning.

3.7 Generation of new rules

It was noted above that one of the problems with the original conceptualisationof induction as problem-solving was that the generation of novel hypotheses wastreated as a random process. This led to an intractible problem, namely constrain-ing the theory. There is no reason to preserve this feature of prior work oninduction. Holland et al. (1986) argue, in the case of categorisation judgements,that the generation of hypotheses will be constrained by the individual’s theoryor mental model of a cognitive domain.

As noted, an MM is a complex semantic representation of some phenom-enon. In the Autonomous Induction Theory I am espousing, MMs will beidentified with complex conjunctions of conceptual structures. MMs will play animportant role in the recognition and interpretation of verbal feedback andcorrection, as will be explained in Chapter 10. They will play less of a rolewithin the autonomous representational systems precisely because they areautonomous. I-learning within the autonomous representational systems involveseither the generalisation or specialisation of cues for categories, rule learning, etc.

The Induction Theory countenances two forms of generalisation: Condition-simplifying generalisation, and instance-based generalisation. Condition-simplify-ing generalisation involves the deletion of part of a rule’s condition. For exam-ple, some part of the conceptual structure disappears from the representation.Holland et al. cite the example of a complex semantic representation (understoodhere as a conceptual structure) consisting of several conjoined propositions beingsimplified by the elimination of a proposition. The relevant operator would mapthe more complex conceptual structure onto a conceptual structure minus therelevant proposition. See (4.19).


(4.19) a. Input to the function = PAST [[JOHN GIVE ROSES TO MARY],AND PAST [MARY PUT THE ROSES IN A VASE]

b. Output of the function = PAST [JOHN GIVE ROSES TO MARY]c. Input to the function = If /donat/i is an INSTANCE OF DATIVE

VERBj AND /donat/i is an INSTANCE OF DOUBLE OBJECT VERBkd. Output of the function = /donat/i is an INSTANCE OF DATIVE VERBj

The examples in (4.19a, b) are meant to display a straightforward case of repre-senting the “outside world” in terms of conceptual structure. In the interests ofreadability and to save space, I have recast the representation of conceptualstructures (which should look like the representations in (4.9)) as a simpleoperator and proposition and omitted all irrelevant detail. The simplificationcreated by condition-simplifying generalisation, as can readily be seen, involvesdeleting the representation of the second proposition. This might represent asituation where a person represents John as giving some specific roses to Maryat a specific timet′ (perhaps it is their anniversary), activates a default represen-tation (she put them in a vase because she always puts them in vases). Nowsuppose that this person then sees the flowers at timet′ + 24 hours, lying on akitchen counter in John and Mary’s home, shrivelled and dry. The conceptualstructure in (4.19a) would license the inference that if Mary had put the flowersin a vase, they would be in a vase. Default assumptions related to a “theory”about the usual care of roses would include the proposition that the vase wouldcontain water and these combined propositions would license the inference thatthe flowers would not be shrivelled up and dry. Since the perceptual input showsthat they are, it is not compatible with (4.19a). The condition-simplifyingoperator is activated and applies and (4.19b) results.

The examples in (4.19c, d) are exactly the same except that they aredesigned to represent metalinguistic information, in this case the information thatthe phonological form of the verbdonatehas two properties: it belongs to theclass of verbs taking an NP and a PP complement (I have expressed this usingthe short form DATIVE VERB) and it belongs to the class of verbs taking NPNP complements (this is here called the DOUBLE OBJECT VERB category.Many learners of English come up with something like (4.19c) after learningsome subset of verbs occurring in both frames. They overgeneralise the alterna-tion to any verb of transfer of possession. If a learner had had a lesson on dativeverbs, in which she is explicitly told thatdonatedoes not occur in the NP NPframe, she might representdonatein something like (4.19d) as a consequence ofthe application of the relevant function.

A second type of simplification involves taking the intersection of theconditions of two or more similar rules. Those parts of the conditions which


differ are treated as details to be ignored (Holland et al 1989: 86). Since in theInduction Theory, categorisations are expressed in the condition–action empiricalrules, the simplification of a categorisation could involve either the eliminationof some property or feature from its representation (as per (4.19)) or the inter-section of properties. For example, suppose that the learner is told on separateoccasions that a VERB can occur in the frame ___ NP, ___ NP PP, and ___ NPS. The intersection of these frames is ___ NP. The prediction is that the learnerwould create a new rule, ignoring the differences and retaining the informationthat a VERB can precede an NP.

A third type of simplification is the case of a TYPE whose features arereduced or simplified. In this case, condition-simplifying generalisation will betriggered by the joint activation of rules with exactly the same actions and almostthe same conditions. Suppose that the learner has represented the information in(4.20).

(4.20) a. If [−N, +V, −3rd p.]-don’t precedes [−N, +V], adjoin it to VP.b. If [−N, +V, +3rd p.]- doesn’tprecedes [−N, +V], adjoin it to VP.

Simplification would then eliminate the reference to the particular features in thecondition leading to a generalisation over the dummy verb.

Evidence for simplification can be found throughout the L1 developmentalliterature. Olguin and Tomasello (1993) have shown, under experimental condi-tions, that native speaking children between the ages of 22 and 25 months appearto follow a linguistic model for each verb they hear. That is to say, learning isinstance-based, meaning that the very specific co-occurence properties of eachverb in the stimuli are encoded. Over time, the learner generalises over classesof verbs, eliminating certain verb-specific encodings (e.g. the phonetic form ofthe verb, or manner-specific meaning encodings). See also Tomasello (1992,2000). The theory of categorisation adopted here based on Jackendoff’s rules ofcategorisation (see (4.9) once again) is so constructed that it can account readilyfor this kind of instance-based learning. We can hypothesise that the learnersencode the instances in longterm memory and that complex generalisations, e.g.agents are subjects, emerge as the simplification of the specific properties ofeach instance.

We have already seen evidence for what might be instance-based learningin SLA in the discussion of the acquisition of verb placement and negation inSwedish, as well as in the acquisition of German word order. Instance-basedlearning is therefore common to both L1 and L2 learning, to learning by childrenand to learning by adults. Instance-based generalisation proceeds from examplars.Generalisation would involve, e.g., proceding from having multiple instance-


based representations to classifying a variety of stimuli as instances of the sameverb. Here is another example. Suppose that the learner observes separately thatdonate(construed either as a class of phonetic representations or as a unit of adifferent representational system, say a phonological representation) can occurin the inputdonate the money to the museum. On the first occasion of observa-tion, the verb and its complement are stored in memory. On the second occasionof observation, the verb and its complement are again stored in memory, say,e.g. asdonate his inheritance to the World Wildlife Fund. Then an empirical rulecan be constructed which generalises over the particular properties of the phoneticexamplar and the lexical items in the syntactic frame. Thus, the learner can extractthe frame __ NP PP by constructing an empirical rule. Now let us suppose thatthe learner hearsgive in the same complement structure, e.g.give money to themuseum. This can be stored as is (unanalyed) in LTM. But exposure to moresuch exemplars will lead to the creation of a second instance-specific rule whichis identical to the rule stated except for the phonological form of the verb itself.A new third rule can then be created which will cover a larger set of situations,namely both the contexts wheredonateoccurs and the context wheregiveoccurs.In the case of both first and second language acquisition, generalisation andabstraction can continue until exemplars of thedonateclass are wrongly groupedas double object verbs (see Pinker 1989: 45–7 for complete discussion). What isodd is that children can recover from their overgeneralisations, adult secondlanguage learners of English usually do not (see Mazurkewich 1984a, b, 1985 forexperimental studies involving double object verbs and ESL learners). This factpoints to a significant difference between generalisation processes of L1 and L2acquisition. What lies behind it is, at this point, anyone’s guess.

When a category is missing from a rule or the wrong category has beenactivated, then the rule will be inadequate. New rules must be generated. Thesystem must be able to function as if further refinement of its current rules isinappropriate. How does this happen? Old rules give rise to new rules by, e.g.,recombining either the condition or the action part of the rules. In the InductionTheory, which assumes that representations have no structure, this occurs througha genetic operator calledcrossover. Crossover combines parts of two existingrules to form a hybrid rule which is added to the system and then competes withthe source rules (Holland et al. 1989: 119). Holland et al. note that geneticalgorithms function formally in the following ways: (a) pairs of classifiers areselected according to their strength, with stronger ones being preferred to weakerones, (b) crossover applies to the pair exchanging a randomly selected segmentfrom the pair, either in the condition, or in the action, or in both, (c) weakestrules are replaced by their “offspring.” In the Induction Theory, q-morphisms


must be “tagged” to name regions in a q-morphism. This creates fundamentaldifficulties arising from the abandonment of structural representations. Thesystem has to identify regions of q-morphisms for recombination, somethingwhich is immediately available in representations consisting of units. Moreover,nothing in the characterisation of crossover will guarantee that q-morphismsrelevant to a given problem will be rapidly identified — a schema related to thephonological analysis of a stimulus could conceivably crossover with a schemarelated to the semantic analysis of the same stimulus. If induction has to respectautonomous representational systems, however, this possibility is excluded. Itfollows that the “search space” will be restricted to the relevant system. Giventhis assumption, it actually becomes possible to imagine how restructuring couldbe constrained by shared triggering conditions. Recombination involves arandomly selected segment from the pair of algorithms, but this leaves open toomany computationally possible choices. Limiting the choice for restructuring toa computationally small number is critical to the success of the model. This canbe done by assuming that the selection process chooses structural representationswhich are different in terms of a single structural change to the rule activated atthe time of a failed parse.

3.8 What initiates and ends i-learning?

Jackendoff’s theory of Conceptual Semantics is concerned largely with absoluteconstraints on conceptual organisation. He has not attempted to model howcategorisation takes place in real time. This is where the Autonomous InductionTheory is useful. It gives us a model of how this might work. The implementationof the rule creation and rule emendation mechanisms is constrained by triggeringconditions that function to ensure that rules will be useful to the system. Theyare most useful to the system when they make no changes unless there is urgentneed.Urgent needis defined as a failure to correspond to the representationsarising from the perceptual representation of the situation and the current MM.Nothing happens, therefore unless existing representations, including defaultexpectations which are part of the MM, are inconsistent with the representationsbeing constructed or activated in working memory (Holland et al 1989: 22).26

Induction is therefore triggered by some input arising from the processing of astimulus in the environment or from some other computation. Thus, the Auton-omous Induction Theory provides an explanation of why learning begins, andthis explanation ties i-learning to the environment in a rather obvious way.

Induction is moreover only initiated by some failure of current representationsto fit the active MM.27 Re-organisation of the system takes place automatically.


Reinterpreted to be consistent with the construct of representational autonomy,this means that i-learning operations are triggered bydetectable errors, that iserrors which are definable over linear sequences (Wexler and Culicover 1980;Wilkins 1993/1994). I return to this topic in Chapter 9. It follows therefore thatlearning stops, a steady state is attained, or fossilisation sets in — however onewishes to characterise it — when the organism fails to detect errors. It is importantto understand that it is the learner’s analyses and representations of the L2 stimuliwhich matter for defining when learning stops.28Detectable errors, and thereforelearning, are defined on input to parsing mechanisms.

Two points need to be stressed here:

a. As already noted in Chapter 1, induction is dependent on the physicalproperties of the speech situation only indirectly. Unlike most learning models inpsychology, including the Competition Model, I do not think that the learner’smental representations reflect the environment in any strict way. Rather theMMs will structure the nature of experience, and the autonomous representa-tional systems will define what can be represented, imposing organisation onstimuli. Consequently, by definition, the stimuli will never match representations(except at the perceptual level of analysis). Therefore, the definition of detectableerrors cannot be defined in terms of an identity between stimuli and mentalrepresentations. Rather, detectable errors must be defined in terms of a “close-ness of fit” between input to parsers (analyses of stimuli) and currently activatedrepresentations.

b. Detectable errors are relevant for representations deployed by the parsingsystem and not the production system. It may well be the case that the learnercontinues to make speech and writing errors although she “knows” that they areerrors. Similarly, a learner may continue to have a foreign accent, although hecan recognise his own production as non-native-like (Flege 1992).29 This is theimportant element of control discussed in Chapter 1. Control is a factor inproduction; it is not a factor in perception where processing appears to occurautomatically. To sum up, if the learner can readily parse and interpret speechsignals (in auditory mode, in visual mode in the case of sign languages, or ingraphic mode), no detectable errors will be registered by the parsing systemalthough the learner may still be making systematic errors in production.30 Thus,the Autonomous Induction Theory provides an explanation of why learning stops.Moreover, it can explain in principle why learning stops even though thephysical properties of the learner’s productions are distinct from the stimuliproduced by native speakers and perceived by the learner to be distinct.

The construction of any mental model will lead to the emergence of a variety of


“expected outcomes.” What is an “expected outcome”, given a current MM? Anexpected outcome is any state of affairs which is consistent with the MMcurrently activated. Consistency is a less stringent requirement than the identityfunction required by theories using matching of stimuli and representations. TheInduction Theory uses quasi- or q-morphisms rather than isomorphisms to definea fit so it can be had without identity being satisfied; there is a fit on somerelevant subset, what counts as “relevant” to be determined by a theory ofperception, a theory of grammar and parsing, and a theory of mental models forparticular domains. Note that the expected outcome need not actually be explicitlyrepresented in the MM, and often will not be, but it does not contradict anythingin the MM or derivable from the MM by logical inference.31 “Unexpectedoutcomes” will be those which are in contradiction with currently specifiedrepresentations in the activated MM. Unexpected outcomes therefore are explicitlycomputed and they trigger induction. It is in this way that induction is always tiedto the learning situation, understood in the broadest sense: Induction is a processwhich permits the organism to eliminate inconsistencies and contradictionsbetween a mental model and current representations of stimuli, or representationsof stimuli in conjunction with stored representations of information.

The notion of “unexpected outcome” will require some modification,however, when applied to the autonomous representational systems. In particular,we do not want to assume that the learning mechanism is computing a largenumber of possible representations of, e.g. a string, including representations ofwhat is ungrammatical. Representations which are ungrammatical are preciselythose which are not computed by learning mechanisms. Consequently, “expectedoutcome” has to be defined by the constraints imposed on the operations of thegrammar, and these, in turn, must be defined by UG.

(4.21) Definition of induction:Induction is a process which leads to the revision of representations sothat they are consistent with information currently represented in workingmemory. Its defining property is that it is rooted in stimuli made availableto the organism through the perceptual systems, coupled with input fromLTM and current computations. I-learning is, however, different frommechanistic responses to environmental change in that the results ofi-learning depend upon the contents of symbolic representations.

I have differentiated i-learning from the strictly corporeal responses of our ownbodies and simpler organisms to stimuli. I-learning is crucially dependent uponthe content of the representations being computed by the learning system. At thelevel of phonetic learning, this means that i-learning will depend upon the


content of phonetic representations, to be defined in terms of acoustic properties.At the level of phonological representation, i-learning will depend on the contentof phonological representations, to be defined in terms of prosodic categories,and featural specification of segments. At the level of morphosyntactic learning,i-learning will depend upon the content of morphosyntactic representations. Andso on. I-learning is also different from deduction in that the informationalcontent of the premisses which form part of, e.g. a deductive syllogism, isirrelevant to the truth of the conclusion. If we consider a classic syllogism of theform “Socrates is a man. All men are mortal. Therefore, Socrates is a man”, thechoice of predicate IS A MAN and the choice of the referent SOCRATES areactually irrelevant to the truth of the conclusion. It is the form of the propositionswhich matters, which is why we can substitute a variety of names and predicatesand still produce a correct conclusion. Thus “Jacques is a hairdresser. Allhairdressers are mortal. Therefore, Jacques is mortal”, is a variant and bothdeductions are simply particular instantiations of the deductive schema: “x is aY. All Y’s are mortal. Therefore x is mortal.” Induction, in contrast, requires theaddition of new information to the inferencing process. Given the inferencingrules discussed in (4.9) above, we can actually predict what the new informationwill consist of: (a) innate conceptual primitives organised into new TOKENS,e.g. I PERCEIVE A NEW THING (EVENT, PATH, ACTION, DIRECTION,etc.), (b) new TOKENS will be categorised according to known TYPES, e.g.THIS THING IS A THAT, and, (c) new TYPES will be created via the additionof new features to those already defining a TYPE, e.g. THIS CLASS IS ALSOTHAT CLASS. (d) TYPES will be located in linear and hierarchical representa-tions at a given level of representation. When it is stated that induction involvesminimal changes to existing activated representations, this is what is intended.Precisely these sorts of minimal changes will be permitted, and we can furtherconstrain the theory be hypothesising that there is a numerical restriction as well— namely, one change at a time is permitted.

Often this new information will be the consequence of processing somestimuli so that the new information will be the output of perceptual processing.However, i-learning can also arise as the result of activating stored informationin LTM. What information gets stored in LTM? Clearly lexical entries and theircontents get stored. We may also assume that there are recognition templates inLTM, by which I mean pre-compiled representations of stimuli which arefrequently heard. Formula, names, idioms, telephone numbers, and so on, cometo mind. We must also assume that recognition templates exist for more abstractrepresentations at each of the levels of autonomous representation, syllabletemplates, morphological templates etc. English-speakers must hear hundreds of


NP V NP sentences in a day. It is hardly parsimonious to assume that a novelprocedure must be generated each time to interpret them. Conceptual structuresare also stored both individually and in complexes (mental models). Finally I willassume that there are various sorts of production schemata which get stored inLTM, including syllables (Levelt 1996) and syntactic templates.

One can make other arguments on behalf of the theory. Holland et al.(1989: 16) resort to condition–action rules in part because they are “modular.” Bythis, they mean that the action of a given rule does not depend on the actions ofpreceding or following rules. Condition–action rules operate completely indepen-dently of the other rules of the system, except insofar as they share the samecontents. There is no need to extrinsicially order them. As is well known fromdiscussions of learnability, excluding such ordering statements considerablyreduces the power of the theory, and constrains it in an important way. Condi-tion–action rules can be assumed to be able to fire in parallel, an obviouslydesirable result for a theory of cognition where one of the central explanatoryproblems is to account for the speed at which cognitive processing occurs. Thereis no reason to assume that competition among rules will take vast quantities oftime, although only formalisation will show how long the system operates in realtime. How long i-learning actually takes for a given linguistic phenomenon fora human learner is an empirical issue as well. Thirdly, condition–action rules areefficacious. Fourthly, they are suitable for building mental models, these morecomplex cognitive structures which constitute our theories about the world. Andthey are suitable to a prediction-based evaluation of the knowledge store. Fifthly,rules can operate in clusters, as was seen above. Clustering will arise if theaction or output of one rule constitutes the condition or input of another, whoseoutput in turn is the input to yet a third rule. Rules which are frequently acti-vated together become associated. Therefore, the activation of a single rule canlead to the deployment of many others. This also has consequences for the speedof computation. Sixthly, the various categorisation rules associated with a thingare organised into default hierarchies of assumptions based on subordinate orsuperordinate relations among concepts. Default hierarchies are a way ofinstantiating typicality conditions on categories, so they can be used to formalisepreference rules. Holland et al. (1989: 20) emphasise that variability and uniform-ity must be part of the categorisation process and that default hierarchies are anefficient way to instantiate this. This means that the problem of the so-called“brittleness” of many classification models — forcing X to be noun, or not anoun, a grammatical sentence or an ungrammatical sentence — can be avoided.32

As is well known, this brittleness problem has been one of the major argumentsagainst classical computational models and for connectionist models — including,


of course, the Competition Model. Seventh, we have an account of the dynamicnature of learning. The system is able to identify and strengthen rules which leadto the achievement of relevant end states. Or, alternatively, it weakens or elimi-nates rules which fail to modify representations in ways consistent with newinformation. In particular, revisions to the system are not random. In theInduction Theory, apportionment of credit (or blame) takes advantage of the factthat there are linked or “coupled” rules; the action of one rule serving as thecondition of some other rule. Holland et al. have formulated an algorithm, calledthe Bucket Brigade Algorithm, which changes an assigned numerical value (usedto measure rule strength) of a rule by passing on a portion of the value fromsome other activated rule, or giving a portion of its value to some other rulewhich is to be activated. Refinements to rules are limited to repairing faulty rulescurrently activated in the system. In the case of a long rule sequence, theapportionment of blame works locally back from the last rule through thesequence of rules. The constraint and the workings of the Bucket BrigadeAlgorithm guarantee that a problem will be found “locally” in the system. Thetheory thus provides a degree of clarity to the nature of the operations which noother SLA theory can lay claim to.

Finally, I would like to add that the Induction Theory has been computati-onally rendered. This means that the properties of condition–action rules andgenetic operators are reasonably well understood. Holland et al. have demon-strated for the Induction Theory certain desirable results, namely transfer oflearning from problem to problem and order-of-magnitude speed-ups in learning(Holland and Reitman 1978). This means that the Induction Theory has a chanceof competing on these terms with the Competition Model and other non-symbolictheories of linguistic cognition. It must be granted that having proposed substan-tial changes to the definitions and internal representations, it behooves me todemonstrate formally that the same results hold of the Autonomous InductionTheory. Since I have not yet operationalised my ideas even for a simple linguis-tic i-learning problem, I cannot guarantee that they will. At the moment, I see nodifficulty in principle but formalisation raises many problems whose seriousnessshould not be underestimated.

4. Summary of the Autonomous Induction Theory

The purpose of this chapter has been to introduce the Autonomous InductionTheory, and to distinguish it where necessary from its progenitor the (non-autonomous) Induction Theory. The Induction Theory takes as its basic formalism


the condition–action rule, which is used to characterise a broad range of process-es. I have restricted its use to the characterisation of representations assumed tobe computed on-line in working memory or stored in longterm memory. I havecharacterised the mental models the Induction Theory adopts as its basis forinductive reasoning in terms of Jackendoff’s conceptual structures, with all ofthe semantic structure which such a move entails. I have presented some of theconstraints of the theory, proposing that i-learning will be initiated by detectableerrors, that the learning mechanisms will make a single change to a representa-tion at the point of error detection, that q-morphisms can account formally forthe classification equivalence observed so often among L2 learners, that thetheory can account both for instance-based learning and generalisation overinstances, that competition among rules (which may differ minimally from oneanother) will ensure that robust solutions win out, that the theory encodes ageneral version of the Elsewhere Condition and can also account for saliency. Ihave illustrated the theory by focusing on language learning problems which canbe assumed to involve conceptual structures and inductive reasoning, such aswhat might be learned in a language class or during an experiment. I haveinsisted, however, that the theory is of greater interest, once we recognise thatinstance-based learning, generalisation and retreat from over-generalisation aremetaprocesseswhich are expressed in slightly different ways within the auton-omous representational formats of the various domains of cognition (includingthe autonomous systems of the grammar). I can now return to a statement madeearlier: learning grammatical categories is not concept learning. We cannot applywithout emendation the constructs of theories of induction designed to explainproblem-solving and concept learning to the problem of language learning. Weacquire instances and categories in learning the grammar of a language but theseinstances and categories are encoded in the autonomous representational systemsof linguistic cognition. Concepts of phones, syllables, or verb classes are anotherkettle of fish. How the Autonomous Induction Theory deals with inductionwithin these systems, and in particular, how i-learning can be appropriatelyconstrained to prevent the creation of “rogue grammars”, will be addressed inmore detail in Chapter 5.

Notes

1. All citations are from the 1989 paperback edition.

2. The Induction Theory has been formalised, based on prior work by Holland et al. on classifiersystems. I will forego presentation of most of the computational apparatus. Interested readersshould consult the source.


3. One of the nicer observations from my perspective comes from the true statement that it ismeaningful to ask bilinguals which language they dream or think in. Jackendoff points out thatif the conceptual system alone were responsible for awareness, this would not be possible since,by definition, it is language-neutral. On the basis of the nature of the so-called “tip-of-the-tongue” experience where one is trying to say something but cannot remember the word, heargues that conceptual representations are excluded from awareness and that only phonologicalrepresentations are relevent (Jackendoff 1987: 290).

4. Note that I amnot suggesting that the NS will be aware of the particular type of error a learnerhas made. For the naive native speaker, the experience is often just that an error is erroneous:“We don’t say it like that!” It can take a great deal of metalinguistic training, experience withnon-native speakers and reflection to develop a theory of the types of errors learners make andtheir causes. See the discussion below of mental models or “theories” in this technical sense.

5. sink, sank, sunkanddrink, drank, drunkbut think, thought, thoughtand notthink, *thank, *thunk.

6. In order to forestall cranky complaints from all those Canadians whose breakfastsdo includeMett, salami, or rice (not to forget whale blubber), let me say that I base my claim on what onecan expect to find on the culturally “unmarked” breakfast menus of hotels, restaurants or B&Bs.

7. Markman (1989) discusses a number of constraints on concept formation in children involvingthe correspondence between categories and language, e.g. theTaxonomicConstraint, which saysthat we preferentially understand relations among objects in such a way that they are groupedinto taxonomies rather than according to how they participate in events (Markman andHutchison 1984). A second constraint is theWhole Object Constraint, which states that weexpect words to refer to whole objects and not to parts of objects. Children are more likely toattend to whole objects rather than to features of objects. They also are more likely to interpretwords preferentially as objects rather than as actions or events (Woodward 1993). Markman(1989) also proposes a constraint calledMutual Exclusivity, according to which children assumethat category terms are mutually exclusive, i.e. , ’ .Finally, she observes that natural kinds support rich inferences. Artefacts support fewerinferences. I know of no research which replicates Markman’s research with adult L2 learnersbut a number of studies ask adults to manipulate materials involving novel concepts (usuallyartefacts). I do not know to what extent the extant literature shows that category formationamong adults learning an L2 exhibits Markman’s constraints.

8. Specifying what counts as “enough” properties to be included as even a marginal member ofa class of entities is one of the central problems of a theory of categorisation. Minimally, would have to be a concrete object or, an individual with certain perceptualattributes (visual in the case of sighted persons, haptic or olfactory in the case of the blind).Current research suggests that even simple classifications like putting in the class ofcats involves the development of a complex theory of animal life. See Keil (1979, 1989), Smithand Medin (1981), Carey (1978, 1985), and Markman (1989) once again for relevant discussionand further references from the philosophical literature.

9. It should be mentioned here that conceptual development and conceptual organisation in adultsexhibits a certain autonomy. As previously mentioned, Keil’s work (see note 8) reveals thatconceptual development does not show “across-the-board” effects but rather that one domain canbe reorganised in a particular way before another conceptual domain is. This means autonomycannot be reduced to modularity. Both constructs are required for an adequate theory of themind. See Karmiloff-Smith (1992) for further discussion of the differences between autonomyand modularity and for empirical evidence that greater differentiation in the “language ofthought” is required to adequately explain conceptual organisation and conceptual development.


10. This use of the termproduction from artificial intelligence should not be confused with thepsycholinguistic construct of speech production.

11. These operating principles are not to be confused with Slobin’s (1972, 1977) operatingprinciples, discussed in Chapter 1.

12. This is one of many statistical rules which Holland et al. (1989: 44) claim people induce fromthe observation of randomising behaviour or through explicit instruction.

13. This is referred to as aRegulation Schemain the original, a label which disguises the true natureof the constraint. The constraints on rule formation expressed in (4.12d) are deductive in nature.

14. There is no absolute constraint against this, indeed, when we are thoroughly convinced in thetruth of some proposition, e.g. that cats don’t talk back when we talk to them, hearing Pusscasually remark that we’re putting on weight might very well lead to the inference that we’rehaving serious mental problems.

15. I say “can” here and not “must” since we can and do use the relevant cues for identifyingcertain Indian accents of English.

16. Nisbett writes (Nisbett 1993: 5)

… people can operate with very abstract rules indeed, and (…) the techniques bywhich they learn them can be very abstract. Abstract improvements to thepreexisting intuitive rule system are passed along to the full range of contentdomains where the rules are applicable, and improvements in a given domain aresufficiently abstracted so they can be applied immediately to a very differentcontent domain.

17. This fits in with the Holland et al. characterisation of concepts, which they view as sets ofprobabilistic assumptions about the features of a thing, and the consequences of specific sets ofantecedents (Holland et al. 1989: 17).

18. Analytic implication is defined so:

A set of assumptions {P} analytically implies an assumption Q if and only if Q isone of the final theses in a deduction in which the initial theses are {P}, and inwhich only analytic rules have applied.”

Synthetic implication is defined so:

A set of assumptions {P} synthetically implies an assumption Q if and only if Qis one of the final theses in a deduction in which the initial theses are {P}, and Qis not an analytic implication of {P} (Sperber and Wilson 1986: 104).

Notice that the definition of synthetic implication does not state that an inductive rule hasapplied. However, if Q is some sort of information from outside of the deductive system, as thedefinition requires, then it follows that some sort of inductive rule must have applied tointroduce Q into the inferencing representation.

19. The representations between slash marks should be understood as a shortform for a phonologi-cal representation, whatever the appropriate format is. I do not assume that learners encodelinear strings of phonemes in their lexical representations.

20. Nothing of importance hinges on my choice of INFL as the specific functional category towhich the verb raises; I could just as easily have chosen AgrO, Tense, Finiteness or any of theother proposed functional categories in the syntactic literature.


21. The variable in question involves sentences like those in (i).

(i) a. Les garçons regardent tous la télévision le vendredi.‘The boys watch all the television the Friday’

b. *Les garçons tous regardent la télévision le vendredi.‘The boys all watch the television the Friday’

c. Les garçons ont tous regardé la télévision le vendredi‘The boys have all watched the television the Friday’

d. To all own cars is the boys’ ambition.e. *To own all cars is the boy’s ambition.

22. It is not clear to me what the underlying position for this adverb should be in the currentframework. If the specifier position is on the left, then raising of the verb must occur. On theother hand, if adverbs can be freely generated on the right of heads, this obviates the claim thatadverb position can be a cue to underlying order.

23. Notice that with respect to the Competition Model, this link is completely unexplained. Thereis no more reason to link the presence or absence of the subject to tense or finiteness of theverb than to the verbal feature itself.

24. See Andersen (1991) who argues that aspectdoesplay a critical role in the emergence of verbalmorphology, and Andersen (1993) for a revised view that the frequency of forms in the inputplays the deciding role.

25. Lakshmanan (1991: 390) and Clahsen and Hong (1995: 66) both point out that Hilles did notcontrol for possible transfer from the L1 so that no conclusions can be drawn from her dataabout whether adult L2 learners were or were not resetting parameters.

26. This property of the Induction Theory is therefore like the “triggering” of the learning functionsin the P&P-based model of syntactic learning of Berwick (1985). It will be recalled that in thatmodel syntactic learning, largely reduced to parameter-setting, is driven by parsing failure.Whenever the current parser cannot analyse an input, and a parse fails, the learning mechanismgoes into action to alter the current grammar, which in turn is used by the parser to parse. Atsome point, of course, the grammar must be “fixed” and parsing failures from that point oncannot lead to further revisions to the grammar. What ends parameter setting and grammaticallearning in the P&P model remains a point of considerable debate. The same problem, needlessto say, exists in L2 P&P models, where it has not been acknowledged, let alone addressed.

27. Bowerman has amassed considerable data related to longterm lexical reorganisations in L1acquisition, see Bowerman (1978, 1981a, b, 1982a, b). Both she and Karmiloff-Smith (1985,1992) have noted that models of L1 acquisition which are restricted to on-line grammaticalreorganisations are necessarily inadequate because they simply have no explanation of whychildren’s grammars reorganise although the child can clearly represent and comprehend theinput and has no problem communicating itself either. A similar problem arises in adult L2acquisition. de Bot, et al. (1995) observe that there appears to be a radical restructuring of theadult’s lexicon somewhere in-between intermediate and near native-like stages of competence.Intermediate level learners exhibit lexical influences across languages such that hearing orseeing a form in one language will activate the entry for a cognate, near-cognate or translationequivalent in the other. In the case of near-natives, they suggest that inhibitory effects are seensuch that no such cross-linguistic effects will be observed. Spada and Lightbown (1993) studiedfrancophone children’s acquisition of English questions and observed that accurate use rates (asmeasured on an oral communication task) increased months after the instruction period. Whatis especially striking in this case is that improvement cannot be attributed to the fact that the


children, having learnt questions, were attending more to questions in the input because theywere not getting any. These subjects were in an intensive English course which lasted for 5months. When it ended, they returned to an intensive French program in which they receivedno English instruction at all. Spada and Lightbown were able to show that these children hadalmost no contact with English or English-speakers outside of school. This too suggests thatrepresentations may continue to be reorganised offline. The Autonomous Induction Theory hasnothing to say about either sets of observations. A complete theory of the languaging mindwould, of course, have to account for such off-line reorganisations. It goes without saying thatmy discussion here assumes that the mind/brain is intact and functioning normally. This theorywould treat as pathology any instance where the organism can detect differences between inputand current representations but cannot restructure them. Such pathologies are well-attested (seeEysenck and Keane 1995: Ch. 7).

28. Much, too much, has been made about the fact that adult second language learners almost neverattain perfect knowledge of the L2. Although these discussions are invariably embedded inpapers dealing with UG in SLA, the authors almost never mean that L2 learners do not displayperfect knowledge of universals. They mean that any group of L2 speaker/hearers will displaydifferent intuitions about any subset of L2 data than native speakers of that L2. This is a mug’sgame. (i) It ignores the considerable variation among native speakers about other subsets of L2data, variation which shows that native speakers are not teleologically driven to some target L2.They learn whatever they learn, and we, as observers, define that as “the language.” (ii) Itshows remarkable naiveté about the linguistic lives of L2 learners, most of whom are not andnever will be fully linguistically integrated into the societies they have joined. Those who are,achieve knowledge of the L2 and perceptual and production skills which can be accuratelycharacterised as “native-like”, meaning not significantly different from the variability inknowledge and skills exhibited by native speaker monolinguals (Ioup et al 1994).

29. On the nature of the “foreign accent” and its detection, see also Flege (1981, 1984), Flege et al.(1998) and references therein..

30. I am claiming, thus, that we do not compute the syntactic structure of every sentence weproduce. Frequently used patterns will be stored and simply “filled in” with relevant lexicalcategories. As support for this view is (a) the great speed of speech, and (b) cross-linguisticslips-of-the-tongue. After an intensive period of speaking German, which is verb-final, I oftenfind myself producing verb-final sentences when I speak French. During the period when I wasactively practising getting German word order right, I even found myself making mistakes ofthis sort in English, suggesting that the syntactic pattern was stored, activated, and difficult tosuppress. On the relevance of the construct of suppression for theories of bilingual behaviour,see Green (1986).

31. Expected outcomes could be measured in terms of explicit verbal statements, for example, “Iwas sure that the Maple Leafs would be in the finals”, but they could also be measured in termsof the organism’s surprise at some event happening. This assumption lays behind some of theresearch techniques in studies investigating infant cognition which will be reviewed in the nextchapter. Surprise is normally understood in phenomenological terms, but could be used toexplain why I picked my players from a given team in playing the hockey pool. The expectedoutcomes might also be simply that the organism’s current representations of the environmentare accurate ones and make correct predictions about future events.

32. I must emphasise once again that there are other formal ways to avoid this problem. Jackendoff(1983), for example, proposes a typology of distinct conditions on word meanings — necessaryconditions, graded or centrality conditions, and typicality conditions which he derives fromdomain-specific applications of preference rules.

C 5

Constraints on i-learning

1. Form extraction, distributional analysis, and categorisation

Since there are as yet no detailed studies of i-learning using the AutonomousInduction Theory, it is impossible to discuss the specific nature of encodings ofa given phenomenon, such as an instance-based versus a rule-based encoding ofFrench gender, or an instance-based versus a rule-based encoding of the Englishdouble object construction. Most discussion of learning in SLA has involveddiscussion of metaprocesses but without focusing on the specific constraintsobserved during development or searching for evidence for their absence. Suchresearch will hopefully follow in the future when the Autonomous InductionTheory is subjected to rigorous verification. In this chapter, I would nonethelesslike to discuss in more detail form extraction, distributional analysis and categori-sation within the autonomous representational systems so that the differencesbetween that kind of i-learning and that which occurs on the basis of informationencoded in conceptual structures and inductive reasoning is clear. This will leadto a discussion of the constraints on i-learning which occur within the Autono-mous Induction Theory.

1.1 Prosodic bootstrapping and form extraction?

Studies of the initial state of acquisition must begin with the question of whatlearners first encode. It stands to reason that the first problem the learner facesis segmenting the speech stream and extracting lexical items. As was noted inChapter 1, how this happens is a fascinating problem which has yet to be givena serious treatment in the SLA literature. The most we can say is that cross-language lexical identifications are possible (the cognate recognition phenom-enon, Carroll 1992), as are other possible types of cross-linguistic influence.There is good reason to suspect that prosodic properties of items will facilitateor hinder their extraction from the speech stream and therefore their encoding in


longterm memory (Carroll 1997). Functional items in many languages (certainlythis is true of English, French, German, Spanish and Italian) tend to be un-stressed, are not the locus for shifts in the fundamental frequency, tend not tobear the tones of intonation contours, are not separated from exponants of themajor lexical categories by pauses, and so on. They are, in short, prosodicallycliticised onto other lexical items which can be realised as prosodic words. Wecan therefore predict that the first items to be extracted from the speech continu-um and learned will be prosodic words, and that in many languages prosodicwords will instantiate tokens of the major lexical classes noun, verb, andadjective. It follows that the first morphosyntactic words learners learn ought tobe members of these word classes. This prediction is consistent with widespreadobservations of L2 learners of languages like Dutch, English, French, German, andSwedish (Klein and Dittmar 1979; Clahsen et al. 1983; Klein and Perdue 1992).It is also consistent with observations from the same literature that these learnersfail to express functional categories in the earliest stages of their L2 production.But this merely makes more pressing the question: What properties of the stimulusare learners relying on to fix the left and right edges of extractable units? If weassume that the learner has no relevantphonologicalknowledge at the initial stageto be able to encode phonological constructs like stressed syllable, then we mustassume that learners are extracting prosodic words on the basis of cues from alower level of acoustic representation and mapping these onto phonological units,which in turn are mapped onto morphosyntactic and semantic units. Suppose thatlearners are relying on given types of acoustic cues to locate prosodic words.Suppose, in particular, that they are relying on shifts in fundamental frequency,then it ought to be the case that the first words will be precisely those prosodicunits which can appear at the beginning or end of an intonational phrase sincethese are precisely the places where the fundamental frequency falls, rises, or isreset (Pierrehumbert 1980; Ladd 1986, 1996; Cutler, Dahan and van Danselaar1997).1 But for this prediction to be true, it must be the case that learners aredriven by an a priori tendency to locate such shifts of fundamental frequency onabstract phonological units such as prosodic words, which in turn they are drivento analyse in terms of sequences of syllables and segments.

This prediction ought to strike a bell with anyone familiar with the firstlanguage acquisition literature. On the one hand, it makes an explicit linkbetween the stimuli that the learner gets and what the learner learns. As is wellknown, there is a substantial literature examining the properties of caretakerspeech. But while a certain literature reveals that some groups of mothers useintonational contours to get and hold the attention of infants (Sachs 1977; Stern,Spieker, and MacKain 1982; Stern, Spieker, Barnett, and MacKain 1983), I know

CONSTRAINTS ON I-LEARNING 181

of no study examining the location of shifts in fundamental frequency and theextraction of first prosodic words.2 On the other hand, my hypothesis is verysimilar in spirit to one of Slobin’s (1971, 1973, 1985a) claims. It was noted inChapter 1, that Slobin proposed a number of operating principles to account forhow infants and young children discover the grammatical systems of theirlanguage. Operating Principle A was “Pay attention to the ends of words.” Slobinwanted to explain with Principle A the relative order of emergence of suffixesbefore prefixes in child language. Operating Principle A does not explain whychildren should pay attention to one end or the other of a word. Gleitman andWanner (1982) proposed in the context of the Prosodic Bootstrapping Hypothesis(see Chapter 2), that children attend to and represent stress and map from stressdomains to lexical items. Thus, it was hypothesised that there is an interactionbetween the representation of lexical items (stored in LTM) and a more generalprocessing strategy which is that learners “Pay attention to stressed words” (Peters1983; Ingram 1989: 68). The basic idea is that first language learners can attendto domains of stress in the stimuli, can extract those domains, and encode themin their mental lexicons. In many languages, stress happens to fall on the first orfinal syllable of a word (Dresher and Kaye 1990; Kenstowicz 1994: Ch. 10). Insuch languages, stress offers an ideal cue to the left and right edges of aprosodic word. Even in languages where stress location must be identified moreabstractly, e.g. in terms of phonological constructs such as extrametricality,bounded feet, and so on, considerable evidence suggests that young childrenmake use of it (Waterson 1981; Chiat 1983; Echols 1988, 1993; Echols andNewport 1992). The question, of course, arises: Since stress itself is defined interms of syllable prominence within a given prosodic domain, how does thelearner locate stressed syllables? The Gleitman and Wanner/Peters/Ingramreinterpretation is really not a complete solution to the problem raised by Slobin.Rather it requires that stress be reinterpreted in terms of acoustic cues. In otherwords, learners cannot come to the task of extracting word units from the speechcontinuum with a priori knowledge of what a stressed syllable is, since thatknowledge itself emerges from learning. This observation is rendered moretrenchant by research which shows that speech to young children is remarkablyunintelligible from the point of view of word recognition (Gurman Bard andAnderson 1983), indeed, more unintelligible than speech to adults, a fact whichin turn appears to be relatable to the prevalence of utterances expressing oldinformation and the use of highly frequent vocabulary in conversations withchildren. It would appear that old information leads to a tendency to articulatesyllables and segments less clearly. It must be the case therefore that the solutionto the initial word extraction problem is to be found in a priori mapping strategies


linking the phonological and phonetic levels of representation, and the nature ofacoustic cues to word boundaries. Shifts in fundamental frequency, of course, areone possible acoustic cue to prosodic domains. Pre-final boundary lengtheningand the cessation of phonation (pause) are other cues.

In FLA, the developmental logic of the correspondence between thephonetics and the phonology, and subsequently the phonology and the morpho-syntax, may actually be fairly straightforward, at least for learners of certainkinds of languages. Consider English. Much of the young infant’s input once ithas reached the babbling or proto-word stage, may well consist of one and twosyllable words (Snow 1977). In such words, stress has to fall on one end of theword or the other. Now suppose that infants first extract “words” on the basis ofacoustic-phonetic cues (whatever they might prove to be) and then they subse-quently re-represent the acoustic representations as phonological structures,including some representation of syllabic prominence. It might appear that thechild is relying on an extraction strategy based on stressed syllables becausethese overlap with the acoustic cues that the child is relying on. However, itmight be more appropriate to state that the child is driven to encode stress as oneof the basic properties of the phonological level of representation, i.e. that thechild is in fact extremely sensitive to acoustic cues which can ultimately berepresented phonologically as stress.

That these prosodic units are then mapped onto major lexical categoriesmust be derived from another a priori correspondence strategy mapping prosodicwords onto morphosyntactic words. That children then procede to map specificsemantic or morphosyntactic functions ontosuffixesmust also be explained bya priori correspondence strategies, which involve mapping specific concepts ontospecific types of morphosyntactic categories.3 Aksu-Koç and Slobin (1985)provide considerable evidence for this correspondence strategy by showing thatchildren acquire the inflectional suffixes of Turkish very early on, i.e. before 2years of age. They demonstrate that Turkish presents a case for simple corre-spondences between unique forms, unreduced and putatively salient syllables, andunique functions in the morphosyntactic system. One can conclude that, given apredisposition to map unique functions onto unique forms, and a languageenvironment which obliges by providing one-to-one correspondences, childrenare good at discovering and learning them.4

And what of adult L2 learners? As far as I have been able to determine, noresearch has examined the nature of the acoustic or phonological cues to wordextraction at the initial stage of L2 acquisition. We therefore simply do not knowhow learners are doing it. There is one interesting observation, however, toemerge from experiments examining the learning of artificial languages. Over the


last 30 years there have been a number of interesting studies involving theimplicit acquisition of artificial languages by adults and which have focused ondistributional analysis. See below. This research shares a number of propertieswith the acquisition of a second language, although many of the studies wereundertaken to elucidate questions of primary language acquisition. Valian andLevitt (1996) asked if adult learners would rely more on prosodic cues tosyntactic units than on same-level morphosyntactic distributional cues, in aneffort to further investigate the hypothesis of Morgan (1986) that prosody guidesthe learner to morphosyntactic segmentation, thus reducing the amount ofdistributional learning which must occur. Their findings, however, suggest thatlearners rely on prosodic cues only in the absence of other types of cues, namelydistributional cues or semantic cues. This suggests that adults may not besensitive at all to prosodic cues to morphosyntax, or be unable to computeprosodic cues in the presence of other types of cues. The results of Carroll(1999a) also point in this direction. Obviously this is one area of SLA researchwhere much more needs to be done.

1.2 Distributional analysis

Studies by Braine (1963, 1966, 1987) and by Smith (1966, 1969) show thatadults are good at learning distributional properties of “words.” In particular,they can learn the position of words with respect to “phrase boundaries.” Thismeans that learners are sensitive to the first position or last position of someconstituent. They can also learn the positions of nonce words with respect to anarbitrary marker (Morgan, Meier and Newport 1987; Valian and Coulson 1988;Valian and Lewitt 1996), suggesting that they can learn to identify functionalcategories and their complements on the basis of a purely distributional analysis.In short, it has been demonstrated experimentally thatadults are sensitive to thedistribution of forms in linearly ordered strings, andcan readily locate particularforms relative to fixed positions in a string or relative to other forms in a string.These two observations are related: functional categories typically mark eitherthe left edge of a phrasal constituent or the right edge. Functional categories aretherefore particularly useful for parsing mechanisms. Since we are assuming herethat parsing mechanisms encode grammatical distinctions which are in partacquired, this means that language learning mechanisms must be sensitive tofunctional categories. This ability can be readily explained in terms of a generalsensitivity to contingencies in input (Kelly and Martin 1994), but only once it isgranted that the learning mechanisms can encode what a functional category is.That ability arises as a consequence of the principles of Universal Grammar.


1.3 Categorisation

Much of i-learning involves categorisation or re-categorisation. Distributionalanalysis presupposes categorisation. So does transfer. Consequently, any learningtheory worthy of the name should pay special attention to categorisation.

It turns out to be true, as I have noted previously, that categories acrosscognitive faculties exhibit “fuzziness” or gradience with some things clearlybelonging to a given category, some things clearly not belonging, and a host ofborderline cases (Putnam 1975a: 133; Rosch 1973, 1975; Rosch and Mervis1975; Mervis 1980; Smith and Medin 1981). Some tokens or members ofcategories are judged to be better exemplars than others (Mervis, Catlin andRosch 1976; Smith and Medin 1981). Categories across cognitive faculties alsoexhibit “family resemblances” (Wittgenstein 1953: 31–2, Rosch and Mervis 1975;Smith and Medin 1981). Natural kind categories behave differently fromartefacts (Rosch, Mervis, Gray, Johnson and Boyes-Braem 1976; Markman1989). Linguistic categories, be they categories of speech perception, of themorphosyntax or of the sociolinguistic system, exhibit exactly the same generalproperties as categories of the conceptual system (Crystal 1967; Ross 1972,1973a, 1973b; Taylor 1989, 1994).5 It is this observation which has led me to theconclusion that the categories of language are i-learned using the same meta-processes discussed above. It is worth emphasising that this perspective isperhaps not widely shared. One might conclude from discussion of linguisticcategories in the SLA literature, categories such as noun, complementiser, etc.,that the categories themselves are provided by UG. I have tried to emphasize inChapter 3, Section 2.2 that such a view does not follow from anything ingenerative theory, rather we can assume that UG provides basic categorialfeatures which are subsequently organised into a language specific typology ofcategories — hence i-learned — on the basis of the prosodic, semantic and/ordistributional properties of the exponents of the categories. On a view oflinguistic cognition where the language faculty consists of sets of autonomousrepresentations and in which only some subparts of linguistic processing of theserepresentations are modular, the shared properties of categories across cognitivedomains can be explained. Representational autonomy requires that at least tworepresentational systems be formally incommensurate and that communicationbetween a pair of representational systems be mediated by correspondence rules(Jackendoff 1995: 5). This does not preclude, however, that the processes whichcreate categories within each representational system cannot share properties.Jackendoff (1983) argues that human cognition instantiates the use of preferencerule systems across a broad range of domains and at all levels of computation.


It is the preference rule systems which explain the fuzziness of categories, theirfamily resemblance properties, discrete exceptions, and the general difficulty indelimiting necessary and sufficient features to define them.

We have seen, then, that the characteristics of preference rule systems arefound everywhere in psychological processes, all the way from low-levelperceptual mechanisms to problems so prominent in our conscious life as to beof social and political concern… Yet the notion of a preference rule systemhas not been recognised as a unified phenomenon, except perhaps by theGestalt psychologists. The reason for this, I think, is that the kind of computa-tion a preference rule system performs is quite alien to prevalent ideas of whata formal theory should be like. Formal logic, generative grammar, andcomputer science all have their roots in the theory of mathematical proof, inwhich there is no room for graded judgements, and in which conflict betweeninferences can be resolved only by throwing the derivation out. I see apreference rule as a way to accomplish what psychological systems do well butcomputers do very badly; deriving a quasi-determinate result from unreliabledata. In a preference rule system there are multiple converging sources ofevidence for a judgement. In the ideal (stereotypical) case these sources areredundant; but no single one of the sources is essential, and in the worst casethe system can make do with one alone. Used as default values, the rules areinvaluable in setting a course of action in the face of insufficient evidence. Athigher levels of organisation, they are a source of great flexibility and adapti-vity in the overall conceptual system. (Jackendoff 1983: 156–7)

We hypothesised that, in acquiring the novel categories of an L2, learners musti-learn new preference rules. New preference rules may also have to bei-learned to carry out the correspondences between novel categories or struc-tures in one representational system and another.6 As previously stated, i-learn-ing new preference rules will entail either learning new cues to a classification,re-weighting the relative importance of different cues, and suppressing the auto-matic activation of analytical procedures used in processing the L1. The Auton-omous Induction Theory can thus explain in principle the nature of categorisa-tion and re-categorisation in SLA. No other theory can. Let me elaborate whatproblems lie before the alternatives.

Categorisation presents two rather serious conceptual problems for the P&Papproach, given its claims that learning is limited to trivial or peripheral aspectsof the lexicon. The first problem lies in the observation just discussed: linguisticcategories exhibit general properties of categorisation across linguistic domains.On the view that linguistic cognition is both autonomous and modular (Fodor1983), this result is mysterious.


The second conceptual problem for P&P theory turns on a methodologicalissue. Many SLA P&P studies rely for their assessments of the interlanguagegrammar on acceptability judgement tasks which themselves are categorisationtasks (Birdsong 1989). While the SLA researcher might be interested in thenature of the learner’s morphosyntactic or phonological knowledge, by resortingto acceptability judgement tasks, he or she is using a metalinguistic task. A meta-linguistic task is one which involves representation in the conceptual system andcannot reveal anything about the organisation of Fodorean modular linguisticsystems. It can reveal only limited aspects about autonomous linguistic systems,namely where correspondences exist between the conceptual system and theothers. There are, in fact, good reasons to suppose that responses to acceptabilityjudgement tasks are indeed derived from activity in the conceptual system, andnot from processing which accesses a modular or an autonomous grammar.Schütze (1996) provides a detailed review of factors influencing results onacceptability judgement tasks and concludes that such judgements are affected by

just about every stimulus and procedure variable one can think of. Serial order,repeated presentation, deliberate judgement strategies, modality, register,preparation and judgement speed… various types of contextual material, themeaningfulness of the sentence, the perceived frequency of the sentencestructure, and idiosyncratic properties of its lexical items… But perhaps thebiggest lesson is the importance of instructions we give to subjects.(Schütze 1996: 169)

There is therefore no reason to believe that acceptability judgement tasks informus directly about the learner’s interlanguage grammar. It seems far more reason-able to assume that these judgements involve an interaction between meta-linguistic knowledge (encoded in the conceptual system), the internalisedgrammar, and the learner’s perceptual systems, especially since the judgementsthemselves display the “fuzzy” character one expects them to have.7

The Competition Model is designed to explain both the fuzzy nature ofcategories and the shared properties of linguistic and non-linguistic categories.Moreover, the Competition Model predicts that what is learned will not be asimple reflection of relative frequencies of properties of the speech stream butrather result from complex interactions among cue frequency, cue validity andcue reliability (cue conflict). The theory falls down, however, in pitchingexplanation at the wrong level. Cues in the Competition Model are properties ofthe speech stream, and hence correspond to bursts of energy, periods of cessationof phonation, and so on. There is no reason to think that L2 learners haveencoded generalisations at this level of representation which will explain such


things as preferred word order strategies. On the contrary, there is good reasonto believe that the behaviour of learners exhibits sensitivity to phonological andmorphosyntactic constituents — just one type of constituent encoded in abstractautonomous representations.

1.4 Summary

To sum up: Distributional analysis would appear to be a prerequisite for encod-ing particular types of representations, constituents, hierarchical structures andword order patterns, and adults have the capacity to do it. But before words andword patterns can be used in speech production, they have to be mentallyrepresented. Distributional analysis, as I view it, can only be understood in thelong run in interaction with mapping procedures linking acoustic properties of thespeech stream to phonological analyses of constituents (form extraction), whichin turn have to be put into correspondence with morphosyntactic constituents. Weknow nothing, apparently, about how adult L2 learners extract prosodic wordsfrom the speech stream and isolate morphosyntactic words, except to note thatlexical categories are often expressed and controlled in speech production beforefunctional categories (a fact which can be explained phonologically, morpho-syntactically or semantically). It is imperative that we begin to conduct specificstudies of how learners learn their first words. Some of that research will haveto be experimental. An essential part of the story, however, will also involvedescriptive studies of the speech learners hear with a focus on such questions asthe frequencies of particular types of prosodic constituents and acoustic cues tophonological constructs like stress. Finally, I have concluded that we need atheory which combines the best of both the generative and the Competition Modelapproaches: symbolic representations consistent with the best linguistic descrip-tions and a learning theory capable of explaining the prototypical nature ofcategories and the fact that cues to categories can compete with one another. TheAutonomous Induction Theory has been designed with both properties in mind.

2. Removing the straw man, or why induction needn’t produce “roguegrammars”

2.1 Induction and the Autonomy Hypotheses

In Chapter 4, I briefly mentioned certain critiques of induction as an explanatorytheory of SLA. I reject such critiques for they display the confounding of a


number of issues. For one thing, they confuse the manner in which induction hastypically been modelled in formal work on learning, with necessary properties ofinduction. As we saw in the last chapter, induction has often been modelled asa random search through a search space. Formal (learnability) studies then ask iflearning algorithms, under what must be viewed as a “worst case” scenario, willconverge on the essential aspects of the target knowledge system. If the answeris “Yes”, that means that the algorithms and models in question might bereasonable models of human cognition. If the answer is “No”, it means thathuman learning of that knowledge cannot be modelled as a random searchthrough the designated search space.8 In the case of primary language learning,the answer has indeed been “No” for every linguistic phenomenon investigated,on the assumption that the learner is not guided by any a priori knowledge aboutwhat linguistic categories or structures should look like. The presence of such apriori knowledge would thus constrain induction in important ways. It is wellunderstood in learning theoretic circles that constraining induction is the centralproblem of induction theory (Peirce 1931–58, Vol. 2: 474–6; cited in Holland etal. 1986: 4, see also Landau and Gleitman 1985; Markman 1989; Gleitman 1990,for relevant discussion). The lack of appropriate constraints has led researchersin first language acquisition largely to reject induction as a major mechanismaccounting for the core properties of grammars.

We also saw that the claim that principles of UG, and especially parametersetting, must be operative in SLA because interlanguages do not display “crazy”rules or do not have “rogue grammars” presupposes that induction can only beunconstrained and necessarily leads to crazy rules. Since induction is usuallyconsidered to be a case of random hypothesis generation and hypothesis testing,the constraints problem arises largely at the point of hypothesis generation. In theabsence of UG, it has never been apparent how the generation of hypothesescould be constrained to come up with just the right linguistic constituents andprinciples, since linguistic structure is not derivable in a straightforward mannerfrom either perceptual properties of the speech stream or conceptual propertiesof language. In other words, if the learning mechanisms are not constrained toencode language in such terms, why should the learning mechanism inducesyllables, or hierarchical morphosyntactic structure? Why should it inducec-command, or syllable structure constraints? No answer has ever been forthcom-ing from the psychology of learning. Moreover, within models of cognition inwhich the mind is viewed as an undifferentiated or unspecialised general proces-sor, it has not been obvious why hypothesis testing should not be random. Thisleaves unanswered how language learning could be so fast and so relatively error-free, and leaves unexplained the well-documented stages of language learning.


The failure to take induction seriously as a solution to the representationalproblem also extends to SLA. No answer has been proposed to the questionsraised by Archibald and others by those in SLA touting general theories oflearning beyond the answer: “Transfer does it.” Such a response requires aworked out theory of transfer to be credible, but we know, on the basis of manyyears of investigation that not every feature, category or principle transfers.Language acquisition is not deterministic and no acquisition would take place ifthe L2 could only be encoded in terms of the categories of the L1. Consequently,the challenge of explaining the absence of “rogue grammars” remains; the“Transfer does it” answer is hardly satisfactory. This said, however, it seems tome that the critique of induction mounted by generativists is extremely naive,demonstrates an embarrassing ignorance of current research in the psychology oflearning, and ultimately amounts to a nonsequitur. It may well be that variousproposals in the first and second language acquisition literature have beenunconstrained.It does not follow that induction is never and could not be con-strained.9

SLA critiques of induction also often confound the question of whetherinterlanguages conform to UG with the question: Is language encoded inautonomous representational systems? Generativists presuppose the autonomy oflinguistic representation, and many apparently believe that a commitment toinduction entails as well as commitment to the hypothesis that all cognition isencoded in a single, undifferenciated non-autonomous representational system.It is certainly true that most inductivists have made this assumption because mostof the people arguing for induction in language acquisition have happened to befunctionalists, and functionalists are people who do not want to believe that therecould be a set of language-specific structural representations. But it is not,however, a logical or conceptual necessity that induction be paired with non-autonomous cognition; the nature of the representational system is a distinctproblem from the question of the mechanisms at work in language acquisition.I adopt the Autonomy Hypotheses, shown in (5.1), which are a more explicitworking out of ideas stated more generally in previous chapters.

(5.1) The Autonomy Hypothesesa. Human cognition is encoded in a variety of autonomous representa-

tional systems. Each autonomous system can be associated with adistinct domain of knowledge.10 A representational system is auton-omous when it consists of (at least) some unique constituents, andprinciples of organisation. In other words, the “syntax” of autono-mous representational systems does not reduce to, and is not neces-sarily in 1 : 1 correspondence with, other representational systems.


b. It follows from this last property that for representations of one sortto influence the organisation of other representations, there must becorrespondence rules which allow the translation of constituents andstructures from one representational system into another. Where nocorrespondence rules exist, no cross-system influence can occur.

c. Language is encoded in autonomous representational systems.

I have hypothesised too that the representational systems which encode phonologicaland morphosyntactic information consist of linguistic constituents as I have definedthem, that they exhibit structural dependence, and, in particular, exhibit propertieslike dominance, sisterhood, etc. I have also assumed that each autonomous level canalso exhibit unique properties such as the c-command relation in the morphosyntaxor the “No Crossing Lines” constraint in the phonology. Now assume that L2 stimuliare encoded in autonomous representational systems as per (5.1). We have seen thatin the Autonomous Induction Theory, linguistic stimuli, regardless of the linguisticsource (L1 or L2) will be analysed by the same language processors which parse L1stimuli. There is no reason to assume that second language stimuli are not processedby the same mechanisms which process primary language stimuli, indeed, were weconstituted differently, it would be impossible to learn a second language. Let uscall this:The Uniform Parsers Hypothesis.

(5.2) The Uniform Parsers HypothesisLinguistic stimuli are processed by the same parsers regardless of the “origin”of the stimuli. Moreover, initially the same processes are applied. In otherwords, initially, L1 parsing procedures will be applied systematically andautomatically to L2 stimuli. The procedures of the parsers are assumed to bebased on structural information encoded in the representational systems of theL1 grammar.11

The Uniform Parsers Hypothesis together with the Autonomy Hypotheses in (5.1)guarantee that interlanguage cognition will display sensitivity to structural relationslike c-command, dominance and sisterhood. This is so because (5.2) ties theoperations of the parsers to the structural properties of the grammar. (5.1) and (5.2)therefore explain the particular forms of structural dependence of both first andsecond language acquisition that Flynn (1983, 1987, 1991) and Epstein et al. (1996)have attributed to P&P theory and which models by Bley-Vroman, Clahsen andMuysken, or Schachter do not explain. But I will make bolder claims: A theory ofinduction incorporating these two assumptions, such as the Autonomous Induc-tion Theory, andonly a theory making the same or similar assumptions can gobeyond the explanation of these properties of psychogrammars to explain thedevelopmental problem of second language acquisition discussed previously.


Let me emphasise the point since it is critical to interpreting the theory: UGhas been invoked to explain universal properties of linguistic representationalsystems. In particular, UG has been invoked to explain some of the primitivesavailable to the L1 grammar and parsers plus constraints on structure-building.Induction alone will not explain these properties. Induction, however, willexplain how grammars are restructured precisely when restructuring involves theacquisition of new categories, the acquisition of new cues to extant L1 cat-egories, the re-weighting of existing cues to extant L1 categories, and locatinginstances of particular categories in particular locations in an input string(distributional analysis). Explaining how such restructuring occurs is the task ofSLA research. The task is a difficult one. Documenting how learners get froman unanalysed speech continuum to phonetic, phonological, morphosyntactic andsemantic representations of a given stimulus involves a kind of research whichsimply has not been done in our field. Despite the seeming pervasiveness ofgrammar-based research, none of it has been devoted to explaining how a learnercould come to encode a particular kind of grammatical representation given aparticular kind of stimulus. Developmental research has remained the purview ofresearchers with no particular commitment to a theory of grammar. Neitherapproach will lead to the development of an explanatory theory of encoding forreasons spelt out in Chapters 2 and 3. And encoding is only part of the story.Understanding why accurate representations at the various levels do not automati-cally lead to native-like control will require models of bilingual speech produc-tion which are just now being formulated (Pienemann 1998a, b). In my view,however, once the relevant research is done, it will show that SLA involvesessentially these metaprocesses: classification or encodings of the sort “X is aninstance of Y”, reclassification or reorganising the cues for a classification,distributional analysis or classification based on structural properties, andstructure-building processes. I-learning will explain essential aspects of each ofthese types of information encoding. The metaprocesses will, however, take astheir starting point certain structural constraints holding of representationalsystems, which will limit how classification and structure-building occur.

2.2 Induction is not random hypothesis-formation

How does one explain that certain hypotheses and not others are generated? Howdoes one explain that certain hypotheses and not others survive the hypothesis-testing phase of learning? I have shown that considerable progress has beenmade on these questions in non-language domains of knowledge. One conclusionis already at hand:Induction should not be characterised as a random process.


According to the Holland et al. theory, MMs predispose us to createparticular hypotheses which will turn out to be relevant to the resolution of agiven problem. In generating new hypotheses, the learning mechanisms createminimally different representations from those currently active in the mind. Thisconstraint will guarantee that i-learning is not random because alterations can bemade only to activated representations and these will turn out to be the represen-tations which contain a “problem” for the system in its on-line analysis of intakeand/or input. Moreover, this constraint is just one of several which operate insuch a way that i-learning is not only non-random but also conservative. Mentalmodels change only a little through i-learning. Sudden, radical restructuring of anentire MM is precluded, providing us with another constraint on i-learning.12

(5.3) Constraints in i-learning (version 1)a. In generating new hypotheses, the learning mechanisms can only alter

those representations currently active.b. In generating new hypotheses, the learning mechanisms create repre-

sentations which are only minimally different from those currentlyactive.

I have stated two principled constraints on induction. These are constraints whichcan be deemed internal to the operations and functional architecture of the mindas proposed by the Induction Theory and its avatar: the Autonomous InductionTheory. Other constraints have already been proposed. Something has to triggerthe learning mechanisms. I have adopted the hypothesis here that learning istriggered when parsing of an incoming string fails. In other words, i-learning iscrucially tied to the operation of the parsers, which, in turn, given the UniformParsers Hypothesis, initially encode specialised properties of the L1. I-learningtherefore involves constructing new parsing procedures attuned to the expressionsand classes of the L2. The construction of new parsing procedures involveslearning new cues for categories or re-weighting particular cues as more (or less)important in the new system. This leads to another important constraint oni-learning; i-learning is tied to “trouble” in the system or to the detection of errors.


those representations currently active.b. The representations currently active when the learning mechanisms go

into operation are those relevant for parsing a current string; i-learn-ing begins when a current parse fails.

c. In generating new hypotheses, the learning mechanisms create repre-sentations which are only minimally different from those currently active.


Let me now reiterate two important consequences which follow from the hypoth-esis in (5.4b), namely (i) that i-learning will cease when the parsers can accom-modate all relevant stimuli with current parsing procedures, current grammaticalrepresentations and current mental models. Parsing may be possible, given theways in which parsers exploit cues, even when the production system is far fromnative-like. In the Autonomous Induction Theory, there is therefore an importantdisjunction between learning for successful parsing and comprehension andlearning for successful production. This means that responses to inadequateproduction in the form of feedback and correction may constitute an importantsignal for the learner of “trouble” in the system, namely trouble in the formula-tion of acceptable speech.Feedback will normally not be directed at trouble in theparsing system, and therefore will not normally signal problems essential forrestructuring the internalised grammar.This constitutes a considerable limitationon the role that feedback can play in SLA. (ii) global reorganisations of the sortwhich may affect the learner’s lexicon, for example, as native-like knowledgeand proficiency are attained, will not be accounted for in terms of i-learning. TheAutonomous Induction Theory is therefore incomplete in that it has nothing to sayabout such global reorganisations, should they prove to part of the SLA story.

The generation of hypotheses will also be constrained by the nature ofattention and perception since what can be construed about the L2 from thestimuli present in a given situation is clearly restricted by what we can perceiveand attend to. This is a well known constraint on induction (Johnson-Laird 1983;Jackendoff 1987), if one whose mechanics are little understood. But constraintshere work in two directions — mental models also constrain what we perceiveand attend to. Similar remarks could be made about the constraints placed oni-learning by working memory and longterm memory. Here therefore is anotherarea to look for constraints on i-learning, namely the ways in which i-learninginteracts with the horizontal faculties of attention, perception, and memory(Fodor 1983).




c. In generating new hypotheses, the learning mechanisms create repre-sentations which are only minimally different from those currentlyactive.

d. In generating new hypotheses, the learning mechanisms will operate


with representations currently under attention, and will be limited towhat can be processed by working memory.

Constraints on i-learning can arise from the way in which “thinking” occurs.Since ratiocination is rooted in the mental models that we have in some domain,defining the relevant MMs for language (MML) is obviously yet another areawhere one can look for constraints on i-learning. Recall that Kellerman (1978,1986, 1987) has argued that learners’ beliefs about the typological relatedness ofthe L1 and the L2 affect the extent to which they believe that the structure ofthe L2 lexicon will be like that of the L1 lexicon, which in turn affects theextent to which they believe what they already know will be relevant for learningL2 idioms. This is an example of how a particular MML can affect learnerbehaviour. I suspect at this point that such considerations may have more to dowith how learners formulate speech in production, rather than how they compre-hend speech. However, this distinction has not been investigated empirically inconnection to Kellerman’s work on transfer and typological relatedness so I mustsimply set the matter aside.





d. In generating new hypotheses, the learning mechanisms will operatewith representations currently under attention, and will be limited towhat can be processed by working memory.

e. To the extent that conceptual representations can interact with auton-omous representational systems, they can restrict the generation ofnew hypotheses, given that representations in one system will bebrought into conformity with the content of representations in another.

Finally, we are armed with the assumption that adult learners transfer therepresentational system of the L1 to the L2 learning task, and that i-learningmust respect the categories and computational operations of autonomous repre-sentational systems (i.e. the Autonomy Hypotheses of (5.1) and the UniformParsers Hypothesis of (5.2)). Therefore, there must be constraints on the ways inwhich the system responsible for generating hypotheses interacts with the


autonomous linguistic representational systems, in particular, the grammar. Thisis a final area to look for constraints on induction.

(5.7) Constraints in i-learning (final version)a. In generating new hypotheses, the learning mechanisms can only alter




d. In generating new hypotheses, the learning mechanisms will operatewith representations currently under attention, and will be limited towhat can be processed by working memory.

e. To the extent that conceptual representations can interact with auton-omous representational systems, they can restrict the generation ofnew hypotheses, given that representations in one system will bebrought into conformity with the content of representations in another.

f. I-learning respects the autonomy of grammatical representationalsystems, which means that it can neither create new primitives nornew operations.

The proposals in (5.7) constitute a significant set of constraints on i-learning andtherefore take us one step further towards explaining why SLA does not lead tothe development of “rogue grammars.” They do so without trivialising either thecontribution of learning to SLA or the contribution of universals to linguisticcognition.

2.3 Jettisoning the problem-solving metaphor

Induction is almost always associated with problem-solving, and talk of problem-solving usually means that induction is associated with “goal-oriented” activities.This in turn means that it is construed as intentional, and therefore is a conse-quence of conscious awareness. I intend to abandon this metaphor because it hasproved to be an obstacle in the development of an integrated theory of languagelearning including both autonomous representational systems and i-learningrooted in the conceptual system.

It has been pointed out before that construing language acquisition as aproblem to be solved is completely unsatisfactory. It is easy to understand theagent’s role in conscious actions, hence the continued appeal of the problem-


solving metaphor. It is more difficult but still possible to characterise an agent’srole in subconscious actions, as Freud has shown, but the extension of the goal-setting metaphor to the characterisation of the internal regulation of cognitivestates is extremely problematic. Much of language acquisition is not consciousnor is it available to awareness. As previously pointed out, learners do not “hear”the subsegmental features of consonants or vowels in the sense that they arerepresentable independently of the syllables, or prosodic domains in which theyoccur, and can be questioned and discussed as features.13 Nonetheless, acquiringan accurate L2 accent requires that learners perceive these features and adjusttheir representations of them. This particular illustration is a good one of theinappropriateness of the problem-solving and goal-setting metaphor becauselearners actually often have as an explicit conscious goal the acquisition of anative-like accent. They want to sound like native speakers. Their (un)conscioussub-goals, however, do not include adjusting their Voice Onset Time valueswhen perceiving and articulating syllables. Illustrations could be found fromother areas of linguistic knowledge.

The problem-solving metaphor demands that explanation of languageacquisition take place in the phenomenological mind, but this demand cannot bemet. One must permit explanation at the level of processing and structure. Onemust distinguish between the ego and the cognitive system as a whole. I canhave certain intentions with respect to my environment, but my brain does not.If we are to avoid the mind/body problem, and, in particular, if we are to remainrealists, then it must be granted that explaining cognition cannot require intentio-nality (Jackendoff 1987). This is particularly clear when we examine theprocesses involved in parsing speech stimuli. The parsing process occurs auto-matically and outside of the realm of our awareness. We could not suppress it oralter it, nor can we have conscious access to it, even if we wanted to. If theproblem-solving metaphor has been so appealing, it is perhaps due to an unfortu-nate over-emphasis on overt behaviour and skills learning as opposed to percep-tual learning and other forms of learning which involve representation andunderstanding rather than overt behaviour. In language production, in contrast tolanguage perception, intentional activity just seems obviously explanatory.14 Aperusal of the literature on slips of the tongue (Fromkin 1971, 1980; Cutler1982a, b) will quickly show, however, that most of the action there too is takingplace outside of consciousness or awareness. Let us grant that it is impossible toknow if the learner’s explicit goals (assuming they have some) have any directconsequences for the ways in which they process input, or store information.

In any event, in practice, theories of induction do not normally limit them-selves to instances of intentional learning. The Induction Theory is no exception.


In short, it is not limited to intentional actions on the part of some agent. On thecontrary, its creators move quickly to the hypothesis that the cognitive system isperforming certain cognitive “actions” independently of the agent’s intentions. Ibelieve, for all of these reasons, that it would be preferable to eliminate the goal-setting metaphor from the Autonomous Induction theory.

2.4 The Coding Constraint

A second property of induction mentioned by Holland et al. is that it takes placein non-specialised sub-systems. If induction is really a type of inferencing, andif it involves combining bits of new information either from the output of theperceptual processors, or from activated representations of stored information(perceptual representations of the environment, representations of the learner’sown internal states, currently activated information drawn from longtermmemory, etc.) then it follows that induction must take place in some processorwhich has access to these different kinds of information. This means thatinformation of various sorts is put to use by some non-specialised system. Thisis often referred to as the central processor. In the theory I am adopting, we haveseen that there is no such thing. It is not necessary to induction that the func-tional architecture include a central executive and there are arguments against theidea (Jackendoff 1987).

The hypothesis that induction takes place in a non-specialised system is thestandard assumption in psychology. This would appear to require that oneassume that cognition is largely non-autonomous. Or, that i-learning does nottake place in the autonomous systems. I have insisted, contra most inductiviststances, on the autonomy of representational systems, in particular, thoseresponsible for linguistic cognition. Holland et al. make the mistake of believingthat they can rely on low-level perceptual processes, namely covariation detec-tion, to make the system work. Covariation detection is supposed to provide thesystem with the basis for discovering errors in the system with respect tocurrent stimuli, i.e. that everything is not “business as usual.” The fact thathumans have language, and apes do not, is reduced to differences in “sensitivi-ty” across species and individuals in a species, which Holland et al. (1989: 174)attribute to motivation, prior experience with the types of rules to be learnedand the codability or events and/or event relations to be incorporated into rules.They concede, however, that associations are more likely to be learned if theyinvolve properties that are relevant to the organism, where relevance must beconstrued as relevant to the internal cognitive organisation of the system.


Associations, however, are not an amorphous, undifferentiated thing; theycan be defined as arbitrary and non-arbitrary (cf. Seligman 1970, sited in Amsel1989). Arbitrary associations are those for which the organism is neither“prepared” nor “counterprepared” genetically. These have typically been theobject of behaviourist learning experiments. But it has been well understood thatnon-arbitrary associations might be learned on a few trials or even a single trialif the organism is prepared for it. It has also been understood that associationmight never occur if the organism is counterprepared for it. So the potential roleof genetic memory has always been acknowledged even by theorists who wouldreject the invocation of UG.

Evidence […] indicates that human co-variation detection is also heavilyinfluenced by the degree of preparedness to see certain associations.(Holland et al. 1989: 175).

Stripping this talk of its associative foundations, we can say that we are allagreed that humans might be prepared a great deal to discover certain patterns inthe stimuli. Since Holland et al. are not linguists, or psycholinguists, have notdeveloped their model to account for language, and presumably did not intend todevelop their model for language, we may assume that if they knew as muchabout it as we do, they would grant that in fact humans are mightily prepared forlearning language. And this preparation includes possessing autonomous repre-sentational systems which encode structure.

To sum up: I have rejected the assumption that cognition must be non-autonomous. The empirical evidence for autonomy is now considerable andcovers a number of domains of knowledge, not just language. Since I want toensure that induction respects the autonomy of the subsystems it co-exists with,I shall introduce the Coding Constraint on induction in (5.8).

(5.8) The Coding Constraint on inductionInduction respects the basic properties of specialised autonomous repre-sentational systems. In particular, it can augment neither the set of basicprimitives nor the set of basic operations

The Coding Constraint does not have to be stipulated. It follows from theAutonomy Hypotheses, but it is useful to spell it out explicitly.

Notice that the Coding Constraint does not require that induction in adultsbe constrained by the properties of the autonomous systems as they are prior toexperience. I am not assuming that the autonomous representational systems area direct mirror of the initial state. Consequently, the Coding Constraint does notguarantee that i-learning respects the categories and computational principles of


UG understanding UG to be that initial state. Rather, it ensures that i-learningwill directly reflect properties of the representational state at the momentinduction occurs. It should be assumed, therefore, that induction will respect theprimitives and operations present in the L1 grammar. The Coding Constraintplaces nonetheless yet another very powerful constraint on induction. Categoriesand properties of language which are not encodable in the adult’s mature repre-sentational systems will not be i-learnable unless they are derivable from theprimitives and operations of the linguistic system via the basic inductive opera-tions. Should it turn out to be the case that the primitives and operations of theL1 grammar and parsers are quite different from UG, then there will be profounddifferences between what the Autonomous Induction Theory will permit andwhat “access to UG” will permit. This allows us to draw a clear distinctionbetween the P&P and the Autonomous Induction Theory: Any primitive attribut-ed to the initial state UG which is not represented in the L1 grammar ought tobe “accessible” to the adult L2 learner if UG itself is “accessible.” Such primi-tives are not learnable in the Autonomous Induction Theory. I have alreadydiscussed studies of the perception of phonetic categories which show that adultsdo not bring “the initial state” of phonetic features to the acquisition of L2 soundsystems. The evidence suggests that these features are no longer accessible toadult learners. They appear not to be i-learnable either, which supports the Autono-mous Induction Theory. I discussed above the L2 learning of French gender andsuggested there that no relevant category can be induced from conceptual categories.These examples are merely illustrative; the issue merits much more research.

The Coding Constraint is designed to guarantee that new information to acognitive subsystem is in the “right” format. Having postulated it, severalquestions arise: (i) What are the representational systems in question? (ii) Whatare the origins of new categories in L2 interlanguages? (iii) What are the interac-tions between the conceptual system and the various linguistic representationalsystems? Are they unrestricted and fully interactive, or are they modular?

No precise answer can be given to the first question at present. The generalanswer required is that there must be enough formats to express all of therelevant distinctions observed in linguistic cognition. Finding a satisfactoryanswer will involve for the researcher at the very least figuring out how manylevels of processing are needed to explain both language acquisition and theefficient processing of speech. Processing theories will be responsible to thedistinctions discovered in competence theories. Grammatical theories of appropri-ate richness and generality may permit the elimination of redundant levels. Onlyongoing research in psycholinguistics and linguistics will give us the rightnumber and the right type.


To the second question: What are the origins of new categories in theinterlanguage?, two answers have been given. One is the traditional answer wein SLA all resort to because we must, namely that new categories come from theexisting cognitive systems. We transfer old categories to new stimuli, i.e. weproject old categories onto to new stimuli, and re-categorise over time toapproximate the categories that native speakers cognise. In Piaget’s terminology,we assimilate new stimuli to old categories, and ultimately adapt old categoriesto the stimuli. I will invoke the Coding Constraint to explain an obvious factabout transfer which, to my knowledge, remains unexplained. Weinreich (1953),Haugen (1953), and Kellerman (1978, 1983) have rightly insisted that transferpresupposes the identification of categories, with stimuli or input of some sortbeing treated as if it were “the same thing” as some category of the L1. Whatthe best theory of transfer must explain, is why the identifications always seemto occur at the “right” level — acoustic phonetic stimuli are identified with thecentral category of phones, as Flege’s research has shown, syllable structures andhigher order phonological representations are identified with phonological wordsand can activate L1 lexical entries, as the cognate literature reveals, and syntacticenvironments involving semantically selected elements (semantic roles) areidentified precisely with the predicate-argument structures of verbs and adjectives(Harley 1989b; Harley and King 1989). Transfer thus operates in a highlyconstrained fashion in that only categories and computational principles relevantto a given level of representation and processing can be transferred, and theymust be transferred to that level.15 It follows from the Coding Constraint thattransfer must involve identification at the right level. It is simply not possible fora learner to identify a category of the syntax, e.g. the syntactic phrase, as if itwere the same thing as an instance of segmental encoding.

This will seem to many readers to be self-evident, which may prove onlythat many readers have unstated and unquestioned assumptions about the natureof cognitive organisation. These assumptions should be brought out into the light.The Induction Theory cannot explain this fact about transfer. Neither canclassical connectionist theories. No theory which relies solely or largely onassociationisn can explain it. Only theories which invoke structural representa-tions can. The Autonomous Induction Theory does.

New categories are also created from the basic primitives of the representa-tional systems or from other complex categories. How does the system come tohave these primitives? The traditional response has been to say “They’re inducedfrom the categories of perception.” Holland et al. realise this response isinadequate but do not really come to grips with it. I assume here that theprimitives of the autonomous representational systems cannot be induced. It


follows therefore that they must be given a priori. We could say that they are“innate” but given the difficulties surrounding this term discussed in Chapter 3,I prefer to avoid it. I-learning plays a role in the creation of novel complexcategories, using the primitives of the autonomous representational systems.

Let us return to the issue of categories as prototypes. Flege (1991), forexample, reviews a number of his studies showing that segments or phones in thegrammars of both native speakers and L2 learners are represented as centralrepresentations. This means that there are no necessary or sufficient conditionsfor being heard as a [p], but rather that articulations that correspond to a certainrange of acoustic features will be assimilated to the phone. He also shows thatsecond language learners adjust their central representations so that representa-tions of phones fall somewhere “in between” those of groups of monolinguals.Wode (1992) has also pointed out that the perception of segments exhibitsproperties of prototypes. But the situation is actually more complicated in thatthe perception of categories is dependent upon global properties of the cognitivesystem. For example, the perception of segments is normally not faithful to theacoustic reality, but rather interacts with lexical knowledge in quite precise ways.Labov (1994) discusses vowel shifts typical of dialects of the northern UnitedStates which involve the raising of low front vowels and the lowering andbacking of high front vowels. In these dialects words with historical /aeh/ vowelsare actually articulated with the vowels in the upper front area. Words withhistorical /o/ words are pronounced with the vowels in a fronted area, and wordswith historical /iy/ and /ey/ are pronounced with the vowels in a central mid area.Labov (1994: 197–9) discusses a number of misperceptions by listeners fromother dialect areas which are directly related to the existence of lexical items inthe listener’s lexicon which could correspond to the actual segments uttered. Inother words, if I hear someone from Buffalo sayingJanwhen they are in factintending to sayJohn, but here them sayCanadawhen they are attempting tosayCanada(articulated as more like [Ákh7n6n6]), it is a direct consequence of thefact that I can projectJanonto the on-line representation of the acoustic stimulusbut there is no closer relevant word thanCanadato project onto the parse of thatstimulus. Note that what counts as the “closest relevant word” in parsingdepends, however, not merely on the properties of the stimuli, but also on thedensity of the lexical neighbourhood in the perceiver’s psychogrammar, theproperties of the to-that-point-constructed morphosyntactic representation, as wellas properties of the ongoing mental model of the discourse.16 None of theseobservations about word recognition can be explained in terms of co-variationdetection and association alone. We must have recourse to constituents andstructures of various sorts. If linguistic cognition reduces to varying degrees of


activation among associated elements in which the elements correspond only tolow-level features of the acoustic stimuli, then these observations about wordrecognition cannot be stated let alone explained. The Coding Constraint requiresthe learning processes to be framed in terms of the relevant representationaltypes and the transfer of specific representations will mean that learning willrequire adjusting the boundaries of extant categories.

2.5 The role of feedback

The third property of induction is that the organism is constantly being fedinformation about the accuracy of its representations of the environment. Thereare two respects in which feedback could play a role. In the first instance,internal monitoring mechanisms could be examining outputs of various pro-cessors to determine if they are in the “right” format for some task. These mightbe entirely self-regulating and independent of the operations of the conceptualsystem. Self-regulating, mechanistic, monitoring could occur within a completelymodular system of linguistic cognition.

I assume that all models of cognition will include self-regulatory mechan-isms. But these will not play a special role in the Autonomous Induction Theorydistinguishing it from other theories. Feedback, I have said, has a causal role toplay in the restructuring of knowledge only if the contents of the learner’sconceptual representations can be shown to be the essential element initiatingchange. This leads to the Feedback Constraint.

(5.9) The Feedback ConstraintChanges to representations which are initiated by feedback must be as-sumed to be caused by the contents of the feedback, which, if givenverbally, will be encoded in conceptual structures, after the speech ex-pressing the feedback has been parsed in the usual fashion. The provisionof metalinguistic feedback therefore presupposes that the organism has thecapacity to encode linguistic categories and concepts in conceptual struc-tures.

In this book feedback is understood to involve the intervention of some externalagent. In the typical case of language acquisition, it will involve a languageteacher or some native speaker, who provides the learner with independentinformation about the accuracy of her representations of the language. Thefeedback will be instantiated in speech. Deploying feedback will thereforeinvolve first decoding the speech, that is parsing the speech and deriving anaccurate conceptual representation of the feedback provider’s (henceforth the


corrector’s) message. The parsing and interpretation processes create opportun-ities for much of the information content in the correction to “go astray”.Consequently, it is not the provision of feedback per se which is important fora theory of language acquisition but the ways in which learners interpret anddeploy it. Since the feedback is encoded in conceptual structures, but thegrammar is encoded in a variety of other autonomous systems, there must bepoints of interaction where the information in the conceptual structures can be re-encoded in the proper format. Adopting the Autonomy Hypotheses and theCoding Constraint has forced on us the adoption of correspondences rules whichwill map categories of the conceptual structures onto categories of the linguisticsystem. Where no correspondences are possible, feedback will have no effect.

3. Summary

In the previous chapter, I introduced a modified version of the Induction Theoryof Holland et al. (1986). In this chapter, I have focused on a number of con-straints which will limit how induction operations can create new representations.The induction functions are assumed to perform only one operation at a time, insuch a way as to respect the Autonomy Hypotheses and the Coding Constraint,meaning that induction cannot directly create primitives or introduce them intothe autonomous representational systems. The Coding Constraint forces theimplementation of correspondence rules which mediate between the mentalmodels related to language and the autonomous representational systems of theinterlanguage grammar. Changes to the system are created when errors are“detected” and this happens when the parsers cannot assign an analysis toincoming material with extant procedures. It should be kept in mind, thatanalysis must occur in both the correspondence and the integrative processors.

These innovations constitute major constraints on the original InductionTheory. The Autonomous Induction Theory was also shown to be constrained ina variety of other ways, by inheritance of constraints which also hold of theInduction Theory. Change can occur only in representations currently activated.Induction therefore always occurs on-line. Operations are limited to creatingminimally different representations from “parent” representations. These thencompete with the parents within the system, the best representation winning out.Rules get activated in clusters, and the clusters can lead to the development ofdefault hierarchies. When problems occur in a cluster of representations, theBucket Brigade Algorithm works back locally from the point of the identificationof the error to locate the source of error.


Taken together, these various sets of constraints provide a constrainedtheory of induction which I believe can account for many of the major propertiesof interlanguages. It must now be admitted that these are areas to look forconstraints on induction. There has been little attempt to elaborate a model ofinduction in SLA so to date we know very little about how i-learning actuallyoperates in this cognitive domain. This discussion, and the questions in (5.10),thus elaborate what amounts to a research program; at the moment there are fewfacts of the matter to report.

(5.10) a. How do the processes which construct novel representations of the L2actually work? And how are they constrained by the functional archi-tecture of the mind?

b. How does perception and attention affect the construction of MMsrelevent for the L2? And vice versa, how do MMs affect the percep-tion of L2 stimuli and attention?

c. What are the mental models relevant for second language acquisition?How are MMs actually derived?

d. What are the correspondences between MMs and the grammaticalrepresentations? In particular, what are the restrictions on these corre-spondences? And specifically, what role is played by feedback andcorrection in the construction of MMs?

By attempting to answer the questions in (5.10) for a variety of different kindsof linguistic knowledge, we can expect to develop constrained models ofi-learning, models which, in interaction with detailed proposals about therepresentational systems in question, really will provide explanations of L2development.

Notes

1. I have no empirical evidence that this is the case but am relying on certain observationsemanating from the typological literature. First of all, fundamental frequency is instantiated inall languages, and is realised either astoneor aspitch. In tone languages, tone is expressedover a lexical domain and indeed typically appears as a contrastive feature of the language,discriminating among lexical items which are otherwise segmentally identical. Inpitch-accentlanguages(such as Japanese), fundamental frequency is also expressed over a lexical domain.In intonational languages, fundamental frequency can be realised as pitch associated with stressmarking or prominence. Stress, in a language like English, is expressed over lexical domains.Thus, even in English, where intonational tunes may be realised over domains much larger thanthe word, these larger domains are still linked to lexical domains via accent. The finalobservation is that a language has one and only one of these ways of realising shifts infundamental frequency, suggesting that its realisation over lexical domains may be a truly


universal property of linguistic cognition, something that an L2 learner would necessarily bringto the problem of extracting words from the speech stream. How this might interact with thespecific prosodic properties which a learner might transfer is not clear to me at this point.

2. It should be noted that at the ends of intonational phrases, shifts in fundamental frequency maywell coincide with other cues such as pre-boundary lengthening and the occurrence of a pauseat the end of the intonational phrase. Bernstein-Ratner (1986) has shown that pre-boundarylengthening is exaggerated at certain phases of parent-child exchanges but is eliminated as thechild grows older. The same can be said for the exaggerated contours which some mothers use.Consequently we have no reason to assume that exaggerated features would be part of thelanguage adult L2 learners are exposed to.

3. Ingram suggests (1989: 68) that the fact that children acquire suffixes before they acquireprefixes could also be attributed to a recency effect in auditory processing but that alone willnot explain why they derive suffixes and prefixes from their analysis and not merely syllables.

4. The specific empirical claim that inflectional suffixes will be acquired before prefixes has beenquestioned. See Weist and Konieczna (1988).

5. This observation appears to be one of the motivations behind the development ofCognitiveLinguistics. See Taylor (1989) for discussion.

6. These preference rules will do much of the work of the connectionist activations linking theinput cues and the output knowledge of the Competition Model. It is essential, to make senseof my claims, to keep in mind that preference rules, in creating categories are creating complexconstructs. Categories are not primitives. Representational primitives are given along with theautonomous representational systems. They are not induced.

7. It is precisely for this reason that I am disinclined to regard data from acceptability judgementtasks as evidence that interlanguage grammars violate principles of UG.

8. Even parameter setting models tend to adopt this approach (Dresher and Kaye 1990; Gibsonand Wexler 1994).

9. Gregg (p.c. 1995) claims that the problem for induction is its “fallibility”, by which he means(I assume) that the learner can fail to arrive at a correct solution. But learners typically do failto arrive at a unique solution to a wide range of language acquisition problems. This is why wehave linguistic variation. The real point is that learners arrive at unique solutions for a limitedrange of phenomena; we need recourse to UG for these and for none others. A theory whichinvokes only UG to provide an account of phenomena like, e.g. the class of verbs correspon-ding to double object verbs, the class of words which can take -hood as a head suffix, thelocation of stress on a variety of learnèd words, or the ability of reflexive pronouns to substitutefor simple pronouns in sentences likeJohn saw a picture of himself in the gallery, will not beable to explain why native speakers regularly disagree as to the class of acceptable andunacceptable cases.

10. However the converse — If X is a distinct domain of knowledge, then X is an autonomoussystem — is not true; every domain of knowledge need not be instantiated by a distinctautonomous representational system. The exact number, and the formats they assume, must bedetermined by empirical investigation.

11. It is a corollary of this hypothesis that learning the L2 involves the development of L2 specificparsing procedures wherever the L1 procedures fail.

12. Similar constraints have made their way into models of parameter setting. Gibson and Wexler(1994: 410–2) propose that the algorithm which sets parameters, called the “Triggering learningalgorithm” (TLA) only operates when a sentence currently being parsed fails to be parsed, that


a parameter value can be altered by the TLA only on parsing failure, and that the learnersomehow cognises that certain parameters may be more relevant to the parsing failure thanothers. They do not spell out, however, how the learner cognises these things. Dresher andKaye (1990) attack this problem head on by supposing that there is a unique relation betweentriggers and parameters. These conditions, it should be noted, are part of a learning theory, andnot part of UG. It is therefore grossly misleading to assert, as some like to do, that UG just isa theory of language acquisition.

13. It should be emphasised that metalinguistic instruction plays no role here. Phoneticians cannothave the relevant sub-goal any more than the naive L2 learner. The perception and representa-tion of sounds is just like that: automatic and unconscious.

14. This is an illusion, which will become obvious as the discussion proceeds. It should also bepointed out that intentionality is distinct from “directed cognitive processing” resulting frominteractions of attention, the conceptual system and perception. Holland et al. (1989: 93–4)discuss focused sampling. Focused sampling takes place when an organism is actively searchingfor a particular type of stimulus. For example, it is known that subjects will hear degradedspeech samples more accurately if they have been given prior information about the nature ofthe stimulus. This and other types of information about speech perception suggest that it doesnot involve matching stored representations to acoustic phonetic properties as they areperceived. Rather, it involves creatively projecting likely representations onto a partiallyspecified representation in construction at the current point in the parse. This is a generalproperty of cognition; while I might intend to look for a given door in my Weihnachtskalender,I don’t intend to see it.

15. One can argue that transfer exhibits these effects only because the analyses have beenexpressed in particular ways, in other words that the effects are a consequence of the analysisand not of linguistic cognition. The critique, however, misses an obvious point, which is thatscholars investigating transfer, in particular, the scholars cited, have been seeking to explainobvious generalisations and the generalisations are only statable as, e.g. “phonological” or“syntactic” or “semantic.”

16. Almost all of the errors of perception cited by Labov respect the syntactic category of thestimulus, thus nouns are misperceived as other nouns, and verbs are misperceived as otherverbs. These errors of perception illustrate that lexical selection is not a bottom-up process only.See also Bond (1981), and Warren, Bashford, and Gardner (1990). In addition, Labov’scollection of misperceptions also tend to respect the basic logical categories of the input, withnames being substituted for other names. This might be an accidental property of Labov’sexample, which was chosen merely to illustrate how lexical closeness affects perception acrossdialects differing in the presence/absence of the Northern Cities Vowel shift. Systematic studiesof “slips of the ear”, however, show that errors of lexical perception generally respect thesyntactic category of the input, and often respect the basic logical category showing how theprojection of non-phonetic information structures lexical selection. See Garnes and Bond (1975,1976), Cole and Jakimik (1978), Bond and Robey (1983).

C 6

The logical problem of (second) language acquisitionrevisited

1. Introduction

In this chapter and the next, I wish to return to the metatheoretical debatesintroduced in Chapters 2 and 3. More particularly, I shall take up the twoprincipal arguments made which lead to the assertion that UG is necessary as anacquisition mechanism to explain SLA. If these arguments can be shown to bewithout basis, then the case for the Autonomous Induction Theory (or someother, better theory of i-learning) is stronger. The first argument, to be addressedhere is that there is alogical problemof second language acquisition whichUniversal Grammar but not induction can solve (White 1985a, 1989: Ch. 2;Birdsong 1989: 89; Bley-Vroman 1990). The second argument, to be addressedin Chapter 7, is Schwartz’ (1987) hypothesis that the language faculty is modularin such a way that language acquisition can only take place bottom-up, on thebasis of stimuli from the speech stream. The major claim in this chapter will bethat there is nological problemof second language acquisition, indeed that thelogical problem of language acquisition has been misrepresented in the literaturementioned, reducing it, incorrectly, to the claim that the stimulus is impoverishedwith respect to ultimate attainment. While the Poverty of the Stimulus Hypoth-esis is an essential component of the logical problem of language acquisition, thetwo are conceptually distinct.1 In order to make my point, I review the variousfactors involved in resolving the logical problem of language acquisition. It willquickly become apparent that resolution involves committing oneself to prop-erties of the learner, the learning situation, the what to be learned, and to adefinition of successful learning. Making such commitments really meansconverting the logical problem into anempiricalproblem of language acquisition.I argue that the logical problem of language acquisition can be resolved inprinciple in a variety of ways, but that the resolution of the empirical problemrests on the facts of human linguistic cognition which differ significantly in thecase of first and second language acquisition.


2. There is no logical problem of second language acquisition

2.1 The form of the argument

UG, I have argued, is necessary to explain how a learner comes to have arepresentational system capable of encoding phonological and morphosyntacticinformation. Such a system cannot be i-learned from properties of stimuli, nor isit derivable from conceptual representations. Now that we have explored what aninduction theory has to look like, in particular the relationship between inductivereasoning and mental models on the one hand, and the autonomous nature of thegrammatical representational systems on the other, this argument is moremotivated. It becomes compelling on the assumption that the pre-linguistic childhas a comparatively primitive conceptual system and limited i-learning abilities.2

This comparatively primitive conceptual system will not support the induction ofthe representational primitives and combinatorial algorithms of the phonologicaland morphosyntactic representations (Fodor 1980; Felix 1981). The case for UG,in some form or other, in primary language development is therefore a virtualnecessity. The case goes like this: At the same time that they are acquiring agrammar, children are also acquiring complex conceptual systems. This meansthat they cannot map from a complex conceptual representation to a simplephonological or morphosyntactic representation. Since they lack other compensa-tory cognitive mechanisms which could overcome the inadequacies of the stimuliin the speech stream (those bursts of energy and bits of silence), there is no othermechanism for inducing the basic properties of these representational systems.The only compensatory mechanism could be UG. One is therefore forced toassume that UG is part of the language acquisition device (LAD). Indeed, I haveassumed that UG is part of the LAD in precisely the sense that it provides thebasic representational system for the pre-linguistic child who neither induces theprimitives of a grammatical representational system from linguistic stimuli normaps them in a one-to-one correspondence from an initial innate conceptualsystem. The same argument could be made using the child’s parsing systems. Atthe same time that the child is acquiring a grammar, he is also acquiringlanguage-specific parsing procedures. Therefore, the parsers cannot be used asthe bootstrapping mechanism for the development of the specific properties ofthe representational system.

Developmental psychology has often assumed that language specificuniversals could be dispensed with and that grammar, to the extent that it exists,can be derived from either perceptual primitives or conceptual ones. Accordingto this view, the traffic goes in one direction only, from the properties of the

THE LOGICAL PROBLEM OF (SECOND) LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 209

initial conceptual and perceptual systems to the categories and features of themorphosyntactic system, so that the child’s initial knowledge of the structuralcategories and organisation of language can be kept to a minimum. Occam’srazor can then be invoked and arguments raised that UG ought not to exist. Forexample, the young child appears to discover the categories of the morphosyntaxby treating referential expressions as nouns, and forms expressing actions asverbs. This correspondence then goes from the non-linguistic conceptual systemto the grammar. Why shouldn’t such relations define linguistic competence ingeneral? The reason is, as Landau and Gleitman (1985), Markman (1989: 37),and Gleitman (1990) have rightly insisted, that linkings work in the otherdirection too. Children also use the formal properties of morphosyntacticcategories to discover the sub-categories in a given semantic field. This meansthat those formal properties must be independently available.

To rephrase, i-learning a given language requires some initial representa-tional system(s) in which the various acoustic/phonetic, phonological, morpho-syntactic and semantic properties of language are encoded. In the case of primarylanguage acquisition, this set of initial representational systems includes at leastthose representational primitives made available by UG, a priori acoustic andvisual perceptual representation systems (which, as it turns out, are quite rich andcomplex) and the initial conceptual system. In the case of second languageacquisition, the relevant set consists of every representational system the learnerhas in place at the point in time where L2 acquisition occurs, including a matureand rich culture-specific conceptual system, the specific grammar of the L1, thespecific parsing and production systems associated with the L1, a mature acousticperceptual system, a mature visual perceptual system, a mature set of domain-specific problem-solving systems, and so on. All the evidence available providessupport for the assumption that adults come to the acquisition task capable ofdeploying their mature representational systems to the purpose of acquiring theL2. Unlike the child’s initial representational system, however, these maturesystems are a product of both “innate” capacities and acquired information. Inother words, the initial knowledge states of the adult learner (at the point ofanalysing L2 data) are such that she can encode stimuli in various representationtypes. The relevant literature suggests that she can encode concepts in terms ofpropositions consisting of predicates and referential categories, quantifiedexpressions, bound variables, etc. It also suggests that an adult learner canencode propositions as sequences of sentences, and sentences as sequences ofstructured morphosyntactic categories (both referential and non-referential). Itsuggests that the abilities to encode the L2 speech stream in these ways arepresent in L2 acquisition from the very start.


It is true that a theory of SLA must explain properties of the initial state,but one is free to hypothesise that adults are transferring knowledge which hasbeen arrived at in any number of ways. It could be a priori knowledge, acquiredthrough selective learning or canalisation, or it could be i-learned. Consequently,one cannot argue that “access” to UG islogically necessary in SLA in order toexplain the fact that adults are capable of representing language in terms oflinguistic structures. There is no separate logical problem of language acquisitionfor each particular language that an individual might acquire. Consequently, thereis no logical problem of second language acquisition.

To summarise, I claim that “access” to UG is not a necessary element forexplaining the fact that adults can represent linguistic stimuli in structural termswhen they acquire a second language. However, it is a necessary part of thestory of how they happen to have the representational systems in the first place.That they do is explained by the very fact that they have an L1 grammar, L1parsing and speech producing systems, and a complex and mature conceptualsystem. UG is thus implicated in SLA but only in a very indirect way. It providesthe pre-linguistic child with the basis for acquiring an L1 psychogrammar, whichconsists of rich, language-specific information encoded in various representa-tional systems. Secondly, UG is not sufficient to explain the properties ofacquired languages, either the developing linguistic systems of children or theinterlanguages of adults. This is so whether one construes UG as the initial stateof acquisition, or as a mechanism responsible for cross-linguistic variation.

In the rest of this chapter, I will present the logical problem of languageacquisition and develop the argument just given in brief above that there is nospecial logical problem for second language acquisition and claims to thecontrary amount to a serious confusion of the representational and developmentalproblems of acquisition.

2.2 What is the logical problem of language acquisition?

2.2.1Three basic assumptionsThe logical problem of language acquisition is a problem for a theory of i-learn-ing. It asks the question: Are natural languages i-learnable in principle? Providingan answer depends on at least five factors: (i) the formal properties of the classof languages to be learned, (ii) the time allotted for learning, (iii) the criterionused to define success, (iv) the nature of the input, and (v) the computationalnature of the learner (Gold 1967; Pinker 1979; Osherson, Stob and Weinstein1984). Defining these factors involves introducing other considerations intolearnability theory. The more these considerations actually reflect psychological


properties of learners and the learning situation, the more such studies becomerelevant for SLA. In other words, learnability studies can be done in such a wayas to move us away from thelogical properties of learning to theempiricalproperties. By referring to the empirical problem of language acquisition, I meanthe problem of how real learners could in principle induce a language.

Let us consider the first factor: What is being acquired? There are variouskinds of responses to this question which are possible. Mathematically formalisedstudies of learning define languages in two ways: extensionally, and through agenerative grammar.3 A language like English can be defined extensionally bysimply listing all of its sentences. We could model i-learning extensionally byhypothesising that learners hear and represent sentences one-by-one. We wouldtherefore define learning English as learning the set of all English sentences. Thisapproach is, however, psychologically implausible. Life is too short to learn one-by-one a set of infinite sentences. Moreover, learners don’t learn sets of strings,they learn form-function pairs. They also, so I have claimed, learn all sorts ofabstract types of knowledge associated with such form-meaning pairs. Thisabstract knowledge can be used to encode and understand sentences that one hasnever heard before. It also is deployed in recognising that languages are recur-sive, and that sentences could be infinitely long (Langendoen and Postal 1985).We must therefore assume that the empirical problem of language asks howlearners could induce the properties of a grammar capable of describing thesentences of a language.4 What the grammar looks like is, however, very mucha matter of debate, and the answers provided to the question: Are naturallanguages learnable in principle? will clearly depend on what assumptions onemakes about the grammars in question. Explaining the empirical problem oflanguage acquisition thus demands, as we have seen, a commitment to a theoryof grammar.

Learnability researchers are content to assume that the time allotted forlearning must be finite. In other words, learning algorithms must converge on agrammar in finite time. This is obviously a very generous definition. Languageacquisition in real learners takes place not merely in finite time, it occurs overrelatively short periods of time.5

The criterion used to define success could include a variety of things.Learnability studies often assume that learning is successful if the learningalgorithm decides-in-the-limit on a unique grammar generating all and only theset of acceptable strings of a language, leaving it up to grammarians or psycho-linguists to spell out what actually fits in the relevant set. This criterion has littlepsychological plausability since it will be both too strong and too weak. It isunlikely that my psychogrammar is actually capable of describing all of the


acceptable strings of English (there are lots of words and even constructions thatI don’t know or don’t use), and my speech also contains utterances which are notacceptable to others.

In the learnability literature, input to the learning mechanisms is defined aspotentially the set of acceptable sentences of the language-to-be-learned, if theinput is to exclude negative evidence, or as sets of acceptable and unacceptablesentences, if the input includes it. Obviously, this is also psycholinguisticallyimplausible since the stimuli learners hear are not sentences but utterances, amuch larger and less well-defined set. Real learners also have to make do withsubsets of sentences of the language, and these may turn out to be quite small.6

They may have other forms of input as well. The matter of the type of inputavailable for language learning turns out to be crucial. Gold (1967) demonstratedthat a general induction procedure could not induce the class of primitiverecursive languages (which is usually assumed to include the class of naturallanguages) on the basis of finite input which consisted only of sentences whichbelong to the language-to-be-learned.7 In the absence of negative evidence,therefore, the class of natural languages is not learnable-in-the-limit by inductivemechanisms of the sort Gold adopted.

The last factor, the computational nature of the learner, is obviously ofcritical importance. Within learnability studies, one adopts the weakest set ofassumptions about the learner’s computational capacity. A learning procedure isdefined simply as an effective function from the set of sentences serving asinput to the set of grammars in some class (Wexler and Culicover 1980: 48).Therefore, by saying that the class of primitive recursive languages could not beinduced on the basis of sentences of the language-to-be-learned in the previousparagraph, I mean that there is no effective function from the data set to therelevant class of languages.8

The learnability literature has thus already provided a kind of demonstrationthat there are three assumptions which cannot be simultaneously held, if bothlanguages and/or the representational systems which encode them are to beinduced:

(6.1) a. the assumption that the learner is linguistically uninformed;b. the assumption that the learner is cognitively uninformed;c. the assumption that learners successfully i-learn their language from

linguistic data which is impoverished in some sense.

Assumption (6.1c) has been discussed enough to merit its own name:ThePoverty of the Stimulus Hypothesis. Since it is my contention that the otherassumptions are equally important I shall give them names too. Let us refer to


(6.1a) asthe Hypothesis of Linguistic Innocence. Let us refer to (6.1b) astheHypothesis of Cognitive Innocence. These three assumptions together are the truebasis for the conclusion that UG is necessary to solve the logical problem oflanguage acquisition. Together they are also the basis for the conclusion that UGis necessary to solve the empirical problem of language acquisition.

This problem has been much discussed in the first and second languageacquisition literature (Bley-Vroman 1990; Hyams 1991; Pinker 1989: Ch. 1;Saleemi 1992; White 1989b: Ch. 2; inter alia). It may seem to many, therefore,that there is no pressing need to revisit it. It seems to me, however, that thepresentation of the logical problem of language acquisition in most of the workscited is misleading. In particular, several of these works suggest that it arisessolely because of the poverty of the stimulus.9 Because this suggestion ismisleading, the conclusions which are supposed to follow for SLA from thelogical problem — that any theory of adult second language acquisition must positUniversal Grammar as a mechanism of language acquisition — fail to convince.

2.2.2The linguistically innocent learnerAssumption (6.1a) corresponds to the hypothesis that learners bring no a prioriknowledge about the nature and structure of language to the i-learning task. Inother words, i-learning of a given language grammar, or of a grammaticalrepresentational system, must take place unaided by any prior information aboutwhat languages or language grammars or the set of relevant sentences of thetarget language might be like. Since we know that natural languages are notlearnable in principle assuming (6.1), we must ask: Which assumption can beabandoned? In moving from the logical to the empirical problem of languageacquisition, we might make some assumptions about whether the learner islinguistically innocent, or how innocent he is. In the case of primary languageacquisition, this means making a commitment as to whether the learner hasknowledge of the basic properties of the representational systems, by hypothesis,phonetic and/or phonological systems, a morphosyntax, and a semantics. Ofcourse, one must also decide if the learner also has knowledge of the specificproperties of the psychogrammar to be induced from the stimuli in the learner’senvironment. In the case of the psychogrammar, it is assumed that the learnercould have no prior linguistic experience since regardless of one’s position oninnateness, no one assumes that children are born knowing the idiosyncraticproperties of specific languages like English. So in the initial state of languageacquisition, neonates are linguistically innocent with respect to the psycho-grammar, and may, or may not, have prior knowledge of a universal grammar,a universal phonetic representational system or a universal conceptual system.


Adopting UG is, however, supposed to be the conclusion that one arrives atafter consideration of the logical problem of language acquisition. It is preciselythe correctness of the Hypothesis of Linguistic Innocence, as applied to thequestion of how children come to have a grammatical representational system,that generativists and non-nativists choose to fight about most, when they turntheir attention to matters of language acquisition. Generativists argue that oneadopts UG because the psychogrammar cannot be learned without it. Non-nativists have tended to argue that children are much more linguistically innocentthan generativists assert. The most extreme version of (6.1a), namely that thechild initially knows nothing about language or grammars, follows directly froman extreme theory of mind: the mind of the child as a tabula rasa with no or onlyrudimentary a priori knowledge about anything. According to the tabula rasaview, all adult knowledge is the result of induction. While this extreme versionof empiricism is a respectable philosophical stance (see Locke 1690/1964), andis essential to the learnability demonstrations, it is presupposed only in certainbehaviourist and folk theories of child cognitive development which are nolonger fashionable. It is no longer, in other words, an acceptablepsychologicalstance. Just about everyone in the business of describing and explaining whatchildren know and do, now takes the view that children bring to the task oflearning everything, including language, some sort of a priori knowledge whichmanifests itself through specific, largely invariant behavioural tendencies. Theyadopt some version of nativism, either UG, or general nativism, to use theterminology of O’Grady (1987), meaning innate systems which transcendlinguistic cognition. Nativists and non-nativists then agree when they assert thatthe fundamental question is: Just what does this innate knowledge look like?

If UG constrains i-learning then children do not have to learn to representstimuli in terms of morphosyntactic or phonological constructs because UGforces them to do this. UG forces particular types of analysis by makingavailable autonomous grammatical representational systems. Moreover, it is oftenargued that autonomous domains of cognition are modular — they operate inrelative isolation from the influence of stored information, and induction andinferencing mechanisms. Consequently, generativists arrive at the conclusion notmerely that the linguistic system happens to be innate,but that it must be innate.Similarly, they have tended to assert that the organisation of linguistic cognitionis such that it is not only modularbut that it must be modular.

Non-nativists, in contrast, tend to assert that the innate knowledge corre-sponds neither to a system of grammatical representations nor to principles andautonomous processes which would derive such representations. In other words,they have tended to reject both claims about the autonomy and modularity of


linguistic cognition. Instead, they have argued for domain-general principles ofinduction, part and parcel of a single, all-embracing general theory of learning.They thus make very different claims about the functional architecture oflinguistic cognition. With respect to specific claims about language, they assumeeither that one can acquire the psychogrammar without acquiring the abstractgrammatical properties attributed to UG (in other words they simply deny thatlinguistic theory is about anything of relevance to psychology), or, they assumethat one can induce the properties of both the psychogrammar and the grammati-cal encoding system. It is often assumed that the properties of the sound systemcan be induced from a general theory of perception, while the properties of themorphosyntax, to the extent they are independently motivated, are learnable fromproperties of the conceptual system.

To summarise: the real disputes about the development of cognition havetraditionally revolved not around the necessity of epistemological innateness, butaround the contents of that innate knowledge. In other words, proponants of UGare prepared to abandon (6.1a) while non-nativists and general nativists prefer toabandon (6.1b). At the same time, disputes have arisen (i) around the question ofwhether there is something we can call general learning processes which causethe final state of linguistic knowledge in the same way they are assumed to causethe acquisition of other cognitive sub-systems (the autonomy question); (ii) theextent to which grammatical development is dependent upon perceptual andconceptual development and how that dependence is to be characterised (thefunctional architecture question); and, (iii) whether cognitive domains which areautonomously represented must also be modular in their processing (the modular-ity question).

2.2.3The cognitively innocent learnerAssumption (6.1b) corresponds to the hypothesis that learners have un- orunderdeveloped cognitive systems, including perceptual, inferential or logical andconceptual systems. The most extreme version of (6.1b) also follows from thetabula rasa theory of mind. It can be contrasted with the position that learnersbring to the learning task mature and fully developed perceptual, conceptual andlogical systems which are appropriate and attuned to the properties of the non-linguistic environment. A third and intermediate position is that children bring tothe task of acquisition conceptual systems which are merely immature.

The extreme version of (6.1b), like the extreme version of (6.1a), is no longervery popular, for good empirical reasons. The developmental literature on categoryand concept-learning provides considerable evidence that the perceptual andcognitive systems of infants and small children are far from being tabula rasa.


Lasky and Gogol (1978), for example, have examined the child’s ability toperceive relations among stimuli, in particular, the relative motion of dotsmoving horizontally and vertically. The thinking behind this work is thatstimulation from the visual field is infinitely variable and must be grouped intofigures and objects to be experienced as THINGS. Perceptual grouping in turnrequires that we respond inrelativeways (rather than in absolute ways) to cuesfrom the environment, and to the interrelations among stimuli, since the bound-aries of figures and objects are not reflected in a straightforward way in thestructure of light to the eye. Lasky and Gogol found that by five months of ageinfants are sensitive to relative-motion cues and appear to be able to groupstimuli perceptually. Perception of motion appears to play a critical role in thedevelopment of object perception. Spelke (1982) discusses habituation studies inwhich infants are required to perceive objects in cluttered, changing arrays.These reveal that infants perceive objects by the spatial arrangement of surfacesin a scene and are not “distracted” by the colours or textures of the objects. Sheproposes moreover that objects are perceived on the basis of two a prioriprinciples: theConnectedSurfacePrincipleand theCommonMovementPrinciple.The former says that two surfaces pertain to the same object if they touch eachother directly (Spelke 1982: 426). The latter says that two surfaces pertain to thesame object if a movement carries both from one place to another withoutdisturbing the connection between them (Spelke 1982: 426). These are apparentlythe only principles that infants follow in perceiving objects visually. Thus, theircognitive systems are different from those of adults in that they do not follow aSimilarity Principle (grouping in a single object surfaces identical in colour,texture, or shape). They also do not group together surfaces so as to createobjects with simple shapes and smooth edges, which means they do not followany principles of form (Spelke 1982: 427). Rather, the static gestalt principles donot emerge until infants are about six months old.

Spelke (1985) reports on habituation experiments involving stationaryobjects adjacent or separated in depth. Infants were presented with displays ofone or two objects (solid, rectangular blocks of various sizes and shapes) andthen looked at displays of one block, of two blocks separated in the frontalplane, of two adjacent blocks, and of two blocks separated in depth. Spelkereports (1985: 95) that only a minority of infants habituated to a change in thenumber of objects. Those that did looked longer at displays of two objectsseparated in depth. Spelke argues that infants begin life able to perceive certainobjects as unitary and bounded, a capacity which enables them to see objects aspersisting even when the objects move in and out of the visual field.

Baillargéon (1986) has studied infants’ abilities to make inferences about


objects hidden from view. Five-month old infants saw displays involving a brightyellow block sitting on a table. In front of the block, lying flat on the table, wasa screen. The screen was able to rotate on its (from the spectator’s perspective)far edge so that it could move up and towards the block. At a 70° rotation, theblock was fully occluded for the spectator. If the screen continued movingtowards the block, it would make contact at 120° rotation. On half of the trialsviewed by the infants, the screen did make contact with the block. On the otherhalf, however, it continued its rotation into the space which should have beenoccupied by the block. Infants were habituated to displays in which the screenrotated in the absence of the block. They also saw displays in which the blocksat next to the screen, out of the way of its rotation path. Infants who saw theblock looked longer at displays in which the screen rotated to a full 180°. Thissuggests that they were surprised by this display, and that in turn licenses theinference that this movement was inconsistent with their mental model of objectmotion and the persistence of objects. The conclusion to be drawn is that theyperceive an object to persist even when it moves behind another object. Spelke(1985: 103–4), in discussing this conclusion, points out, however, that there is noreason to assume that objects always persist when they come to be occluded byother objects. She notes that objects which enter mouths and incinerators do notnormally emerge from these places preserved intact. Our ability to makedecisions about the persistence of objects in various situations therefore dependson our mental models about those objects inparticular kinds of relations. Seealso Spelke (1990). Spelke (1988: 198) states:

In our studies of human infants, the organisation of the perceptual world doesnot appear to mirror the sensory properties of objects, it does not appear tofollow from gestalt principles of organisation, and it does not appear to dependeither on invariant-detectors or modality-specific modules. Our researchsuggests that these views are wrong for a common reason. All assume thatobjects areperceived; that humans come to know about an object’s unity,boundaries, and persistence in ways like those by which we come to knowabout its brightness, colour, or distance. I suggest, in contrast, that objects areconceived: Humans come to know about an object’s unity, boundaries, andpersistence in ways like those by which we come to know about its materialcomposition or its market value. That is, the ability to apprehend physicalobjects appears to be inextricably tied to the ability to reason about the world.[Emphasis in the original, SEC]

As noted, Baillargéon (1986) has shown that infants as young as 6-monthsexhibit object permanence. Babies can recognise objects as specific individuals.They can recognise the basic object level of categorisation. They can identify


certain thematic relations among objects in events — causality, space, and time.Massey and Gelman (1988) show that three and four-year-old children havelearned to use the complex surface properties of objects in order to distinguishthose that do and those that do not have a capacity for self-generated motion.They know, for example, that animals can move even if they cannot see theanimal’s feet or wings. They know that statues do not move, even if the statueslook like animals. Premack (1990) has argued that children have an a priorinotion of self-propulsion which is the basis for their developing theories ofanimacy. Golinkoff, Harding, Carlson, and Sexton (1984) have shown thatinfants sometime around year two exhibit behaviour suggesting that they expectanimate and inanimate objects to behave differently in causal events, the latterrequiring physical contact and possibly force to make an object move, the formernot. Golinkoff (1975), however, has results which are inconsistent with the claimthat toddlers represent the same animacy concepts as adults. She had two groupsof male infants (14–18 months, and 20–24 months) watch films involving a tableand a man or a man and a woman. The children were habituated to events inwhich the man pushed the table from left to right and to a second film in whichthe man pushed the woman from left to right. The experimental films involvedevents where the action roles were preserved but the direction of action was not(position-direction reversals). In this case, the man pushed the table or thewoman from right to left. In the third event type, the direction of action waspreserved but the action role was not, in which case the table was seen aspushing the man, or the woman was seen as pushing the man (action rolereversals by position). In the fourth event type, both action and direction changed(action role reversals by direction). Changes in action role reversals by eitherposition or direction in the film involving the man and the table created anomal-ous events. The children watched the events involving the table and the manlonger than those involving the man and the woman. However, action rolereversals by direction were watched significantly longer than position-directionreversals, suggesting that the children were not simply mapping notions of self-propulsion onto notions of agency. Rather, shifts in the direction were cueingthem to shifts in action.

I have stressed the fact that humans encode contingencies as part ofi-learning. Gelman (1990a: 90) also argues that learning the predictive validity ofcues in a domain is a general process exhibited by humans and other animals.Watson (1984), however, shows that simple contingency of events cannot be thebasis for inferring causality, rather, infants appear to enter the world “preparedto analyse its dynamic causal fabric” (Golinkoff et al 1984: 151). This in turn isdetermined by concepts of what can act on what. Moreover, the fact that a cue


is valid does not entail that it is a defining property of an object. Golinkoff askswhat determines category membership and replies:

I propose that implicit domain-defining principles specify the core of many ofthe concepts and categories with which young children learn to sort the world.Domain-specific principles function to direct attention to the objects, events, orattributes that are relevant exemplars. The examplars in turn feed generalprocessing abilities, including the ability to extract from stored information thepredictive validity of the characteristics of the items assimilated to a domain.(Gelman 1990a: 90)

Keil (1979, 1989) has developed a theory of natural kind and artefactual conceptsas relational entities which are structured, and which instantiate systematic setsof beliefs.10 These sets of beliefs are like “theories” and mental models in thatthey are causal in nature. He too specifically argues that even young children donot rely solely on counting attributes and correlations in constructing classes ofthings. For example, children of kindergarten age do not judge that temporaryalterations in the appearance of an animal, nor its wearing a costume change thecategory of the object. In other words, a cat that temporarily looks like a skunkis still a cat.11 Carey (1985) has produced similar results showing the complexityof children’s “theories” about biological kinds.

Markman (1989) has examined the nature of basic classificatory abilities ina large number of studies and has shown that children are biased right from thestart to assume that nouns refer to whole objects rather than to object parts (theWhole Object Constraint). They also assume that nouns refer to objects of thesame type, namely objects at the basic level of categorisation (theBasic Level ofCategorisation Constraint). In other words, they cognise, by about 18 months,that objects are members of a class, and they also cognise that names refer to theclass rather than to the individual members or to supersets (see also Katz, Baker,and Macnamara 1974; Macnamara 1982). They thus cognise that references toacat are different in kind from references toFluffy, although they are clearlyhearing both kinds of nouns. Young children notice and represent both thematicrelations and taxonomic relations but over time develop a preference for thelatter (theTaxonomic Constraint). They do not assume that thematic relations aregood candidates for noun meanings. In particular, they assume that term labelsrefer to taxonomic categories and they are biased to assume that novel namesrefer to whole objects (Markman 1989: 27). They are biased to assume thatobjects with different names belong to mutually exclusive categories. By the ageof 4, they know that membership in natural kind categories will support richinductive inferences about novel objects. If some thing is identified as a cat, the


child (and the rest of us too!) can infer that it will be active at night, hunt mice,like catnip, have fur, meow, and so on, once these properties of cats are mentallyrepresented. Markman argues moreover that children manifest several types ofclassification strategies from a very early age — not only exemplar-based, butalso feature-based (Markman 1989: Ch. 1). See Gelman (1990a) as well.

Gelman and Gallistel (1979), Starkey and Cooper (1980), Starkey, Gelman,and Spelke (1983), Starkey, Spelke and Gelman (1990), and Gelman (1990a, b)have examined the origins of numerical cognition. They show that infants asyoung as 22 weeks old can discriminate the exact number of items in stimulusarrays consisting of not more than four items, a property we apparently sharewith certain primates. This ability relies on, but is distinct from, a rapid perceptu-al enumeration process called “subitizing”. Gelman (1990a, b) has argued forstructural constraints on cognitive development which direct the child’s attentionto relevant stimuli and direct learning of number concepts.

Johnson and Morton (1991) looked at the development of face recognitionand showed that neonates preferentially attend to static stimuli that have face-likearrangements of features. Johnson (1990a) has hypothesised that there arespecific subcortical mechanisms (an orienting mechanism, and a behaviouralmechanism, mediated by the subcortical visual pathway) which guarantee thatfaces and face-like objects are attended to at birth. Johnson (1990b) observes thatpreferential tracking for static face-like patterns, however, disappears between 4to 6 weeks as developing cortical circuits inhibit the activity of the subcorticalsystem. At this stage, a second system, which depends on the cortical system,and requiring exposure to faces, takes over. This second system interacts withi-learning since increased exposure to face stimuli increases the specificity of theinput needed to activate it (Johnson 1990b: 152). Johnson (1990b) argues for fourdifferent visual pathways, each one operating according to maturational develop-ment. The relevant neurological structures quickly become specialised for faces.12

The face-recognition mechanisms become modularised as well. Schematic facesare not preferentially attended to by 5-month olds. However, if internal move-ment is given to face-like configurations, in other words, if the stimuli becomemore specific, the effect is restored. Johnson (1990b: 159) remarks:

in the first few weeks of life developing cortical circuits in the infants [sic]brain are preferential [sic] exposed to classes of stimuli for which they willsubsequently become specialised. This preferential input is ensured by primi-tive sensory motor systems such as the tracking of face-like patterns.13

See Karmiloff-Smith (1992: Ch. 5), and the papers in Mehler and Fox (1985) formore discussion of the development of face recognition.


To sum up, what this rich and varied literature shows is that in non-linguistic domains of cognition, children reveal invariant tendencies to attend tospecific sorts of stimuli in the environment, which means specifically that theyare not processing stimuli in a random fashion. They organise perceptualinformation in complex ways, and quickly develop highly specialised knowledge.This ability relies on both a priori perceptual processes which are domain-independent and a priori representational primitives which are domain-specific.These directed searches may be guided by the maturational patterns of the visualpathways. Young children also have tendencies to relate language (nouns) toobjects in quite specific ways (the Taxonomic Constraint, the Whole ObjectConstraint, and the Basic Level of Categorisation Constraint) which determinehow individual and class names are mapped to concepts. Infants therefore havecertain types of basic knowledge about the nature of objects, knowledge whichdevelops over time into richly structured beliefs about categories, the relationsamong the members of categories, and how we typically talk about individuals,classes and the properties they exhibit. These structured belief sets allow theyoung child to make inferences about the nature of categories and their membersin a given cognitive domain. These structured beliefs in turn can direct attentionto stimuli in the environment. This research thus shows a complex interactionbetween a priori representational systems which are far richer than has beentraditionally believed, and perception. Certainly they demonstrate that hypothesis(6.1b) is not tenable and must be abandoned. However, as noted above, the sameliterature also reveals that small children do not carry out perceptual, categorisa-tion and inferencing tasks in the same way as older adolescents and adults. Thisis because categorisation and inferencing depends on mental models, and themental models of infants and very young children are impoverished in compari-son to those of adults, and, in some respects, just plain different. Infants arethereforecomparativelyunderdeveloped or cognitively immature. Let us refer tothis modified version of (6.1b) as theHypothesis of Cognitive Immaturity.

(6.2) The Hypothesis of Cognitive ImmaturityChildren’s non-linguistic cognitive systems are immature in comparison toadult systems, meaning that they are not as rich in content and structure,and are deployed differently from the mature systems.

As a weakened version of the Hypothesis of Cognitive Innocence, it mightappear as if (6.2) can be adopted both by those who believe in UniversalGrammar in the domain of language acquisition, and those who do not. Oneeither assumes that linguistic cognition and non-linguistic cognition exhibitparallels, both deriving from skeletal domain-specific primitives, or, one argues


that language is still “different” and requires a much richer set of a prioriorganisational primitives. But observe that (6.2) plays an essential role in theargumentationfor UG in linguistic cognition. The argument goes this way. If, byhypothesis, children have no prior knowledge of what grammars ought to be like,then they will need comparatively well-developed and powerful cognitivesystems to compensate them for any deficiencies in the stimuli. But if they havecomparatively immature perceptual and representational systems, this increasesthe likelihood that they will not attend to, encode, or store in memory relevantstimuli. Moreover, if they have limited knowledge of what sentences and wordsmight mean because they have limited theories about the organisation of theworld, this decreases the likelihood that they can make correct inferences aboutsentence structure and grammatical form on the basis of an understanding ofsentence and word meaning. If infants and young children have limited inferen-cing capacities, they are less likely to induce the correct conclusions fromappropriate input even when it is correctly encoded. Finally, if they have limitedmetalinguistic capacities, then they will not understand and will not be able touse explicit instruction about language or metalinguistic feedback and correction.In summary, even if one adopts the Hypothesis of Cognitive Immaturity, whichattributes much greater a priori knowledge to the child in non-linguistic domainsof cognition, then one still cannot, in principle, explain how children could everinduce the linguistic representational systems (the phonology and the morpho-syntax) given impoverished stimuli.

2.2.4The Poverty of the Stimulus HypothesisHypothesis (6.1c) is the final piece in this puzzle. In its present form, it express-es two separate claims. The first is that the information relevant for inducing agrammar comes from the environment, in the form of utterances produced inmeaningful interactions with other speakers. This formulation is innocent anduncontroversial and does nothing more than reflect the fact that languageacquisition is based on exposure to stimuli. Hypothesis (6.1c), can be, and oftenis, however, construed as a claim about the functional architecture of the mind.Thus, from the separate claims that learners acquire a psychogrammar from input,and input equals stimuli, one can be led, not quite so innocently and uncontrover-sially, to the claim that acquiring a grammar necessitates a version of modularity.If grammatical acquisition is dependent on sentence processing in a bottom-upfashion, then one would conclude that grammatical acquisition cannot be influ-enced by conceptual information. This follows if one understands (6.1c) to meanthat the learner acquires her language only on the basis of input in this restrictedsense. Modularity then would lead to the conclusion that psychogrammars cannot


be induced. I shall set the Modularity Hypothesis aside until Chapter 7. Forpresent purposes, (6.1c) does not entail modularity. It says, merely, that stimuliare impoverished with respect to the grammatical knowledge that speaker/hearersmanifest.

There are three significant ways in which linguistic stimuli are impover-ished: They are uninformative about critical properties of grammatical representa-tions; they are incomplete; they are deviant but their deviancy is not signalled.Let us take these claims in order. We can understand (6.1c) to say that thespeech stream, is uninformative about the grammatical categories, relations andconstraints that speaker/hearers ultimately cognise. Therefore, the linguisticstimuli are uninformative about the nature of the morphosyntactic and phonologi-cal representational systems which are assumed to characterise the adult gram-matical knowledge systems. They are therefore also uninformative about thegrammar needed to generate the strings of a particular language. A considerationof even some simple properties of grammars will show the logic of the argu-ment. There is no information in the speech stream about the categories of wordscomprising a sentence. Assume that it is correct to characterise the grammaticalknowledge of English speakers in these terms: They cognise that the sentenceThe birdfeeder is emptyconsists of a set of four words corresponding to theabstract syntactic categories det(erminer), noun, verb and adj(ective). Nowobserve that there is nothing in the acoustic-phonetic properties of the sentencewhich indicates that the first word is a det, the second a noun, or the third averb. Indeed, the problem is more serious because there need not be, undernormal pronunciation of the same sentence, any indication that it consists ofwords nor even about where the word boundaries occur. This problem has beenextensively studied by structuralists under the name of juncture (see Goldsmith1990, for discussion). The larger morphosyntactic units of a sentence are notisomorphic to the acoustic-phonetic ones either (Selkirk 1984; Nespor and Vogel1986). Indeed, explaining how hearers extract phonological units from the speechcontinuum remains one of the great puzzles of linguistic cognition (Pisoni andLuce 1987; Cutler, Dahan, and van Donselaar 1997).14 Exactly how suchphonological units map onto morphosyntactic ones or conceptual ones has yet tobe determined, although the problem is currently getting a certain amount ofattention in FLA research (Morgan, and Demuth 1996).

Comparable arguments can be constructed looking at the correspondenceissue from the conceptual-syntactic side too. It is well-known that the correspon-dence between the meaning of a sentence and its morphosyntactic structure isalso not one-to-one but rather many-to-many.15 Therefore, a learner inferring aninterpretation of some string from the context would not be able to map the


meaning of the sentence onto a unique structural analysis of the stimulus simplyon the basis of his conceptual representation of it. Strings are, moreover, oftenmultiply ambiguous. This can be illustrated using Chomsky’s famous exampleFlying planes can be dangerous. It can attribute the property of dangerousness toobjects or to an event. It is easy to imagine many contexts (standing on anairfield looking at planes overhead, for example) where the context simply wouldnot permit us to choose one interpretation over the other and therefore to chooseone syntactic analysis over the other. Theambiguity problemof the input is notinsignificant. We cannot allow language acquisition to be sensitive to, or derailedby, such instances.

Attempts to counter the claim that the linguistic stimuli are uninformativeabout the abstract properties of syntactic knowledge often start from an unde-clared and undefended presupposition that the input to language acquisitioninvolves some already analysed representation. In other words, the presuppositionis that when learners learn language, they already know what counts as asentence, or a word of their grammar. Slobin’s operating principles, for example,appear to be based on this assumption. Of course, if it were true that learners hadsome pre-analysed representations incorporating words and sentences, this wouldamount to the rejection of the claim that they are linguistically innocent. In thepast, the presupposition has usually been born out of sheer ignorance about thetrue nature of linguistic stimuli. What learners initially confront is a wall ofsound. Getting over that wall to some minimal morphosyntactic and semanticrepresentations of the speech signal amounts to a significant feat of acquisition.

Notice, however, that even if we assume that the learner can somehowrepresent sentences as strings of words, it still turns out to be true that intake orminimally analysed types of input are unrevealing about many properties ofgrammars. Strings of words say nothing, for example, about the structuredependency of grammatical processes. It is this property of grammars whichexplains why (6.3b) is a well-formed global oryes/noquestion version of (6.3a)but (6.3c) is not.

(6.3) a. The rose which is blooming in the garden is an Austin rose.b. Is the rose which is blooming in the garden an Austin rose?c. *Is the rose which blooming in the garden is an Austin rose?

This often-used illustration of structure dependency hinges on the fact thatyes/noquestion formation in English requires the main copula verbis in (6.3a) to appearto the left of the complex noun phrase (NP) subjectthe rose which is blooming inthe garden. In particular, it is not possible for just any verb to appear at the frontof the question. More generally, it is the case that syntactic operations respect the


constituent structure of the sentence. It is this constraint which goes under thename ofstructure dependency, discussed in previous chapters. However, knowl-edge of the well-formedness of (6.3a) does not entail that the correspondingquestion must conform to (6.3b), or more generally that question formation as agrammatical process conforms to structure dependency. Since all naturallanguages appear to manifest structure dependency, the question then naturallyarises: How does the acquirer come to know this? How could an acquirer inducethis property of grammars? There are no obvious answers based solely on theproperties of the stimuli. Even if one just waves one’s hand at the problem andresponds that learnersjust doinfer the property, the next question becomes: Whatrequires the inference? Again, there are no obvious answers based solely ongeneral properties of induction, and the nature of the stimuli. The only plausibleanswer, one made explicitly by Slobin (1991), is that structure dependency is ageneral property of all cognition. That language manifests it is therefore notsurprising, or so Slobin surmises. This response, however, overlooks onesignificant fact:Different domains exhibit sensitivity to different units of structure.The examples in (6.3) illustrate more than just the fact that language manifestsstructure dependency, they illustrate the nature of that structure-dependency. Thepoint about (6.3) is that movement operations are sensitive to structures uniqueto language: phrasal categories, and tense. This is surely a surprising result ifgrammars are induced from properties of conceptual representations or fromacoustic-phonetic stimuli.

There are other problems with the traditional idea that people induce basicgrammatical categories or primitives and grammatical constraints from linguisticstimuli. One problem raises difficulties both for the claim that learners couldinduce a morphosyntactic representational system, and for the claim that theycould induce the psychogrammar of the L1 without an a priori morphosyntacticrepresentational system to guide them. Input isincomplete. One of the assump-tions we must make in moving from the logical problem of language acquisitionto the empirical one, is that real learners get exposure to only finite amounts ofthe language. No learner of English hears all possible sentences of English. Aswe noted above, no learner could therefore learn English through simple enume-ration of the strings of the language. At best exposure, the learner’s input ismerely representative. A related problem is what I call thesampling problem; thelearner at any one time has been exposed to only a finite subset of the sentencesof the language but has linguistic knowledge which goes far beyond the proper-ties of the sample. This fact leads to a related problem: theuniformity problem.We must assume that learners hear linguistic stimuli which are variable in anynumber of ways. Learners might attend closely to different details of the stimuli


and end up extrapolating quite different sorts of generalisations about thelanguage they are learning. If the progress that learners manifested was alsohighly variable, that might suggest the influence of the stimuli and environmentalvariability. However, L1 learners show remarkable uniformity in their develop-ment in this respect: for certain grammatical phenomena (see Brown 1973;Ingram 1989; Meisel 1986, 1990a, b, 1992, 1994a, 1994c, for numerous exam-ples), children go through the same stages in the same order, although notnecessarily at the same age or speed. Since i-learning is experience-dependentand children’s experiences can vary in infinite ways, how can this be explainedwithin a general theory of induction? This question becomes particularly pressingwhen one observes that children’s linguistic development manifests variabilitywith respect to the acquisition of other phenomena (Vihman, Ferguson, andElbert 1986; Bates, Bretherton and Snyder 1988; Dinnsen 1992). What theory ofinduction could explain both of these patterns of development without recourseto cognitive or linguistic universals?

Yet another problem is therobustness problem. Learners must not be ledastray by properties of odd, unique, infrequent or even ill-formed stimuli. Wesaw in Chapter 4 (the Unusualness Constraint of (4.12)) that humans are some-times prepared to pay close attention to unusual events and to alter their mentalrepresentations on the basis of the properties of those events. Selective attentionis also clearly a factor in first language acquisition (de Boysson-Bardies, Vihman,Roug-Hellichius, Durand, Landberg, and Arao 1992). This, however, creates adilemma for general learning theories. Even small amounts of odd or ill-formedstimuli could lead to serious misanalyses if learners were inducing their L1grammars by attending closely to all aspects of the stimuli and encoding unusualfeatures. Learners are apparently impervious to certain kinds of “noise” in thestimuli. What explains that? Every learning theory must explain precisely whichunusual properties of language are ignored and which get encoded. It isn’t clearhow induction alone can do this. This factor interacts with the issue of the timeallotted to learning. We observed in Chapter 4 that construing language acquisi-tion as an unstructured search among possible hypotheses leads to intolerablecomputational results.16 The ability to disregard misleading or highly variableaspects of the input would appear to be part and parcel of a “structured search.”The vital question is: What is directing the search?

2.2.5SummaryThe truth of the claim that hypotheses (6.1a–c) (or (6.1) and (6.2)) cannot besimultaneously held should now be obvious if we grant that knowledge of apsychogrammar consists of knowledge of abstract grammatical categories and


constraints like structure dependency. The internalised information that consti-tutes knowledge of the properties of the grammatical representational systemsmust come from somewhere. If the information comes from the acquirer’sexperience, it must be directly represented in the linguistic stimuli. Or, if it is notdirectly represented in the linguistic stimuli, the acquirer must induce its presenceon the basis of some other information, or else she must transfer it from someother known cognitive domain. Both the induction solution and the transfersolution entail that the acquirer possess this other sort of information and therequisite inferential capacities, including an appropriate representational systemcapable of encoding inferences. If the information cannot come from theenvironment, or if the learner does not possess the necessary cognitive mechan-isms to infer it, or if it is assumed that the learner’s conceptual/inferential systemcannot represent the right inferences because it is too immature, then theinformation must be “innate”. There are no other logical possibilities.

The solution to the logical problem involves abandoning at least one of theassumptions (6.1a, b, or c), or (6.2). Any one can go. In addition, we couldabandon the claim that knowledge of a language involves knowledge of abstractproperties of grammars, which is the route connectionists like Bates andMacWhinney would like to take. I am, however, not really interested in the logicof the matter so much as how to interpret grammatical acquisition when definedin terms of real people. We must make rather different assumptions in the caseof primary and second language acquisition.

3. The empirical facts from first language acquisition

3.1 From FLA to SLA?

It is commonplace for researchers to approach the problem of SLA by discussingthe nature of first language acquisition. One can find this approach exemplifiednot only in discussions of the logical problem of (second) language acquisition,but also in characterisations of the developmental stages that learners actuallypass through. I have followed this tradition. I want to make the case now, on thebasis of a consideration of the logical problem of language acquisition, and thefacts of first language acquisition, that both the logic and the empirical factsconcerning it are different from those relevant for SLA. What then are theconsiderations from the L1 developmental literature which inform the logicalproblem and help us to decide which of the assumptions (6.1a–c) or (6.2) mustin fact be abandoned?


3.2 Input consists of more than strings of forms

3.2.1Meaning as inputGeneral nativists have argued that children induce grammars on the basis ofmeaning, via thegrammaticalisationof meanings. The basic idea is that ifstructural information may not be derivable from properties of the speech stream,as we saw above, it may nevertheless be derivable from properties of conceptualrepresentations. The claim is that grammatical constructs are encoded in theearliest stages of L1 acquisition as concepts in conceptual representations. Thereare two possible interpretations of this claim. One is that children use meaningto discover the properties of the syntax. This claim does not necessarily deny theprior existence of UG. Indeed, it is commonly asserted to be true, as the discussionof the Semantic Bootstrapping Hypothesis made clear. The second claim is thatthe syntactic representational system itself is derived from meanings. This versiondoes deny UG.17 Only concepts and conceptual representations are said to exista priori and they are said to “evolve” into grammatical notions and categories.

Despite vagueness in the literature about how this evolution occurs, this ideais not without interest for us. On the one hand, virtually every major contempor-ary theory of psychology has adopted a position much like this. Functionalistlinguistic theories can, under one interpretation, be construed as making the sameclaim. On the other hand, Gold’s (1967) learnability research demonstrates thatthe class of natural language grammars is induceable, in principle, if the inputincludes a correspondence between each sentence and a representation of itsmeaning. Thus, if the conceptual code is innate (or given in advance), and if theproperties of this code are kept constant, then a grammar could eventually belearned-in-the-limit.

There is an obvious problem with this solution when transferred to therealm of primary language acquisition and when one moves beyond the simplestproblems like correspondences such as INDIVIDUAL-noun or ACTION-verb. Itforces one to abandon the Assumption of Cognitive Immaturity (6.2). This is oneassumption, as we have seen above, for which there is considerable empiricalmotivation. It is implausible to think that children have complete and well-developed representations of sentence meanings which they can put in correspon-dence with linguistic forms in order to learn the grammar of their language.Thus, for example, we have no reason to believe that children have a completeset of quantifiers available at birth and can map these onto words likeevery, all,someor many. Studies by Drozd, Philip and Musolino and Crain into children’sinterpretations of negation and quantification show that they manifest distinctlynon-adult properties, but properties which are nonetheless fully compatible with


the nature of the stimuli they get (Philip 1991; Drozd 1996; Musolino and Crain1999). We reviewed literature above showing that the conceptual system ofchildren is clearly distinct from that of adults, e.g. that their object concepts aredifferent. At best, then, the grammaticalisation claim is that some sorts ofprimitive conceptual notions can be equated with some sorts of primitivegrammatical categories. How the adult system of grammatical categories andconstraints (structure-dependency, subjacency, etc.) emerges or even how thechild develops an adult-like conceptual system is left unexplained.

Even if we assume that infants begin with a fairly rich repertoire of innateconceptual categories, something I have tried to motivate, this assumption doesnot explain how they make the correspondence between events in the world,meanings and linguistic strings. Conceptual innateness does not resolve, in otherwords, how a child comes to believe that sentences mean what they do, i.e. thatthe stringsDon’t eat those flowers(pointing at some hellebores)They’re poison-ouscould be true of particular objects in the garden, and lead him to act appro-priately (i.e. to refrain from eating those particular pink-flowers-over-there, notgiving them to his little brother to play with, etc.). So there must be innateprinciples regulating the correspondences between language and the conceptualsystem of precisely the sort that Markman (1989) has proposed. And even if weassumed that children have far richer conceptual systems, and we build inuniversal mapping principles between the conceptual categories and the morpho-syntactic ones, it remains true that the two representational systems are far fromisomorphic. Therefore we must assume that moving from conceptual representa-tions to grammatical representations involves more than establishing a one-to-onecorrespondence. Children must be doing some complex inferencing. For example,in the adult language, noun phrases do not refer merely to INDIVIDUALS. Theycan refer to ACTIONS (The leaf rakingtook hours), EVENTS (The leaf rakinghas been completed), STATES (Sleepingis necessary for good health), or nothingat all (It seems unlikely that itwill snow in July). Similarly, verb phrases can referto more than just ACTIONS. Without UG, we would have to assume thatchildren can use categories only to express initially a single conceptual type(INDIVIDUALS and ACTIONS), and that they must be doing some seriousgrammatical restructuring as their conceptual system or the correspondencepatterns between, e.g. individuals and nouns changes. I know no evidencedemonstrating such serious grammatical reorganisation. Grammatical organisationon the basis ofsyntacticcategories is apparent early on. More importantly, theessential properties of the morphosyntactic categories (major referential cat-egories and functional categories) are acquired long before the child’s semanticsystem is fully worked out.


Finally, consider that functionalist approaches have no answer to the basicquestion of why syntax should exist. How could, and why should, a representa-tional system of one sort (a system in which categories likes EVENT, STATE,INDIVIDUAL, PROCESS are encoded) turn into a separate system in whichcategories like sentence, verb, noun and adjective are encoded? We will find noaccount in the first language acquisition literature of the mechanism whichcauses the evolution of conceptual representations of utterances into separateconceptual and morphosyntactic representations.18 In other words, we will findno description of the cognitive mechanism whose function is to convert semanticrepresentations into an autonomous format. Asserting that grammar develops outof “meaning”, therefore, is itself meaningless when it is taken to be a responseto the question: How do children come to have a syntactic representationalsystem? A corresponding criticism can be constructed regarding claims thatknowledge of the phonological representational system is induced on the basis ofan a priori perceptual representational system. There is no evidence that thestructural primitives of the phonological code are induced or are inducible fromthe features of the speech stream.

3.2.2Feedback as inputIn much of modern psychology, the nature of the input to language learning hasnot been debated, it is merely presupposed that learners get enriched informationin the form of feedback and correction. Feedback is the answer given to thecharge that linguistic stimuli are deviant, incomplete and unrevealing about thestructural properties of grammars. It is also the answer given to the problem ofconstraining induction. Developmental psycholinguists, in contrast, charged withthe task of explaining what small children actually say and understand, have hadto critically examine the nature of the stimuli children are exposed to. What dothey look like?

As with much else in the domain, there is controversy about what the factsactually are. A small but important body of research has claimed that children donot get explicit correction about abstract structural properties of grammar, inparticular about syntactic mistakes (Brown and Hanlon 1970; Hirsh-Pasek,Treiman, and Schneiderman 1984). Snow and Goldfield (1983), nonetheless,report that erroneous choice of vocabulary is systematically corrected. Thus,caretakers enrich the input serving to establish lexical sound-meaning correspon-dences. Moerk (1991) also shows this to be the case. See also Moerk (1983a, b)and the references therein to further studies by Moerk. These latter studies showthat it cannot be claimed that correction does not exist. The only bone ofcontention can be whether there isexplicit grammatical correction, that is to say,


correction related to structural properties of words or sentences. Unfortunately,the empirical studies focusing on this question are not all that revealing for threereasons. The first is that the characterisation of a correction as structural dependsupon a theory of structure. The literature asserting or denying structural correc-tion in FLA almost never makes explicit its structural assumptions. It is simplyassumed that if a correction could in principle be analysed in a given way, itmust in fact be so analysed by the child. Nothing could be further from the truth.Secondly, there has been no attempt in the corpus studies to show that thecaretaker had, what I shall call, a structuralcorrective intention. It is naive toassume that a parent who repeats or re-words a child’s two word utterancenecessarily has a corrective intention, that is to say, that the point of the repeti-tion is to teach the child something specific, and specifically grammatical, aboutthe L1. The fact that parents repeat both correct and incorrect child utterances(Gropen, Pinker, Hollander, Goldberg, and Wilson 1989; Pinker 1989) suggests,on the contrary, that this particular parental behaviour might have a variety ofcauses. It would also be naive to assume that parents who do not repeat orcorrect haven’t noticed the child’s error. We are not driven to comment on errorswe perceive. I will come back to this point later in the book. Thirdly, no one haspresented any evidence that children construe corrections, repetitions, and recastsas corrections. In Chapter 10 I will demonstrate that correction is not an intrinsicproperty of an utterance, but rather a construal of the interlocutor’s behaviour. Tocount as explicit structural correction an utterance must be so construed by thechild — the psycholinguist’s interpretation of the same utterance is irrelevant.

A second important claim is that infants and young children do not under-stand explicit feedback or correction, and do not use it, when they do get it(McNeill 1966; Braine 1971; Platt and MacWhinney 1983). This failure can bedirectly explained by the fact that interpreting linguistic feedback requiresconstructing conceptual representations which encode linguistic constructs(sentences, noun phrases, syllables, etc.) as objects of thought. In other words,the child has to possess a metalinguistic capacity which will permit her to thinkabout language in much the same way that she might think about her dog or afavourite toy — as entities in the world, as possessing properties that can bepredicated of particular individuals, and so on. Inductive extrapolation involvingunits of language requires at least this much. But metalinguistic capacity of thissort is not manifested in the earliest stages of language acquisition and appearsto follow a maturational path (Gombert 1992). At 2 or 3 years of age, childrendo not appear to be able to make sense of questions like “How many words arein the sentenceJohnny likes to watch television?” which suggests that they cannotconceptually encode the notions WORD or SENTENCE. See Bialystok (1979,


1982, 1986a, b) for further discussion of the emergence of these abilities. Ifchildren do not possess at a given stage the requisite metalinguistic capacities,they clearly cannot construct the appropriate conceptual representations of thecontents of the intended feedback.

Another tack has been to argue that input really is enriched, but enriched bythe caretaker in an indirect way. Indirect feedback is said to consist of differenti-ated responses by caretakers to well- and ill-formed utterances produced by thelearner (Hirsh-Pasek et al. 1984; Demetras, Post, and Snow 1986; Penner 1987;Bohannon and Stanowicz 1988, among others). These studies show that care-takers have tendencies to repeat children’s ill-formed utterances. The idea behindthe claim that this is useful to the child is that he can notice the differentialresponses to his own utterances, infer that there is some meaning to this behav-iour, infer that the meaning is that his own output is deviant, and then attend tothe problematic output. Moerk (1983a, 1991), for example, has claimed thatexpansions of children’s utterances are “necessarily” corrections. This argumentis fallacious. It has been noted before (Gleitman, Newport, and Gleitman 1984;Pinker 1989) that these studies are correlational and therefore cannot in principleestablish a causal relation between what caretakers say and children do. But thesituation is much worse; the very logic behind this research is faulty. As notedabove, very young children do not have the requisite metalinguistic capacitiesduring early stages of acquisition (up to approximately age 5) for drawing theinferences that indirect forms of feedback are supposed to lead to. In Chapter 10I will demonstrate that interpreting metalinguistic feedback requires some verysophisticated inferencing based on violations of Grice’s Relevance Principle. Themore explicit the feedback, the easier it is to draw appropriate conclusions fromit. Implicit feedback does not state the relevant information, and frequentlyobscures the corrector’s corrective intention. This makes the learner’s taskharder, not easier.

Even if we set aside this critical problem, the arguments still do not hold.If indirect feedback is to be useful and not misleading, children would need toget it systematically, but they do not (Gropen et al. 1989). Moreover, the olderthe child is (and therefore the more likely to be able to interpret indirect feed-back), the less likely caretakers are to provide it (Pinker 1989: 10–15). Pinker hasalso argued that feedback from parents is informationally limited in the sensethat it does not distinguish types or the sources of error. So the child has tofigure out on his own what his mistake has been. As noted above, responding toindirect forms of feedback therefore increases the amount and complexity of theinferencing required; it does not reduce it. Pinker also points out that theprovision of feedback may be culturally or even class-restricted (the sampling


problem again); there is no evidence that children use it, nor that it is necessaryto recover from an erroneous analysis. It is therefore impossible to see how theprovision of indirect sorts of feedback solves the problem of how children cometo have grammatical representations.

3.2.3The Simplified Input HypothesisSome input research has focused on other properties of the stimuli. One body ofresearch has attempted to prove that Chomsky’s (1965: 200–1, ft. 14) remarksabout linguistic stimuli relevant for language acquisition containing slips of thetongue, false starts and other performance errors cannot be substantiated. Thefirst result was to show that properties of adult speech are differentiatedaccording to the addressee, in particular, that while it may be true that adultspeech to other adults includes ill-formed utterances, the speech of adults toyoung children is largely well-formed (Snow 1972; see also the contributions inSnow and Ferguson 1977, in particular Snow 1977). This research thus rejectsthe deviance claim. It also shows that caretaker speech is simplified in that itconsists of non-recursive structures (simple sentences and simple noun phrases),and is deictic. Well-formed simplified input, it has been argued, thus solves thelogical problem of language acquisition, dispensing with the need for recourse toUG. The Simplified Input Hypothesis is based on the idea, not only that the childhears simplified language but also that she proceeds in step-like fashion learningfirst the properties of simple sentences and then the properties of more complexones. This predicts, for example, that children learn first how single verb mainclauses are organised (simple intransitive and transitive sentences) and then learnembedded and complex complementation structures.

The conclusion does not follow, however, as is obvious when one considersclosely particular i-learning problems involving recursive structures. Consider inthis light the fact that children acquire complex sentences (relative clauses,subordinate clauses, clefts, etc.). The research on caretaker speech to childrenshows that these constructions are available in considerably smaller numbers thansimple sentences. Morgan (1989: 352), for example, has tabulated 30 hours ofspeech transcripts from the American English corpus of Roger Brown. Thistabulation shows quite clearly that the vast majority of sentences to the childrenAdam, Eve and Sarah involved unembedded simple sentences. Sentences withmore than 1 degree of embedding were virtually absent. I reproduce a simplifiedversion of the tabulation in Table 6.1.


Table 6.1.Complexity of language input (reconstructed from Morgan 1989: 352)

Simple sentences 1 degree of embedding

Stage IStage IIStage IIIStage IVStage VObserved totalProjected totals

93.28%93.55%89.70%91.05%87.69%7,9763,900,000

06.38%06.08%09.73%08.09%11.63%742360,000

The projected totals were calculated by extrapolating the hourly rate of speech over eight hours perday × seven days a week × five years.

If we consider first the frequencies, it is clear that simple sentences might besubstantially more important to children for i-learning the properties of theirlanguage than complex ones. Indeed, the frequencies of sentential complementsand relative clauses are so small that children might ignore them and treat themas “noise” in the data like the foreign accent of the occasional visitor. Moreover,it is noteworthy that the differences are stable over time. Parental speech tochildren becomes more complex along a number of dimensions, but not appar-ently this one.

These data clearly bear out the claim that children hear simple sentences.The Simplified Input Hypothesis then asserts that this type of data will makeinducing the properties of the complex structures easier. The argument, however,is based on an unsubstantiated assumption: that the syntactic organisation ofcomplex sentences is a simple extension of the syntactic organisation of simpleones. But just the opposite is sometimes true. In many languages certain basicproperties of morphosyntactic organisation will only be revealed by the complexsentences. If, for example, the evidence for i-learning constituent order inGerman is revealed by the place of verbs in embedded sentences, which are verbfinal (SOV order), or in sentences with infinitives (as Lightfoot’s (1991)discussion proposes) then clearly children cannot decide on basic phrasal ordersolely on the basis of simple single verb utterances, where the input can beanalysed as SVO or OVS but not *SOV. The only way around this would be toargue, as Lightfoot does, that the most obvious cues as to verb position, namelythe position of the main verb, are not in fact the most important cues for thelearner. However, in the absence of an account of why the most direct cues areignored in preference to indirect cues, in other words, in the absence of a theoryof grammar which explicitly links the position of separable verb particles or


tense to an “underlying” position of verbs, such a move is suspect. So theproblem remains that one cannot get in any straightforward way via inductionfrom an analysis of main clauses to a correct account of the structure of embed-ded clauses.19

Consider a different example. If the properties of subjacency, hinge on therelationships between an interrogative pronoun and a predicate in an embeddedconstituent, then the input must include embedded interrogatives for theseproperties to be i-learned. The child cannot i-learn properties of sentences whichare not present in the input (nor induceable from properties of conceptualrepresentations). In fact the situation is worse for the Simplified Input Hypoth-esis; if the child i-learns simple structures first and only then complex structures,i-learning the latter will require considerable unlearning. In short, there are atleast some syntactic problems where the learner can acquire more in principlefrom complex input than from simplified input (see the commentary to Lightfoot1989, for further examples of this sort).

Another major difficulty with the simplified input research arises from thesampling problem. There is only a crude correspondence between the frequencyof certain patterns in the speech of caretakers and that of children. Consider,once again, the literature on the acquisition of German word order (Clahsen1982; Clahsen and Penke 1992; Meisel 1986, 1994b, 1995; Meisel and Müller1992), which shows that children initially favour verbs in final position (SOVorder) despite the frequency of SVO and OVS orders in the input and theabsence of *SOV simple sentences. Although we can find a reason why childrenmight encode structures with verbs at the end of the sentence, for example, theseverbs in final position will bear shifts in fundamental frequency and are likely tohave lengthened syllables and thus to be acoustically salient (see Cooper andPaccia-Cooper 1980, who document these properties for English sentences, seealso Bernstein-Ratner 1986; Hirsh-Pasek, Kemler Nelson, Jusczyk, WrightKennedy, Druss and Kennedy 1987, and Echols 1988), there is no principledreason obvious from the acquisition literature as to why children shouldpreferthese stimuli to ones where the verbs occur initially or medially. The post hocnature of much explanation based on the Simplified Input Hypothesis thusbecomes particularly obvious when examining accounts of children’s structureswhich never occur in speech to children. It also becomes obvious whenever thechild’s speech really does reflect the variability present in the linguistic stimuli.Children and adults alike display variability in their knowledge of word formsand word meanings. Children pick and choose which forms will be theirfavourite first forms (Ingram 1989). Now the point here is that i-learningtheorists cannot argue that learners get structurally uniform experience (they


uniformly extract general syntactic patterns) but get lexically (phonetically,semantically) variable experience. The reason is that syntactic properties ofsentences directly reflect lexical properties. Syntactic properties such as subcate-gorisation and selection, argument structure and the correspondence betweensemantic roles like AGENT, EXPERIENCER, FIGURE or GROUND andsyntactic positions or case relations hinge on the semantics of individual words(Chomsky 1965: 86–87; Gruber 1965; Fillmore 1968; Jackendoff 1972, 1983,1990b; Grimshaw 1990; among others). If the lexical input to the child isvariable, or if the child variably selects from homogeneous stimuli, then itfollows that the information about syntactic structures to the child is variable. Ifthe syntactic input is variable then the systematicity in children’s syntacticdevelopment becomes quite mysterious. In short, general nativists cannot havetheir cake and eat it too. They cannot explain differences in the content andorganisation of an individual’s lexicon in terms of the contingent nature oflexical input and at the same time argue that syntactic input is uniform.

3.3 The representational problem vs. the discovery problem

It is customary in standard presentations of the logical problem of languageacquisition to dismiss the Simplified Input Hypothesis and then launch into adiscussion of UG. This will not be a standard presentation. I want to dismiss theconclusions of Snow (1977), viz. that one can explain primary language acquisi-tion without positing Universal Grammar, but at the same time, I want toemphasise the importance of simplified input for a theory of language acquisi-tion. Here is the link. I have defined the representational problem as the problemof how the learner comes to have a representational system of a particular type,one capable of encoding certain constructs. I have defined the developmentalproblem as the problem of explaining how the learner comes to know theproperties of the psychogrammar. Connected to the latter is what I call thediscovery problem. This is the problem of how a learner comes to know that aparticular bit of the input instantiates a given sound or concept (Gleitman, et al.1988). In Snow’s (1977) paper, she proposed the Simplified Input Hypothesis asan answer to the representational problem. This is understandable insofar assyntactic constructs were to be defined inductively on the basis of the environ-mental cues that a learner noticed and represented. In other words, from afunctionalist point of view, grammatical constructs would reduce to somethingelse and would have no independent status. Unfortunately, the Simplified InputHypothesis is not an answer to the representational problem.

What is frequently overlooked, however, in the rush to defend Universal


Grammar, is that the Simplified Input Hypothesis is directly relevant to thediscovery problem. Studies of caretaker speech constitute an important body ofresearch and have led to important refinements to claims about the nature of thestimuli that children, at least middle-class American children, get. They areespecially important in showing how interactions guide children’s attention, andprovide important ideas about how children can initially break through the wallof sound to begin structural analysis. For example, discussions of languagelearnability (Wexler and Culicover 1980; Grimshaw 1981; Berwick 1985), inwhich UG is acknowledged as the answer to the representational problem,hypothesise that child acquirers must encode some minimal representation ofmeaning in order for syntactic acquisition to begin. Under some proposals thisconceptual information is limited to the distinction between INDIVIDUALS andACTIONS. In other proposals, the child must know who did what to whom inspecific events. He then can deploy an a priori and universal strategy whichmaps AGENTS onto grammatical subjects and PATIENTS onto grammaticalobjects, these relations being provided a priori by UG.20 Children also maplogical subjects and predicates onto NPs and TPs. The input literature suggeststhat caretaker speech is used in such a way as to make such semantic roles andrelations particularly salient for the child by focusing on objects and eventswhich are independently perceptually discriminable.

Moreover, such relations are expressed over simple clauses as Morgan’stable above showed. Broen (1972), Bernstein Ratner (1986), and Fernald (1985)have shown that caretaker speech to infants can show greater and more system-atic use of various prosodic features which coincide with clause boundaries.Hirsh-Pasek et al. (1987) have shown that infants discriminate on the basis ofsuch features, thus potentially providing the child with the means to extractclauses from the speech stream if he knows what a clause is and only has tolocate it in the speech stream with respect to changes in fundamental frequency(or changes in sequences of high and low tones). Mintz, Newport and Bever(1995) have shown how distributional properties of nouns and verbs in caretakerspeech could serve as the basis for inducing which expressions are nouns andwhich are verbs. Thus, the input literature reveals a “conspiracy” of factorswhich would permit the child to identify the phonological units and the semanticunits relevant for locating the morphosyntactic units of the psychogrammar.

The learnability literature also claims that if “long distance” relationships,e.g. the proper interpretation of passive sentence subjects likeThe lily wasattacked by beetleswhere the lily is a PATIENT, or the relationship betweenquestion pronouns and their source positions as inWhen didWortmann’s say theywould send the camelliast?, where thewhenphrase must be understood in terms


of the sentencethey would send the camellias when, are to be learned at all, thenthese relationships must be learned from simple sentences. Simple sentences, asnoted above, are defined in terms of the extent of their embedding. Wexler andCulicover (1980) proposed that constructions like passives and questions must belearned over structures which have no more than two degrees of embedding.Lightfoot (1989, 1991) has argued that this should be reduced to zero degrees,i.e. “main clauses plus a bit” (see Culicover and Wilkins 1984, for the related butdistinct claim that thematic and grammatical relations can be assigned withinsimple sentences). The important point here is the the input studies provideempirical support for such ideas. Children do not hear a lot of sentences withtwo and greater degrees of embedding.

To sum up, the simplified input literature is not to be dismissed. It plays animportant function in guiding our assumptions about the discovery problem. Ihave stressed in previous chapters that one of the problems of much currentgenerative work in SLA is that it pays insufficient attention to the problem ofdefining relevant input for the acquisition of a given phenomenon. The literatureon native speaker-nonnative speaker interactions should be regarded in the samelight. Properly done, it can give us some idea of the features of language thatlearners can use to discover the properties of the psychogrammar. Having saidthis, however, we can return to the idea that caretaker speech research does notshow that assumption (6.1c) is wrong. It therefore fails to solve the logicalproblem of language acquisition and consequently is irrelevant to Chomsky’sclaims about the necessity of UG to explain primary language acquisition.

3.4 Summary

The facts from L1 acquisition show that assumption (6.1c) is basically correct.Linguistic stimuli constituting the input to language acquisition are unrevealing,incomplete, variable, and (in the case of older learners) occasionally deviant.This input is not enriched by instruction, feedback or correction relevant to thelearning of structural properties of language (such as structure dependency, basicword order, or subjacency). No case has been made that children construeindirect forms of feedback as the instantiation of a corrective intention on thepart of the caretaker, nor is there any reason to believe that they have thenecessary metalinguistic capacity to draw the proper inferences about their owngrammars on the basis of indirect forms of feedback. No case has been made,therefore, that enriched input solves the representational problem of languageacquisition. This has led me to conclude that we have to accept UG in someform or other as a means for the development of the representational systems used


in the psychogrammar. The case against UG-less inductive approaches in firstlanguage acquisition is, in my view, very strong. There is no way a linguisticallyand cognitively uninformed learner can acquire a grammatical representationalsystem of the required complexity on the basis of impoverished input.

4. The empirical problem of second language acquisition

4.1 Preliminaries

I now want to turn my attention to the arguments for UG in second languageacquisition. I began this chapter by asserting that there is no logical problem ofsecond language acquisition. There is one logical problem: the simultaneousincompatiblity of assumptions (6.1a–c) (or (6.1a), (6.1c) and (6.2)). It can beresolved by abandoning any one of the assumptions. The facts about infantcognition suggest that we need to adopt UG as the basis for i-learning our firstlinguistic system. What we face in SLA is something quite different, namely anempirical problem of language acquisition. This point is no mere quibble overterminology. To be used to make inferences about either first or second languageacquisition, the logical problem must be converted into an empirical problemwith distinct sets of assumptions made for any given group of learners, and anygiven class of languages. The formal nature of the grammars of natural lan-guages does not change just because they are being acquired subsequent to someother language. So we can set aside this aspect of the logical problem: the natureof the what being acquired. However, it is patently obvious after even superficialscrutiny that the nature of the learner changes dramatically from childhood toadulthood with the learner coming to possess much more powerful cognitivesystems, complex “theories” about objects in the world, including linguisticobjects, and a number of compensatory mechanisms which could make i-learningof an L2 possible.

4.2 The Success Measure

Posing the question: Is English learnable in principle? requires making acommitment to some explicit criterion of successful learning. We saw that thelearnability literature simply sidesteps the issue by defining successful learningin terms of a grammar which will generate all of the sentences of a language, butdoes not worry about how one actually determines what that class consists of.When we convert the logical problem to an empirical problem, what happens?


It has become commonplace to assert that first language learners acquire theirmother tongues “perfectly.” This claim is, however, either trivially true, andhence uninformative, or else it is false. It is trivially true if it is just a way ofsaying that first language learners stop learning at some point and that point,whatever it is, counts as a definition of the L1. With this definition, eachlearner’s idiolect is acquired perfectly, an obviously uninteresting conclusion. Theclaim is false if it is intended as a claim about the learner and the stimuli comingfrom the environment. The literature on sociolinguistic variation and languagechange cited earlier shows quite clearly that individuals growing up in the samecommunity do not acquire the same knowledge systems and do not use languagein the same way (see also Trudgill 1986; Labov 1994).

Success in SLA is still insufficiently researched. Some studies suggest thatadult acquirers can attain the same sorts of grammatical knowledge or perform-ance that L1 learners do (Neufeld 1978, 1979; White and Genesee 1996; Ioup etal. 1994). Other studies clearly show that learners resident in a country for manyyears do not attain native-like competence or proficiency (Oyama 1976, 1978;Patkowski 1980; Johnson and Newport 1989, 1991; Coppetiers 1987; Birdsong1992; Sorace 1993). Some of the latter research concludes that older learners arenot able to attain native-like competence. Ioup et al. (1994), whose subjectclearly has attained native-like competence in the L2 despite learning it as anadult, is treated as an exceptional learner. Both types of studies suggest that,generally speaking, adult L2 learning is relatively unsuccessful in that mono-linguals L1 learners cognise other types of knowledge and have much bettercontrol of their knowledge. Therefore, it cannot be argued that UG is required toexplain the comparative lack of success of adult L2 learners (given cautionaryremarks made earlier about the nature of the input to L2 learning).

4.3 The adult’s other cognitive “equipment”

I have stated repeatedly that the logical problem of language acquisition dependsnot merely on the assumption that the linguistic stimuli is impoverished, but alsoon the assumption that the learner has no compensatory cognitive mechanisms.In moving from the logical problem of language acquisition to the empiricalproblem of how children learn their primary language, we have seen that one canmotivate empirically the assumption that the child indeed does not possess suchcompensatory mechanisms even when we grant that children have much richerinitial conceptual systems than has traditionally been believed. In contrast, adultsare, by hypothesis, cognitively and linguistically well-equipped. At least as far asthe logical problem of language learning is concerned; I set aside here the


hypothesis (Felix 1987: Ch. 3) that the adult’s superior cognitive abilities in factget in the way of language acquisition.

4.3.1How meaning solves the logical problem of language acquisitionIt has been shown that relevant classes of languages are learnable in principle,i.e. they can be learned-in-the-limit, if input strings are coupled with representa-tions of “meaning” (Gold 1967). If adults possess mature conceptual systems,they have, at least in principle, the capacity to represent the meanings ofsentences. If they have fully developed inferencing systems, they have, at leastin principle, the capacity to make inferences about the meaning of an input stringfrom prior knowledge, or from the visual and auditory context. Second languagelearners have hypothetically two different routes into the formal system: Theycould map directly from conceptual representations onto structures of the L2, orthey could use representations of sentences of the L1 to map onto the L2 via atranslation-equivalent strategy.21 If adults possess the capacity to match inputstrings with meanings, they have the capacity, in principle, to solve the logicalproblem of language acquisition.

4.3.2How feedback solves the logical problem of language acquisitionThere has been no demonstration that feedback is unavailable, uninformative andnot used by adult learners. It is therefore potentially available as a solution to thelogical problem of language acquisition. Indeed, many researchers have arguedthat given the transfer of linguistic representations (or parsing procedures) fromthe L1 as a major discovery procedure, feedback and negative evidence arerequiredto learn the L2 (Vigil and Oller 1976; Gass 1988; Major 1988; Schachter1988; Birdsong 1989; Bley-Vroman 1990; White 1987b, 1989a, 1991a: 148–71).My own research and that of others, which will be reviewed in Chapter 8, hasshown that adult learners can in principle learn at least certain sorts of abstractlinguistic generalisations on the basis of metalinguistic instruction or feedback inexperimental contexts. Thus, a second solution to the logical problem exists inprinciple for adult L2 learners, according to which feedback constrains thelearner’s induction about forms and structures in the L2.

4.3.3The time elementThe amount of time available to learn a language is an important factor. Learna-bility studies place no temporal constraints on language learning since they wantto simulate the idealisation of instantaneous acquisition (Chomsky 1975: 119–23).According to this idealisation the learning mechanism has access to all relevantinput and learning is not hindered by the sampling problem. In translating from


the logical to the empirical problem of language learning, clearly this idealisationmust be surrendered. The fact that input is temporally organised means that inputis sequenced. Ordering input may hinder learning (some necessary informationis missing in a given sample of input) or else it may help learning (simple inputmay come before more complex input). Berwick (1985: 173) has made the pointthat the incremental nature of acquisition could serve as a filter of stimulireceived in random order. Thus, an ordering of the stimuli can occur even whenno one in the environment consciously attempts to restrict it (as happens inlanguage teaching). Indeed, we saw in Chapter 3 that maturation of principlesand parameters has been proposed as a means to filter input to infants in orderto explain the incremental nature of learning. We saw above in the discussion of thedevelopment of facial recognition that maturation of the visual cortex changes thekinds of stimuli infants attend to. It follows that the temporal dimension is critical tostating what access the learner has to given sorts of input; at stage 1 more may befiltered out than at stage 10. If learning is interrupted at stage 5, no conclusionsabout the failure to learn what might have been learned in stage 10 can be drawn.

Talking in such ways relativises the notion of time to the learner. Butcomparisons between the success of FLA and the failure of adult SLA oftenmake use of absolute notions of time, observing either that first languageacquisition is fast, or that it is slow (Klein 1991: 50–2). If one focuses on howfast first language acquisition is, adults look terribly disadvantaged. Childrenhave acquired much of the phonetic and phonological properties of their L1 inthe first year, and many of the morphosyntactic structures of the L1 by 4 yearsof age. There are no longitudinal studies which have followed adult languageacquisition for that length of time but certainly the studies on ultimate attainmentcited above suggest that many immigrants are still far from proficient productionlong after arriving in the L2 community. Nonetheless, if one focuses on howslow first language acquisition is, the two groups appear more alike. Six year-olds are often still sorting out some aspects of the segmental systems of the L1and certainly are still acquiring the L1 morphology and lexis. That aspect ofknowledge may not be fully acquired until around puberty.

But how could language acquisition or even grammar acquisition be bothfast and slow? The apparent conflict arises because researchers are talking abouttwo separate things. The fast aspects of first language acquisition appear toinvolve the encoding in perception and comprehension of the principal categorytypes and the basic properties of the representational systems of the phonologyand morphosyntax. This can be explained if it is the case that these properties arethe manifestation of the deployment of the representational system for language,and if this system is never in fact acquired. The hypothesis then is that the


primitives of the representational systems are simply available and are put to useto rapidly acquire the specific categories of the L1 psychogrammar (between,say, birth and 3 years). On this view, the idealisation to instantaneous acquisitionmight not be so ideal. What appears to take time is the acquisition of thecategories of the grammar, the sound-meaning correspondences, the cues tocategories in perception and the parsing system, the acquisition of the parsingand production schemata and the development of expert control of those sche-mata. These are precisely the things that adult L2 learners must acquire.

The comparison to L2 acquisition then permits the following conclusions:Adults do not acquire a representational system, indeed there will be no manifes-tation of development involving the representational system since the adult’scognitive system is adult. We may assume that adult learners simply deploy therelevant representational systems and this deployment is equivalent to instan-taneous acquisition. As I have stated before, the developmental problem in L2acquisition then boils down to (i) creating lexical sound-meaning mappings, (ii)the development of novel parsing procedures for stimuli where transferredparsing procedures fails, (iii) the acquisition of any categories, relations, orproperties not instantiated in the L1, and (iv) the appropriate differenciation ofcategories insufficiently differentiated under (ii). Any apparent developmentaleffects should be limited to these aspects of acquisition and not to the suddenemergence of the representational system. Therefore, we should expect SLA tolook like the late stages of primary language acquisition and not the early stages,which ordinarily serve as the basis for comparison involving the “fast” aspectsof language acquisition. To my knowledge, no such systematic comparisons ofchildren learning their L1 in the late stages, and adult L2 learners has been done.

5. Summary

I have argued at length that there is no logical problem of second languageacquisition. There is only one logical problem which is correctly characterised interms of a number of assumptions about the formal properties of natural lan-guages, the cognitive capacities of the learner, the Success Measure, and the timealotted to learn. Converting the logical problem of language acquisition into aseries of conclusions about the empirical problem facing a given learner meansmaking certain assumptions with respect to each one of these categories. Sincethe objective is to make a case about what the facts are, one’s assumptionsshould be drawn from the best available studies describing the relevant population.The best available studies suggest there are profound differences in the learning


problems facing the language-less child and the adult L2 learner. Children do notpossess mature conceptual systems. Their theories about how the world isorganised are comparatively simple ones. It is not apparent that they could orindeed do derive the grammatical representational system from semantic informa-tion although mapping from initial conceptual representations to an initialsyntactic representation appears to be needed to solve the discovery problem.Children have immature inferencing capacities and lack the metalinguisticcapacities necessary for interpreting feedback and metalinguistic instruction(before approximately age 5). They could not use feedback, and apparently do notuse feedback, to learn either the properties of the representational system or theirpsychogrammar. All of these reasons motivate my belief that linguistic cognitionis constrained by UG and other a priori principles. That belief motivates in partmy decision to constrain induction by tying it to autonomous representationalsystems which are by-products of innate capacities, including UG.

None of these properties are true of adults. They possess all of the relevantrepresentational systems. They have complex theories about objects in the world,including complex theories about language. They have mature inferencingcapacities based on their mental models. They have mature metalinguisticcapacities enabling them to represent units of language as conceptual categories.They therefore can, in principle, and apparently do, use feedback to learn theproperties of the target system. Consequently, they could in principle at leastinduce the psychogrammar from the properties of their existent representationalsystem (the L1 grammar), and the input.

The point of this chapter has not been to claim that any one of the proposedprocedural types (mapping from L1 structures to L2 structures, mapping fromconceptual representations to L2 structures, inferencing on the basis of feedbackor correction, etc.) will, on its own, provide correct accounts of what I have beencalling the empirical problem of second language acquisition: explaining whatadult learners come to know on the basis of the input they actually get. I do notbelieve they will. Nor do I believe that they will explain the developmentalproblem: accounting for the stages that learners actually pass through on the wayto whatever endstate they achieve, as well as accounting for the pace of acquisi-tion. Models of acquisition processes must be fleshed out in conjunction withmodels of longterm memory (in particular that part of memory we usually referto as the mental lexicon), models of short term or working memory (includingauditory memory), models of attention and consciousness, models of learnerstyle, by which I mean everything from the individual’s tolerance of anxiety topreferences for certain types of stimuli, and last, but not least, models of theinput to learning. The development of an explanatory theory of second language


acquisition will necessitate concerted research efforts on all of these fronts. Weshould conclude, however, that the logical properties of language acquisition arenot a suitable basis for motivating access to UG in SLA. Even less are they amotivation for parameter-setting. There is no logical problem of second languageacquisition, and therefore the logical problem of language acquisition cannot beused as grounds for excluding i-learning in SLA.

Notes

1. One SLA author who makes this distinction abundantly clear is Felix (1986: Ch. 2) who iscareful to describe the logical problem of acquisition in terms of the question: What factorsmake language acquisition possible at all?

2. Note that I am not claiming that the child’s conceptual system is primitive in the sense that itcan encode only a small range of concept types. On the contrary, the research literature onconceptual development shows that infants have rich initial conceptual systems. As techniquesof investigation become more sophisticated, I think we will discover that infant and youngchildren can cognise far more. I assume merely that the child’s conceptual system is compara-tively impoverished with respect to that of the adult’s. I also assume that it is immature in theareas of problem-solving, inferencing, and deduction. This assumption is well-supportedempirically (Gruber and Voneche 1977; Carey 1985; Keil 1989; Gelman 1990a, b).

3. I am using the term “generative” here in its original mathematical sense and not to mean someparticular version of transformational generative grammar. In the learnability and mathematicallinguistics literature a generative grammar is one that describes a language.

4. The situation is actually much more complex. Katz (1995, 1996), basing himself on the citedwork by Langendoen and Postal (1985), has argued that generative linguistics is not consistentwith representational realism. In other words, no person could have internalised a generativegrammar in their mind/brain because a generative grammar must be capable of deriving non-denumerably infinite numbers of sentences, including sentences like the sentences in (i).

(i) I know that I like darwin tulips. I know that I know that I like darwin tulips. I know thatI know that I know that I like darwin tulips. …

As noted in the text, our linguistic competence corresponds to an ability to produce andrepresent not only an infinite number of sentences, but also sentences with infinitely manyembeddings, even unending sentences. No finite mental capacity could be said to be aphysicalstatecorresponding to such knowledge. In other words, there could be no distinct physical statecorresponding to each sentence. (See also Putnam 1989, on this issue.) Katz therefore claimsthat Chomsky and other generativists have failed to show that mental grammars must begenerative. Indeed, Katz says they are not generative, and consequently, one can no longerdefine “grammaticality” as that knowledge derivable from a generative grammar. It follows thatUG is therefore not true of the initial mental state; it is at best a possible model of the contentsof the initial state.

5. For primary language acquisition, the most conservative estimates place the process somewherebetween 4 and 14 years at which age it is normally assumed that the child’s linguistic systemis mature (although Labov 1963, has shown that older adolescents can move away from or


towards a given sociolect). The least conservative estimates place the time of acquisitionsomewhere between 0 and 6 years arguing, incorrectly, that what follows is merely “lexical”acquisition. As far as second language acquisition is concerned, I know of no estimates of thelength of time needed to acquire the L2 based on any sound empirical evidence. Variousresearchers have, however, speculated that after the first 3 or 4 years of exposure, no significantlearning occurs. See note 6.

6. Flege claims in various places that phonetic learning takes place in the very early stages ofSLA, and that fossilisation sets in rather rapidly. For this level of acquisition, then, it wouldappear that the input set might be very limited, representing only a tiny subset of the possibleutterances of a target language.

7. Gold’s algorithm exploits the properties of primitive recursive languages byenumerating candidate grammars one by one. For each candidate grammar, it triesto determine whether all the input sentences it has seen so far can be derived fromthe grammar. If so, it waits for a new sentence and tries the grammar again. If not,it moves to a new grammar and repeats the process. Although such a devicecannot be guaranteed to discover the correct grammar of the target language froma finite corpus of sample sentences (such a guarantee would violate the knownlimits of any inductive process), nevertheless it can legitimately aspire to identifythe target grammar ‘in the limit’ if it manages to find a grammar that continuouslypasses tests against new input sentences and hence need not be abandoned.(Gleitman and Wanner 1982: 6)

8. In their discussion of the relationship of triggers to parameters, Gibson & Wexler (1994: 408)characterise the learning algorithm as simply choosing a set of parameter-settings such that thedata are grammatical, i.e. generated by the grammar, given the parameter-settings.

9. The logical problem is the familiar problem of accounting for the apparent ease, rapidityand uniformity of acquisition in the face of impoverished data. (Hyams 1991: 72).

This is the standard formulation.

10. This constitutes a radical departure from Gentner (1982) who has argued that nouns are learnedbefore verbs because the latter are semantically relational. If object names are also relationalconceptually then another explanation must be found for the comparatively early acquisition ofnouns. One solution is to say that the verbs, like all predicates, arestructurally relational andthat it is this structural difference which retards the development of verbs in child speech.

11. Pre-schoolers have judged that wearing a mask would change a cat into a dog (DeVries 1969).Keil (1989: 231–34) showed 3 and 4 year-olds a series of pictures consisting of, e.g. a whitehorse, a zebra, and a “mixed” picture in which the white horse exhibits the zebra’s head. Thechildren heard stories while looking at the pictures. In one condition, the stories made it clearthat the zebra was wearing a horse costume. In another condition, the zebra wore paint coveringits stripes and a glued-on mane which temporarily came off and then got put back on. In athird condition, the stories related that the zebra was painted and had a glued-on horse’s manebut the paint and the mane never come off. (They were, in other words, permanently attached.)The pre-schoolers differed significantly from chance responses to the question “Is the animala horse or a zebra?” only on the first condition. For the very youngest children, the externalappearance of an animal seemed to matter more than its internal features, its heredity, or itsbehaviour, and they were willing to infer appearance based on other properties (Keil 1989: 235).

12. Johnson (1990a, b) relates this to a developmental shift from subcortical to cortical processingin vision due to the maturation of the primary visual pathway. Johnson’s studies also indicatethe special effects that moving stimuli have for infants.


13. Johnson (1990b: 159) continues:

I would anticipate similar mechanisms for language acquisition. This biased inputat particular stages serves two functions. The first is to ensure appropriate input tosensory pathways, the second to ensure appropriate feedback through the specificpathway from, for example, STS [= superior temporal sulcus, SEC]. In this way,neural pathways may become configured to process particular classes of input. Onlywhen the initial phases of the configuring are complete does the pathway begin tocontrol output. In such a scenario the relative contribution of genes and the environ-ment may be specified, but are nevertheless highly interdependent and integrated.

14. This is not to suggest that once phonological units are imposed on the speech stream thatcorrespondences between them and morphosyntactic units could not be established. On thecontrary, much current work in primary language acquisition assumes that children bootstrapfrom the phonology to the syntax. See Gleitman and Wanner (1982), Hirsh-Pasek, KemlerNelson, Jusczyk, Wright Kennedy, Druss & Kennedy (1987), Gleitman et al. (1988), all onprimary language acquisition, and Cooper and Paccia Cooper (1980) on the correspondencesbetween phonological properties and syntactic units in adult speech.

15. There is plenty of evidence for this point in the linguistics literature. Georgian verbal morphol-ogy should convince even sceptics. See Anderson (1992: 137–56).

16. Clark shows that this problem exists even assuming UG. His example begins with a UGcontaining the small number of 30 binary parameters. The search space defined by 30parameters yields 230 or 1,073,741,824 possible grammars to test against the input and acceptor reject. Clark calculates that if the learner could test and reject one grammar per second itwould take 34 years to test all of the hypothesised possible grammars. This is clearly unaccept-able for any theory of language learning; children do not take 34 years to decide on a grammar.It must be emphasised, however, that 30 is a tiny number in comparison to the infinite numberof features induceable from any perceptually-defined situation.

17. This is the basic idea behind one of Slobin’s (1973) operating principles, i.e. OP E: Underlyingsemantic relations should be marked overtly and clearly in the morphosyntax. Slobin assumesthe prior existence of semantic categories but denies the prior existence of a syntacticrepresentational system. The Semantic Bootstrapping Hypothesis discussed previously agreeswith Slobin that the child imposes a correspondence initially between semantic and syntacticconstituents, but also assumes, in contrast, that the syntactic constituents have prior representa-tional existence. In other words, there is a fundamental distinction between Slobin’s position,where semantic categories are used to induce syntactic categories, and the Semantic Boots-trapping Hypothesis where semantic categories are used to help the acquirer map UG-givensyntactic features onto particular forms of the L1.

18. It is, of course, misleading to say that conceptual representations evolve into syntacticrepresentations since at no time does the child cease to represent the meanings of utterances.Rather, the idea is that the child induces a separate and distinct set of concepts which are thenused in a purely unconscious way to analyse and encode the linguistic stimuli for structuralrather than interpretive purposes. The interpretation remains the function of the conceptualrepresentations.

19. In general there is a lack of correspondence between main or root clauses and embedded clauses.The embedded clause generally exhibits fewer properties and is more constrained (Emonds 1976).

20. Berwick (1985: 22) adopts this second proposal and derives the 1–1 syntactic/thematiccorrespondence from the Subset Principle.


21. Flynn (1987) claims that knowledge of structure dependency would not be available if learnerswere translating and could only result from directly accessing principles and parameters. Thisargument holds water only if subjects are mapping from a conceptual representation (based onthe L1) to a non-structural linear ordering of words in the L2. But there is absolutely no reasonto suppose that this is what translation consists of. Consider what Sharwood Smith (1979: 16)has to say about translation or what he callsnaive relexification:

Here learners are said to generate (in a processing sense) an L1 (or other non-target language)syntactic framewhich is then filled with substitute L2 lexicalmaterial, producing what looks like a literal translation of the source language.[emphasis mine].

In other words, translation involves mapping from one syntactic structure to another, defined onthe basis of the syntactic properties of the original L1 lexical items which are simply given anL2 phonological shape. Such a process wouldentail that learners have knowledge of structuredependency.

C 7

Input and the Modularity Hypothesis

1. Introduction

The need to appeal to principles and parameter-setting as an acquisition mechan-ism to explain the properties and stages of second language acquisition hasseemed compelling to many in SLA. The most frequent argument to appear inprint is that UG is needed to explain the logical problem of second languageacquisition, which we examined in the last chapter. We saw, however, that thereis no such logical problem. The weakest argument for adopting UG is simply theabsence of a well-defined alternative, in particular, a theory of i-learning whichcan explain the constraints that linguistic systems obviously exhibit.1 In previouschapters we saw that the essential point about the constraints issue has to do withhow the primitives of the representational systems in which linguistic cognitionis encoded develop. This point is a critical one for first language acquisitionalone. It is of secondary importance for a theory of adult second languageacquisition since we must assume that the learner possesses adult, maturerepresentational systems, including one for the L1 grammar. More importantly,it is possible to propose an explicit model of i-learning which addresses directlythe constraints problem. I have done so. Specifically, in Chapters 4 and 5 Ihypothesised that i-learning is severely constrained by the representational systemin which the L1 is encoded, by the functional architecture of the mind, and bythe nature of language processing, in addition to a number of independentcontraints stipulated to hold. Further aspects of the model dealing with howinformation encoded in conceptual structures can interact with the grammaticalsystem will be taken up later. This leaves us to face what may be the onlylegitimate conceptual argument on behalf of UG qua acquisition mechanism inSLA, namely that linguistic cognition ismodularand that all acquisition takesplace on the basis of a strictly bottom-up processing of the linguistic stimuli withno input affecting acquisition from longterm memory or from the conceptualsystem. If these properties were to turn out to be true of the language faculty,


there could be no role for concept-based i-learning, for i-learning based oninferential reasoning, or for any enrichment of the input to learning throughcorrection and feedback. If the input to language learning is restricted, there mustbe compensatory sources of information which the learning mechanisms candraw on. The validity of the Poverty of the Stimulus Hypothesis then forces apriori knowledge on us if we are to explain how the learner indeed learns.

I first introduced the Modularity of Mind Hypothesis (Fodor 1983) inChapter 1, Section 2.2. It is time now to be more precise about what this termmeans.

2. The Modularity of Mind Hypothesis

The Modularity of Mind Hypothesis begins in a model of faculty psychology.Fodor’s model is shown in Figure 7.1.

The mind consists of “horizontal” and “vertical” faculties. The former corre-spond to such things as memory, imagination, attention, judgement, perception,etc. Cognitive processes exhibit the interaction of these faculties. In addition,they exhibit properties of the second type of faculties — the modular ones.Modules do not share and do not compete for horizontal resources. Languageis a module, and moreover is an input system with the following properties:

Input Modules Central Processing System

Domain specific Operates in multiple domains

Processing occurs in a mandatory fashion Processing is not mandatory

Operates fast Is comparatively slow

The central processor has limited access to theoperations of the modules, and, as a conse-quence, they function outside of consciousness

Processing is interactive meaning that thecentral processor can access all components(processing produces awareness).

Is informationally encapsulated (i.e. it is un-effected by feedback, and the belief systemcannot direct the operations of the processors)

Is (by definition) interactive

Input analysers have shallow outputs, in par-ticular what is in the input system are thoseproperties of utterances which they have byvirtue of their linguistic structure. Fodor sug-gests (1983: 88) grammar + logical form.

The central processor deals with those aspectsof language dependent on inferencing, e.g.reference and coreference, metaphor, humour,irony, etc..

INPUT AND THE MODULARITY HYPOTHESIS 251

Input modules are associated with fixed neuralarchitecture (meaning they are hard-wired)

Central processing is also obviously associatedwith neural architecture, but it is not hard-wired

Consequently, they are associated with specificpathologies, e.g. maintenance of phonologicaland syntactic knowledge about words whensemantic knowledge about the same words hasbroken down (Schwartz, Marin, and Saffran1979).

Disease and/or trauma lead to domain-generalpathologies

The ontogeny of input systems exhibits charac-teristic pacing and sequencing

(so does the development of classification,problem-solving and inferencing skills butFodor has nothing to say about this)

Figure 7.1.Fodor’s model of faculty psychology

The properties of this model will be reviewed briefly below.

2.1 Componentiality, autonomy and domain-specificity

The Modularity of Mind Hypothesis amounts to several claims. The first is thatthe mind consists of various components performing specific processing func-tions, and representing information in ways distinct from one another. Modularitythus entails that cognition is componential. This claim is hardly new; psychol-ogists and linguists alike readily speak of a syntax, a phonology or a lexicon.Talk of components of knowledge does not require specific commitments as tothe existence of processors computing differentiated representations. “Syntax”might merely refer to information about sentences stored in longterm memory.Or it might refer to the representations that some general processing mechanismconstructs which encode syntactic distinctions. In short, one can adopt the claimthat processors compute differentiated representations without thereby adoptingthe position that some or all grammatical distinctions require separate processors.The Modularity of Mind Hypothesis, in contrast, is first and foremost a claimabout the domain-specificity of information-processing subsystems. The languagemodule processes only linguistic representations. This means that its processorsare sensitive only to distinctions that can ultimately be encoded in linguisticrepresentations. It follows that the Modularity of Mind Hypothesis also requiresthat the various representational systems which are domain-specific be auton-omous. In other words, the representational system encoding language existsindependently of the representational system used for encoding thought.2


2.2 Modules are part of the “hardware”

I said that linguists and psychologists alike can talk about a mental grammarwithout committing themselves to the idea that the functional architecture of themind/brain includes a processing unit specific to grammar. It should be apparentthat they also need not commit themselves to the claim that these componentsactually correspond to defined neural structures or to neural areas in the mind/brain. It is important to understand that Fodor (1983, 1987), in contrast,iscommitted to representational realism. In particular, modules are claimed to beinstantiated in the brain.3 This means that they correspond to and operate throughdedicated neuroanatomical structures. Fodor’s claim is that the human brainmanifests dedicated neuroanatomical structures forlanguage. As evidence forthis, he points out that subsequent to injury or other insults to the brain, humanscan manifest quite specific pathologies involving language without the perform-ance of other modules or of unspecialised processors being affected. Aphasicpatients can manifest such disassociations. They can be unable to speak and yethave no difficulty orienting themselves spatially; they can be able to perform avariety of non-linguistic tasks such as adding up a bill or playing a musicalinstrument, learn to recognise new faces, etc. It has been claimed that similardissociations exist in dementia (Schwartz, Marin, & Saffran 1979) and indevelopment (Van der Lely 1995, 1996). For a detailed introduction to this topic,see Eysenck & Keane (1995).

2.3 Modular domains exhibit a specific ontogeny

As additional evidence for modularity, Fodor points to the distinct ontogeny oflanguage. First language acquisition exhibits characteristic stages, sequencing,and pacing. The acquisition of the first language is, as we have already noted,often said to occur relatively quickly, and uniformly. Fodor suggests that suchproperties make the acquisition of language quite different from the acquisitionof other sorts of knowledge. We saw in Chapter 6, however, that conceptualdevelopment can be likened to the development of complex and rich (tacit)theories about entities, including their essential properties and the relations theybear to other entities. We also noted there that such learning is internallydirected by a priori tendencies to attend to certain kinds of stimuli, and by thebasic features of the conceptual system The learner is constantly interactingwith the environment and encoding information on the basis of those interactions.It is occasionally suggested that this kind of learning is very slow and effortful,in contrast to language acquisition which is the proverbial “piece of cake.”


Such claims are exaggerated and overlook the incremental nature of languageacquisition (Ingram 1989), as well as the rapidity with which children developrich representations of concepts. In addition, one can observe unique phases ofdevelopment in other cognitive domains, where, on a domain-specific basis,conceptual information is reorganised (Keil 1989; Karmiloff-Smith 1992). Wealso saw in the last chapter that certain kinds of domain-specific capacities innon-linguistic areas of cognition can suddenly emerge. This means that linguisticontogeny is not as unique as Fodor would have us believe. Rather, linguisticontogeny shares certain global properties with conceptual acquisition, reflectingthe domain-specific characters of both.

Fodor also points to the fact that disassociations can be found betweenlinguistic development and other areas of cognition. Children deprived oflanguage experience in the first few years of life show clear and irreparablelinguistic deficits although other aspects of their cognition is intact and theyshow the ability to learn other things (Curtiss 1977, 1982, 1988). Whether theirnon-linguistic intelligence is normal is a separate issue and hard to assess, giventhe considerable damage done to such children in other ways. Consequently, amore interesting example, one not specifically mentioned by Fodor but certainlyone which adds grist to his mill, involves children with Specific LanguageImpairment or SLI. Subgroups of such children can perform normally onstandardised tests of non-linguistic cognitive and motor skills, and normally onstandardised tests of hearing and emotional development, but reveal severeproblems in their skills at comprehending and expressing language (Van der Lely1995, 1996). In particular, they have problems comprehending and producinggrammatical morphemes, e.g. for English-speaking SLI children, regular verbinflections of past tense, third person singular, and the copula (Leonard 1979).There is a lively debate going on about the origins of these problems. Gopnikand Crago (1991) have proposed that SLI children have a featural deficit, whichmakes it impossible for these children to encode the morphological markers ofthose features. Such a deficit would of necessity be specific to the languagefaculty. The Featural Deficit Hypothesis has been vigorously contested by otherresearchers. Leonard, Bortolini, Caselli, McGregor and Sabbadini (1992) haveshown that SLI children do not produce grammatical morphemes in inappropriatecontexts and therefore are not treating the forms as meaningless. Clahsen,Rothweiler, Woest, and Marcus (1992) have shown that German SLI childrenoverregularise noun plurals showing that they can identify morphological endingsand extract generalisations from the input. Clahsen (1991) has argued that thedeficit should be attributed to either a failure to set relevant parameters or tosetting the wrong parameter. Clahsen (1995) has argued that SLI should be


characterised in terms of a lack of agreement, which will explain (given thecharacterisation of agreement in the Government and Binding theory of morpho-syntax) not only the English data but account as well for the tendency that ItalianSLI children have of omitting obligatory object clitics. See also Clahsen (1989).Bishop (1994) has shown that the errors that SLI children make in markingmorphosyntactic features are not random — thus they may omit affixes but theydo not misanalyse nominal features and assign them to verbal categories.Moreover, they make fewer errors in marking noun plurals than in marking verbtense showing that within the morphosyntax, SLI children are differenciatingtypes of features. The case system seems to be especially vulnerable. Van derLely (1995) has proposed that the children manifest an inability to controlgovernment relations. Obviously, there is no consensus on the explanationoffered, but most of these researchers agree that SLI is a deficit of the languagefaculty and is not due to some general deficit.4

2.4 The automaticity and speed of modular processing

According to Fodor, modular processes operate automatically, and they functionoutside of a person’s conscious awareness and control. For Fodor, this means anadditional difference between language and the operations of the conceptualsystem. Fodor makes the point that one can choose not to listen to one’s mothertongue being spoken (by avoiding situations where it will be used, or stoppingone’s ears), but one cannot choose not to “hear” it once it is spoken. One cannever hear one’s mother tongue the way one hears a second language on firstexposure, namely as a continuous, unbroken stream of noise. The perception ofspeech is thus like the visual perception of objects. The very existence of visualillusions (mirages, Wittgenstein’s (1953) duck-rabbit, and other visual phenom-ena studied by Gestalt psychologists, see Wertheimer 1923; Köhler 1929; Koffka1935) shows not only that perception is not something derived solely fromproperties of the stimuli, it is also something which happens to us rather thansomething we consciously do.

Modules also operate very quickly. In particular, Fodor wants to make theclaim that they operate much faster than the information processing unit respon-sible for inferencing, problem-solving and thinking. Therefore, language process-ing operates faster than the systems responsible for i-learning.


2.5 Modules produce “shallow” outputs

Modules are associated with “shallow” outputs. This is related to the issue ofautonomy. In the brief discussion of speech processing in Chapter 1, I pointedout that parsers are assumed to have quite specific inputs — the phonologicalparsers will be sensitive to features of the speech stream, the morphosyntacticparsers are sensitive to features of morphosyntactic categories like [+N, −V]. Ihave assumed that the phonological parsers output an abstract phonologicalrepresentation which activates abstract phonological representations in entries ina mental lexicon organised along phonological lines (Cutler and Fay 1982). Thephonological parsers thus do not output morphosyntactic representations; that jobbelongs to morphosyntactic parsers. Modules exhibit this sort of job specialisa-tion.5 Fodor’s claim that modules have shallow outputs means that parsersperform limited sorts of operations on their inputs — operations which are alsodomain-specific. The effect of this claim is that the language module does alittle bit of the processing work and then passes on the job to the centralprocessor, which Fodor assumes is responsible for thought.

2.6 “Cross-talk” is limited

Modules interact in a highly restricted fashion. They may provide input represen-tations to one another but their internal operations are relatively closed to outsideinfluence. This is a property referred to asinformation encapsulation. Fodorclaims that language is aninput systemto the central processor. It follows thatthe language module must analyse and represent speech with little or no use ofinformation from the central processor, from longterm memory or from aperson’s beliefs and assumptions about the ongoing context of speech.

2.7 The Schwartz model of modular L2 acquisition

2.7.1K-acquisition vs. k-learningSchwartz’ (1986, 1987, 1992, 1993) goal is to motivate theoretically a distinctionmade by Krashen (1981, 1982, 1985) between “language acquisition” and“language learning”. I will henceforth call these “k-acquisition” and “k-learning”to underline the speculative and theory-specific nature of these constructs and tobe able to continue to use the terms “acquisition” and “learning” in an intuitiveway. Krashen’s distinction, as I understand it, is based on little more than theobservation that naturalistic L2 acquisition and L2 acquisition in the classroomlead to different results. Crudely put, acquisition of an L2 in natural settings is


claimed to lead to superior and more native-like competence and proficiency thanacquisition based on instruction in the classroom to the tutored learner. Theuntutored adult k-acquires a second language by the intuitive analysis ofspontaneously provided stimuli from native speakers observed in normalcommunicative settings. The intuitive analysis is the work of whatever mechan-isms are responsible for L1 acquisition. As to what those mechanisms are,Krashen does not say beyond speculating that they must be the same mechanismsthat are responsible for primary language acquisition. For Krashen, the superior-ity of k-acquisition is not simply the result of the untutored learner getting moreor better stimuli. Rather, the nature of linguistic processing and hence of acquisi-tion and performance are differentially organised based on the nature of theinput to learning — normal speech in the first case, and metalinguistic instructionin the the second. For discussion of Krashen’s work, see Klein (1986: 28–9),McLaughlin (1987), Larsen-Freeman and Long (1991: 240–9), and Towell andHawkins (1994: 25–31).

Schwartz attempts to provide some content to Krashen’s model, which onits own is too vague to be falsifiable, by adding two different ideas to Krashen’sk-acquisition and k-learning distinction. The first involves Fodor’s claim thatlanguage processing in monolingual, mature adults is modular. See Figure 7.1above. For Schwartz, language is an input system with information flowing fromthe acoustic-perceptual stimuli to interpretation. This is made manifest in hermodel of information processing. See Figure 7.2 reproduced from Chapter 1.

A. Linguistic Competencearises from the activ-ities of the Language Acquisition Device, whichis modular at least in the sense of being infor-mationally encapsulated. The No Negative Evi-dence Hypothesis is a major presupposition. Sois the claim that language acquisition is uncon-scious. Linguistic Competence is the normalresult of learning in naturalistic situations.

Learned Linguistic Knowledgearises from activ-ities of the central processor, which are domain-general (not specific to language and possiblynot innate), result in conscious awareness, andare based on exposure to negative evidence,metalinguistic information, and explicitly taught“rules”. Learned Linguistic Knowledge is thenormal result of learning in classrooms.

B. The direction of information-flow within a Schwartz model

Vision Module CentralProcessingSystems

Things out there in the worldthat we see or hear

Language Module

Etc.

Figure 7.2.Schwartz’ model of modular processing (adapted from Schwartz 1993: 157)


The second idea involves adopting P&P as a theory of linguistic representation.The P&P theory thus provides Schwartz with an explicit definition of language.She puts the three sets of ideas together to argue that naturalistic L2 acquisitionis, must be, and could only be, a bottom-up process whereby the adult L2acquirer represents the linguistic stimuli guided by Universal Grammar, on theone hand, and linguistic representations of the L1 (also a consequence of UG),on the other hand.

K-acquisition and k-learning are distinguished in Krashen’s work largely bythe claim that the first occurs unconsciously, while the second takes placeconsciously. For Schwartz this means that k-learning must take place in thecentral processor. K-acquisition, in contrast, will occur in the language module.For Krashen, k-acquisition results from whatever the LAD does, and we saw inChapter 1 that for Krashen this means that the LAD can use conceptual informa-tion to bootstrap the grammar from Stage i to Stage i + 1. In other words,k-acquisition can be a form of i-learning. For Schwartz, this possibility isexcluded, except in the realm of lexical learning. She hypothesises that adultlearners transfer the parameter-settings of the L1 grammar and then, upon theidentification of appropriate triggers, reset their parameters to those which areconsistent with the triggers. In short, k-acquisition is said to result when alanguage is acquired unconsciously on the basis of exposure to stimuli producedin meaningful contexts through the operation of parameter-(re)setting. Induction,in this theory, as in other P&P research, is limited to the acquisition of sound-meaning pairs in the lexicon. Input from feedback, correction, metalinguisticinstruction or other forms of negative evidence is explicitly excluded.

Basically, [k-]Acquisition of a second language is likened to the processes thatobtain when a child acquires his/her first language, in that the subject “picks up”the language unconsciously without recourse to explicit (instructional) rules.This is distinct from [k-]Learning a second language whereby a subject incor-porates rules, namely descriptive generalisations, of the language by conscious-ly mastering them. [k-]Acquisition is thereal knowledge of a second languagewhereas [k-]Learning is not. (Schwartz 1987: 27, emphasis in the original).

K-learning which, by hypothesis, results from attempts to teach the language byteaching about the language involves quite distinct processes and leads todifferent results. In her thesis (Schwartz 1986), Schwartz develops the idea thatk-learning involves the conscious learning of largely metalinguistic informationpresented in the form of rules. This information could come from grammaticalinstruction (explicit or implicit), feedback and correction, studying linguistics, andso on. Learners internalise propositions which express grammatical information


(more or less well). According to this analysis, the statement “English is an SVOlanguage”, or the truth-functionally equivalent statement “In English, subjectsprecede tensed verbs” would count as instances of such metalinguistic rules.However, Schwartz insists that if such learning is not optimal, i.e. if it doesn’tlead to the same knowledge or proficiency that natives demonstrate, it is notmerely because the statements are uninterpretable, incomplete or inaccurate. Noris it merely that adult learners have inadequate automatisation when they attemptto deploy their knowledge in speech production. Rather, k-learning leads toinadequate performance because metalinguistic information is represented anddeployed in the central processor, and cannot be deployed in any way, shape, orform by the modular language processing system. Only information extractedfrom the processing of linguistic stimuli can be input to the LAD. There is noinput from the conceptual system.

What are the consequences of this distinction? One consequence is that wemight assume that the representations which correspond to k-acquisition instan-tiate such relations as dominance, precedence, locality, c-command, or the EmptyCategory Principle (ECP). It would follow that the representations resulting fromk-learning do not. We might predict therefore that learners whose knowledge ofthe L2 has been acquired solely on the basis of classroom learning will notcognise these properties in their L2. Schwartz, in fact, makes no such claim, andmoreover, makes no attempt to demonstrate that speech behaviour arising fromk-learning does not manifest the relevant properties. There is no empiricalevidence to show that the basic properties of k-acquired systems are fundamen-tally different from the basic properties of k-learned systems. Indeed, it wouldbe difficult to prove such a thing, since even in classrooms using grammar/translation methods, learners also get linguistic stimuli. Schwartz thus faces aterrible methodological problem of how to demonstrate such radical differencesin knowledge. The distinction between these two types of knowledge is also notmotivated on the basis of empirical evidence contrasting first and secondlanguage acquisition. I would argue there is no empirical evidence for thedistinction. It is, rather, strictly a conceptual consequence of Schwartz imposingFodor’s (1983) theory of modularity on Chomsky’s theory of UG.

There are certain other aspects of the model which merit some attention.The first is that the modularity of second language acquisition is made dependentupon the modularity of language processing as purportedly exhibited by highlycompetent, highly proficient monolingual L1 speaker/hearers. This move seemsunwarranted in the absence of empirical evidence suggesting that languageprocessing in such learners is modular. It is to Schwartz’ credit that she hasattempted to connect SLA to an explicit model of the cognitive architecture of


the mind and specific hypotheses about language processing in adults. Suchattempts are rare in the field. But it needs to be kept in mind that Fodor did notformulate his theory of faculty architecture on the basis of facts of languageprocessing drawn from language acquisition. His claims are limited to monolin-gual adults processing their L1. I see no reason to assume that the properties ofsuch processing systems, even if they were to be modular in Fodor’s sense (moreon this below) would necessarily extend to learning mechanisms. Indeed, I havealready spoken of evidence which shows that linguistic categories manifest thesame typicality properties of categories in other cognitive domains, assumed byeveryone to arise from i-learning.

Schwartz’ notion of normal language acquisition is a major departure, ratherthan merely an explicit working out, of Krashen’s views. Both equate k-acquisi-tion with the operations of the LAD, and hence with Universal Grammar, but 10years of linguistic theorising lie between the two and the changes in the concept-ualisation of UG have been fundamental. At the time that Krashen was defininghis terminology, UG was construed as a set of constraints on rule constructionand representation. When we spoke then of learners acquiring linguistic compe-tence, we spoke of them learning rules. We also said that they learned categoriesand category typologies. Consequently, it was possible in those days to drawexplicit parallels between language acquisition and other domains of learning.Now it is often asserted that rules are not part of linguistic competence at all(Clahsen and Muysken 1986, 1989). This would certainly be true if linguisticcompetence were nothing more than UG. Although, like everyone else, Schwartzhas her own views on what to maintain and what to jettison among the hundredsof various proposals in the literature, this is the overall view of UG that shesubscribes to too (Schwartz and Tomaselli 1990; Schwartz and Vikner 1989).One may well ask: Are these the same notions of k-acquisition?6 I suggest theyare not. The earlier proposals were much more compatible with i-learning.Current P&P theory is not.

2.7.2SummaryLet me now summarise the Schwartz model of language acquisition.

(7.1) the Schwartz modela. Language processing is modular in precisely the sense of Fodor

(1983), in particular, one can establish a clear division between theconstruction of linguistic structures and the processing of meaning,the first being modular while the second is not.

b. The on-line processing of linguistic stimuli is the sole source of input


for grammatical restructuring. There can be no k-acquisition based onother sources of input.

c. Because on-line processing of linguistic stimuli is modular, languageacquisition is modular.

d. There is a distinction in processing terms between k-acquisition (un-conscious, automatic, bottom-up processing), and k-learning (con-scious, non-automatic, occurs only in the central processor) which hasconsequences for the representation of linguistic information.

e. Language and linguistic competence correspond to whatever resultsfrom UG, parameter-setting and lexical acquisition. Specifically ex-cluded from linguistic competence is pragmatic competence, that is tosay that knowledge which permits speaker/hearers to know whatforms to use in particular contexts in order to make particular logicalinferences. Also excluded are induced categories or rules, structureslearned through metalinguistic instruction, or inferencing, and allinformation derived from correction and/or feedback.

f. UG and parameter-setting can be construed as acquisition mechan-isms, therefore k-acquisition can be defined as parameter-setting.

g. K-acquisition leads in principle to native-like competence but k-learn-ing never can.

In the rest of this chapter, I wish to focus on the processing and representationalissues implicit in Schwartz’ work. Although there is a substantial literature onlanguage processing, indeed there is a substantial literature on Fodor’s notion ofmodularity, and on some definition or other of modularity (Crain and Steedman1985; Tanenhaus, Carlson, and Seidenberg 1985; Garfield 1987; Marslen-Wilsonand Tyler 1987; Linebarger 1989; Frazier 1990; Fodor 1990; Thompson andAltmann 1990; Karmiloff-Smith 1992; Shillcock and Bard 1993), Schwartz citesnone of it in her later work either to justify her adoption of Fodor’s claim thatthe language faculty is modular, or to motivate her claims about L2 acquisitionand learning.7 This literature must be drawn on to determine the relevance ofFodor’s work for SLA theorising and certainly should be kept in mind by thosewho cite Schwartz’ take on modularity in approving tones.

3. What’s wrong with Fodorian modularity?

Since Schwartz bases her model of L2 acquisition on Fodor’s model of modulari-ty, it inherits all of the weaknesses of that model. I hope to undermine any beliefthat it can be incorporated into SLA theorising. My criticisms, it should be noted,


are partial motivation for the adoption of an alternative version of modularity,namely Representational Modularity. For criticism, I shall not turn to theliterature which rejects more or less outright the concept of modularity (see, e.g.,Anderson 1983), rather, I shall look at the limitations of Fodor’s model from theperspective of research which accepts the basic idea but thinks that Fodor’smodel is the wrong model.

3.1 Problem one: We’re not talking about “language acquisition”, we’re talk-ing only about “grammar acquisition”

In adopting Fodor’s version of modularity, Schwartz commits herself to theclaim that there is a clear division of labour in language processing betweenstructural processes and the processing of meaning, the first being modular andthe second not. Now what we normally think of as “language” corresponds tocomplex and diverse types of knowledge and we have no reason at present toexpect that the processing mechanisms needed to parse representations correspon-ding to these types of knowledge will not be equally complex and diverse. If itturned out to be true that only some subparts of the language processingmechanisms manifested modularity, then Schwartz could hardly equate “lan-guage” with the language module. This in turn would make it difficult to equatethe operations of the LAD with k-acquisition and the output of activities of thecentral processors with k-learning since knowledge of language would manifestproperties of both systems. In other words, maintaining a distinction betweenk-acquisition and k-learning requires that k-acquisition correspond to what weintuitively think language acquisition ought to be. If it turns out that only somesubpart of language processing and/or k-acquisition is modular, then Schwartz’model cannot be a complete model of second language. It will need to besupplemented with other mechanisms and one of those mechanisms would bei-learning. It would then follow that an explanatory theory of SLA would haveto be compatible with i-learning. The Autonomous Induction Theory wasexplicitly designed to meet this criterion; the Schwartz theory does not.

Schwartz (1993) differenciates between semantics and pragmatics and putssemantics in the linguistic module. She does not explain what the differencebetween semantics and pragmatics is. Establishing a difference has over theyears proven extremely difficult and many semanticists do not consider theterminological distinction to be, pardon the pun, meaningful (Jackendoff 1983,1990b). Schwartz’ claim that semantics belongs in the language module isconsistent with Chomsky’s early view that semantics belongs to the languagefaculty but it is a serious departure from Fodor’s position and, I think, not a


coherent stance. If semantic information can guide a syntactic parse, then thereis no information encapsulation. To be consistent with Fodor’s claims aboutprocessing, we ought to assume that linguistic semantics falls outside of thelanguage module except for those aspects of meaning which are directly con-nected to linguistic structure, such as defining the scope of operators andmodifiers, quantifier-binding, binding of reflexives. In short, Logical Form,which is really syntax, is “in”, reference, coreference, denotation, connotation,inferencing and all supra-sentential interpretation are “out.” So this leaves uswith only the grammar, inside the language module. The construct “language”has been reduced to “grammar”.

Schwartz has written that native speakers can have Learned LinguisticKnowledge about a language’s grammar, for example, when they attend agrammar class on the native language and learn explicitly what its description is.But although Learned Linguistic Knowledge is originally defined as metalingu-istic in nature, this cannot be entirely what Schwartz has in mind, for there couldbe many kinds of k-learned knowledge which are not metalinguistic in nature.Thus, what Schwartz is really contrasting is not Krashen’s distinction betweenk-acquired and k-learned (metalinguistic) knowledge, but rather parameter-settingand i-learning. Observe, now, that much of i-learning will take place indepen-dently of awareness. We cannot tie the distinction between induction andparameter-(re)setting to the distinction between conscious and unconsciouslearning. We thus lose Krashen’s claim that the product of k-learning is con-scious and the produce of k-acquisition is unconscious.8 So, Schwartz has shedthe distinction between naturalistic and metalinguistic learning, as well as thedistinction between conscious and unconscious learning. We are left with thedistinction that knowledge of the grammar will result from bottom-up onlyprocessing of the stimuli. Other types of linguistic knowledge do not. This is,however, a conclusion to emerge from empirical evidence and not evidence forthe distinction. The relevant question to now ask is: Do the processing mecha-nisms which parse knowledge corresponding to grammatical knowledge operatein a strictly bottom-up fashion? The correct response here is “Yes, but also no”.Some aspects of grammatical knowledge appear to be parsed in modular fashion,but others clearly are not.

3.2 Problem two: Fodor’s concept of what a module is is too crude

As Tanenhaus et al. (1985: 361) put it, a central assumption of the Modularity ofMind Hypothesis is that we are “computing different levels of linguistic represen-tations that correspond to separate processing modules”. The most obvious


criticism to level at Fodor’s model is that the grammar must correspond to theprocessor’s modules. Schwartz also adopts this view although it clearly runscounter to the spirit of the Principles and Parameters theory, where, adopting asimple-minded view of the relationship between grammar and processor, wemight expect to find a semantic-role processor, a phrase structure processor, afunction-variable binding processor, and so on. See Frazier (1990) for somesuggestions along precisely these lines. There simply is no reason to assume thatthere must be a single set of processors which correspond to the phonology andsyntax and that they count as part of the relevant modular system with semanticson the outside. The first line of attack has therefore been to show that this slicingof the pie doesn’t work.Consequently, one problem with Fodor’s model is that ismisanalyses the relationship between modular and central processes.

Both Tanenhaus et al. (1990) and Marslen-Wilson and Tyler (1987: 37)argue that the boundaries between language input systems and the centralprocessor do not coincide with the boundaries conventionally drawn betweengrammar and referential semantics and/or pragmatics. It is not the case, therefore,that one can use Fodor’s criteria of modularity to put morphosyntax inside butconceptual processing outside of the language module. There are severalarguments here to be made with respect to Fodor’s definition of modules. I takethem up one by one.

i. The specificity of the processing domain:Fodor makes the inference that if the representations which encode knowledge ina domain are autonomous, then the processor responsible for the domain couldbe modular. Fodor notes, however, and Marslen-Wilson and Tyler insist, quitecorrectly, that the truth of the inference does not follow as a matter of conceptualnecessity. Rather it is a matter of fact. As they emphasise (Marslen-Wilson andTyler 1987: 39), Fodor provides no evidence that the processing which mapsstimuli onto shallow linguistic representations is any more domain specific thanthe processing which maps those shallow linguistic representations onto concept-ual structures. Indeed, we have documented in Chapter 6 evidence that thinkingand problem-solving are domain-specific too in the sense that particular types ofproblem-solving require domain-specific representations and domain-specificoperations on those representations. See Hunter (1966, 1977), Huttenlocher(1968, 1977), Clark (1969, 1977) and Johnson-Laird and Wason (1977a) forfurther discussion.9 Since thinking and problem-solving are for Fodor thedefining responsabilities of the central processor, if they turn out to be domain-specific, this will undercut dramatically the contrast between language processingand central processing which Fodor wants to make.


ii. Obligatory or automatic processing:The existence of obligatory or automatic processes has been well-documented(see Posner and Snyder 1975; Shiffrin and Schneider 1977; Marslen-Wilson andTyler 1980, 1981; for discussion in the SLA literature, see Bialystok 1979, 1982;McLaughlin, Rossman, and McLeod 1983; McLeod and McLaughlin 1986).Marslen-Wilson and Tyler (1987) point out, however, that there is no evidenceto show, and no reason to suppose, that the automatic projection of linguisticstimuli onto higher-order representations stops precisely at the level of computingmorphosyntactic representations. They argue in contrast (Marslen-Wilson andTyler 1987: 39) that innormal first-pass processingthe projection of linguisticstimuli onto a discourse interpretation can be as obligatory as the processing ofthe lower-order representations. Once again, this weakens the contrast that Fodorwants to make between the processing of grammatical representations and theprocessing of conceptual ones.

iii. Limited access to intermediate representations by the central processor:The central processor, according to Fodor and Schwartz, has limited access to theintermediate shallow representations. This hypothesis is designed to explain whywe cannot introspect on-line about the nature of the syllable structures of thespeech stream — we merely “hear” sounds in a particular way. Marslen-Wilsonand Tyler (1987: 40) observe that all of this might be true without it sayinganything at all about which level of processing is the one most readily accessibleto the central processor.10 Fodor merely assumes it must be the morphosyntax.He provides no empirical evidence to bolster this assumption.

Jackendoff (1989: 117–8) questions the very concept of a central processorà la Fodor. He reports on an experiment by Lackner and Tuller (1976) in whichsubjects heard repeated instances of stimuli like those in (7.2).

(7.2) a. the sun I see the sun I see the sun I see…b. I like to fish I like to fish I like to fish

After listening to the uninterrupted sequences for a while, subjects reportedhearing quite different sequences, which apparently arise as the result ofspontaneously regrouping the cues in the stimuli into an alternative representa-tion. Subjects reported hearing (7.3).

(7.3) a. ice on the sea ice on the sea ice on the sea…b. to fish, I like; to fish, I like; to fish, I like

Along with the reported changes in lexical items were reported changes in stressand intonation. Jackendoff (1989: 118) concludes:


This experiment shows that multiple interpretations are not limited to theconceptual or syntactic level but extend down even to the level of phonologicalstructure, including intonation. This confirms the claim that STLM [short termlinguistic memory, SEC] is computing all levels in registration with each otherand that the selection function is choosing not just a high-level conceptualstructure but the syntactic and phonological structures in registration with it. Itwould thus seem to dispel any notion that the selection function is performedby a “higher-level cognitive device” that deals exclusively with central levelsof representation such as meaning or even syntax.

Data like this thus suggest that the idea of a central processor interacting with agrammatical module provide a poor model of language processing. Observe thatthey also provide evidence for top-down effects on the processing of bothphonological and morphosyntactic processing. The grammar is not an inputsystem in the sense Fodor intended.

iv. Modular processing is fastThe processing of speech is very fast, but this does not inform us about theboundaries between modular and the central processes (Marslen-Wilson andTyler 1987: 40). Marslen-Wilson and Tyler (1987: 44–61) provide a resumé ofexperimental studies involving word monitoring, the resolution of syntacticambiguity, and the use of pragmatic inference in anaphor resolution to show thatmapping onto a mental model can be just as fast as a putative mapping onto adisambiguated syntactic representation, even when it involves pragmatic inferen-cing. In other words, having recourse to background information, performinginferencing based on contextual information, visual information or informationfrom outside the hypothesised language module can be extremely fast. Onceagain, this undercuts the division that Fodor makes between it and the processingof grammatical representations.

v. Information encapsulationA module is informationally encapsulated if the information available in and/orderived from central processing cannot direct or guide processing within the module.Marslen-Wilson and Tyler (1987: 41) point out that information encapsulation isnot a diagnostic feature of modularity in the same way as the other criteria.Rather, it is definable only in terms of the relationship between the modular andconceptual systems. They note too that there are a number of construals of thisconstraint on sentence processing. One version, which they dub “autonomousprocessing”, citing Forster (1979), claims that the output of each processor isdetermined strictly by its input provided in a bottom-up only fashion.11 There isalso output autonomy, meaning that each processor constructs representations


only in a given representational format, and, finally, there may belate interactionof semantic with morphosyntactic information(Linebarger 1989: 199–200). Thisthird type of encapsulation permits a number of different relationships betweenthe grammatical and conceptual processing systems. All possible parses might becomputed with the “correct” one being selected late in the parse based on amatch with concurrent parses in the nextup processor. Marslen-Wilson and Tylersuggest that Fodor is prepared to live with the third version (Fodor 1983: 76–78),namely a limited amount of top-down communication taking place late in theparse. Schwartz explicitly denies this possibility. Her view of modularity rather,seems to one of input and output autonomy, which therefore makes it incompati-ble with the evidence showing that conceptual information can affect processingas early as lexical recognition. Let me develop this further with an extensivequote from Marslen-Wilson and Tyler (1987: 41)

Top-down communication between levels of linguistically specified representa-tion does not violate the principle of informational encapsulation… Thelanguage module as a whole, however, is autonomous in the standard sense.No information that is not linguistically specified — at the linguistic levels upto and including logical form — can affect operations within the module.Fodor believes that the cost of fast, mandatory operation in the linguistic inputsystem is isolation from everything else the perceiver knows.

As stated, this claim cannot be completely true. When listeners encountersyntactically ambiguous strings, where only pragmatic knowledge can resolvethe ambiguity, they nonetheless seem to end up with the structural analysis thatbest fits the context. To cope with this, Fodor does allow a limited form ofinteraction at the syntactic interface between the language module and centralprocesses. The central processes can give the syntactic parser feedback aboutthe semantic and pragmatic acceptability of the structures it has computed(Fodor 1983, pp. 134–135). Thus, in cases of structural ambiguity, extra-modular information does affect the outcome of linguistic analysis. (Marslen-Wilson and Tyler 1987: 41).

Marslen-Wilson and Tyler (1987: 41) then go on to make clear that to ensureautonomy, Fodor must prohibit the syntactic parser from being told which parseto pursue by the discourse processor; semantic information cannot be used toguide the parse on-line. As Marslen-Wilson and Tyler (1987: 41) emphasise,however, this means that the claim for information encapsulation hinges entirelyon the point during the parse at which the contextual resolution of syntacticambiguities occurs, a question for which Fodor himself provides no empiricalevidence. They argue, in contrast, using the same evidence already cited, thatcontext does direct the parser on-line. In particular, citing experimental work by


Marslen-Wilson and Young (1984), they describe a naming experiment in whichsubjects heard one of two contextally-situating clauses followed by an ambiguousfragment such as those in (7.4). See Marslen-Wilson and Tyler (1987: 49–50).See Tyler (1989: 446–8) as well.

(7.4) a. If you want a cheap holiday, visiting relatives … (Adjectival bias)b. If you have a spare bedroom, visiting relatives … (Gerund bias)

(Marslen-Wilson and Tyler 1987: 49).

Immediately after the offset of the /s/ of the wordrelatives, subjects saw avisual probe which either was or was not an appropriate continuation of theambiguous fragment (is or are). Subjects named the probe and were timed doingso. Marslen-Wilson and Tyler (1987: 49) report a significantly faster naminglatency to appropriate probes. They conclude that nonlinguistic context affectsthe determination of a syntactic analysis very early on. While these results do notforce one to adopt an interactive parsing model, in contrast to one where severalsyntactic parses are simultaneously computed and then the appropriate one selectedat the earliest possible moment from contextual information, Marslen-Wilson andTyler (1987:51) point out it becomes impossible empirically to distinguish betweenthe two approaches. Information encapsulation will not decide the issue.

In addition to the studies reviewed in Marslen-Wilson and Tyler (1987),Marslen-Wilson (1989) provides a considerable amount of evidence suggestingthat the lexicon must be excised out from the modular grammar. They proposethe interactive model in Figure 7.3.

According to this modification of Fodor’s proposals, processing becomesinteractive at the point of lexical selection. TheCohort Modelof lexical activa-tion and selection proposed by Marslen-Wilson requires that the (modular)processing of the speech signal produce a representation which will then activateall lexical representations with the same phonological representation, linearly,left-to-right. These multiple activations constitute the Cohort. As the phonologicalprocessing continues more and more entries will be deactivated, eventuallyreducing the activated entry to just one or to a handful (in the case of homo-phones). However, Marslen-Wilson has emphasised that hearers are able torecognise a word without hearing the whole thing. His explanation of thisremarkable ability is that word recognition cannot literally involving matchingthe signal onto the lexicon but rather must involve projecting an appropriateword onto the signal. This projection appears to crucially involve informationfrom the on-going mental model of the discourse. So the selection of theappropriate “lemma”, in Levelt’s (1989) terminology, involves interactionbetween the grammar, the lexicon, and the conceptual system.


Under this revision, Fodor’s language faculty is simply carved up into

Figure 7.3.Interactive parallel parsing

Assume that each stage of processing occurs more-or-less simultaneously.

Semantic and conceptualprocessing

→ Semantic representationsof the sentence within the

ongoing discourse↑

Syntactic parser → Syntactic representations(including LF)

↑Lexical selection and

lexical integration← On-going model of discourse

↑Lexical Activation

↑Phonological parser → Phonological

Representations

smaller “boxes”, what Jackendoff (1989: 101) has dubbed “minimodules”. Thus,phonology becomes a minimodule. Whether syntax is also a module is controver-sial. Marslen-Wilson’s current position, I believe, is that syntactic processing iscompletely interactive so that only the phonology is modular. Other modularityfans are basically forced to concede the lexicon but argue that syntax can still bemodular after word recognition. Under this view of things, the lexicon becomes,as Jackendoff (1983) argues, a set of correspondences between the autonomousrepresentational systems phonology and morphosyntax. What strikes me,however, is that the modified modular proposals shown in Figure 7.3 correspondto a very structuralist view of language processing. Structuralism has taught usthat explanation of linguistic knowledge requires various autonomous representa-tional systems — phonetics, phonology, morphosyntax, derivational morphology,semantics, etc. But it is a great conceptual leap to conclude, as Karmiloff-Smith(1992) has reminded us, that autonomous representational systems are modular.A second leap is made when we move from the need for autonomous representa-tions to the claim that processing is modular throughout development.12

Observe that the structuralist box view of linguistic cognition goes againstthe spirit of the P&P approach, by which I mean the insight that knowledge oflanguage arises from the complex interaction of certain very abstract principles.Carried over to processing, in an admittedly simplistic way, we would expectthat it too takes place on the basis of the deployment of abstract principles which


cut across the components of the grammar. The components of the grammar wouldthen not need be modules even in a modular theory of the grammar. With somethinglike this in mind, Frazier (1990) has proposed that there are several postlexicalmodules, also a significant weakening of Fodor’s position. See Figure 7.4.

central system reference binding c-command

θ-predication c-structure sisterhood

Figure 7.4.Frazier’s modularity (Frazier 1990: 413)

We come to the conclusion that there is a certain lack of coherence betweenSchwartz’ adoption of the P&P theory of grammar, her use of this theory toaccount for L2 acquisition, and the Fodorian view of parsing. How a system likeFrazier’s, whichis compatible with the P&P theory, actually would enter intoacquisition matters is hardly obvious.

We are far from having consensus on which parts of the processing systemrespect information encapsulation. I do not require consensus on this point,however; I merely need some agreement among psycholinguists that thegram-mar is not informationally encapsulated. That agreement can be found.

vi. How to define the dedicated neurological structure?There can be no doubt that dedicated structures relevant to language of some sortexist (Marshall 1980) but it is also clear that there are no “language zones” inthe brain. Chomsky, in arguing for his “UG as mental organ” metaphor (Chomsky1980c) has argued that one cannot state where the circulation system begins andends. This might be correct, nevertheless, the heart is delimited sufficiently tomake heart transplants possible. There is no “language lobe” which could besimilarly removed from the brain. It may well be that language and evengrammar are distributed across the parts of the brain in much the way connectio-nists claims. For some evidence to this effect, see Caplan and Hildebrandt(1988) and R.-A. Müller (1996). The literature on brain-imaging provides furthersupport for this idea. The connection between linguistic cognition and neuro-chemical processing is even more complex making the claim as to what “counts”as a dedicated neuroanatomical structure difficult to assess at the present.

One of the most striking facts aboutThe Modularity of Mindis that theempirical evidence for the neurological basis of modularity comes entirely fromstudies of aphasia. This evidence shows that certain types of aphasia differential-ly affect language and the conceptual systems. But the evidence is problematicinsofar as, say, Broca’s or Wernicke’s aphasics apparently manifest disturbances


only to somesubpartsof their linguistic knowledge. It isn’t the case that all oflanguage or even all of the grammar is disturbed. One can read Fodor as sayinglanguage is a box; facial recognition is another box; problem-solving and centralprocessing is a third, and the operations in each box do not affect one another.Given his intended audience — psychologists, and others committed to anundifferentiated theory of mind, this makes sense for the existence of specifical-ly linguistic disturbances in an undifferentiated mind is surely surprising.However, once we grant autonomy and modularity as possibilities, what isstriking is that the disturbances affect quite specific sub-parts of the grammaticalcomponents. Contemporary work on aphasia suggests that impairments inprocessing affect subparts of the traditional grammatical components. Thisprovides additional evidence that the structuralist views of grammatical compo-nents (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics) do not lend themselves readilyto the psycholinguistic facts and will have to be modified (Caplan and Hilde-brand 1988; Emmorey and Fromkin 1988; Linebarger 1989). Aphasic break-downs occur along other lines. Consider in this regard, Kean’s (1977, 1980) nowwell-known arguments that the telegraphic speech typical of Broca’s aphasia isthe result of a phonological deficit. Kean argues that the language processors insuch patients are not computing the relevant distinctions between clitics andphonological words. The deficit is quite specific; the computational system is notmaking a given distinction with respect to phonological form which has conse-quences for the shape of morphosyntactic representations. But notice that thephonological system in its entirety is not disrupted. The deficit does not other-wise affect the subject’s knowledge of syllable structure constraints, or herknowledge of stress placement. Comparable remarks can be made about morpho-syntactic processing. Caplan and Hildebrandt show that antecedent-trace relationscan be rendered inaccessible. Subjects exhibiting this particular pattern ofdisturbance do not necessarily manifest disturbances elsewhere in the syntacticsystem, say in their knowledge of predication or modification patterns. There canbe quite specific disturbances affecting the lexicon, for example, an aphasicpatient might read nonce expressions but not be able to write them to dictation(Beauvois and Dérousné 1979). Emmory and Fromkin (1988) review a numberof studies which demonstrate how localised within the lexicon such disassoca-tions can be. Moreover, they do not just affect the phonological or morpho-syntactic representations in the lexicon. An aphasic can exhibit quite specificsemantic deficits having almost all of his lexical semantics intact but beingunable to access words from one semantic field. So the evidence does notsupport a cut between grammar and semantics, and suggests, moreover, that thedeficits are affecting subparts of grammatical knowledge, not the grammar itself.


If the grammar were a module, one would predict exactly the opposite.To sum up, research in aphasia makes it difficult to support Fodor’s claim

that a module corresponds to a specific neuroanatomical structure. There is nosimple association between parts of the brain and grammar, on the one hand, andspecific impairments typically manifest much smaller parts of the grammar, thelexicon, or the semantic system. Neurolinguistic research provides little supportfor the idea that there is a either “language organ” or a “grammar organ” in anynon-metaphorical sense.

vii. Developmental dissociationsSimilar conclusions can be made on the basis of ontogenesis. Dissociationsbetween grammatical development and intelligence as measured by standardisedintelligence tests do not of themselves support Fodor’s claims. Conceptualdevelopment, as we have seen, manifests a characteristic pace and path. Similarobservations must be made about metalinguistic development, problem-solving,and inferencing. Fodor’s ontogenetic argument, if construed as a sufficientcondition for modularity, would support the claim that just about all of cognitionis modular. Even SLI is not such a clear example supporting Fodor’s position.All of the studies mentioned earlier proposing a specifically linguistic deficit (asopposed to a general one) claim that some single aspect of the morphosyntax isaffected (binding, government, agreement, or morphosyntactic features limitedonly to suffixes). There is no general syntactic deficit proposed. In addition,none of this data involves on-line studies of language processing, so they dealnot with modularity but with the autonomy question.

Let me conclude Subsection 3.2: The empirical data from processing doesnot support the idea that grammatical processing is encapsulated, operatingindependently of the conceptual system. At best we have evidence for modularprocessing in the phonetic system. We have, however, seen substantial evidencefor the Autonomy Hypotheses. Fodor’s arguments for modularity are in realityarguments for the autonomy of grammatical representations.

3.3 Problem three: The relationship between parsing and knowledge in profi-cient native speakers and acquisition in L2 learners is unclear

Even if we had a theory of parsing for adult native speakers, it is hardly obviousthat it should generalise in a straightforward way to second language acquisition.While it may be true that parsing in such adults is mandatory, unconscious, andfast, there is no reason to assume at present that parsing in learners exhibits thesame properties. There has been little exploration of the nature of parsing in


learners beyond those works cited in earlier chapters, and few of these studiesask how parsing changes over time. Generative studies of parsing in L2 learnersare few and far between. This means that SLA generativists mainly have studiesof native speakers to rely on. It is hardly obvious that evidence derived fromstudies of such speaker/hearers with highly overlearned parsing procedures andthe “right kind” of grammars will carry over to learners hearing forms andstructures for the first time. In addition, the generative parsing models availablepresuppose that the language has been acquired. They explore the question ofhow linguistic knowledge is deployed in real-time (e.g. Frazier 1978; Pritchett1987, 1992; Gorrell 1995). They do not ask the question: How do parsingmechanisms interact with acquisition mechanisms? They simply have nothing tosay about this. I have already introduced the one major exploration of therelationship between parsing and language acquisition in primary languageacquisition within a UG perspective, namely Berwick (1985). It is quite limitedin its scope, examining only the acquisition of certain basic parameters of syntax,and presupposes that lexical acquisition, including the acquisition of majorsyntactic classes is complete when syntactic parameter-setting occurs. How thishappens is not spelt out but it is assumed that conceptual knowledge will play arole in telling the learner which categories in the input will correspond to THINGcategories, which to ACTIONS, which to EVENTS, etc. So Berwick is assumingsome form of semantic bootstrapping where prior conceptual structures guidesmorphosyntactic classification. To accept bootstrapping in acquisition is to denythat information goes bottom-up only from the stimulus to the conceptual system.

What about the phonetic module? I made the point above that there is someconsensus emerging among psycholinguists that the phonetic processors may bemodules in Fodor’s sense. Recall that phonetic acquisition may be an instance ofcanalisation. We observed that the neonate has perceptual discriminationcapacities which can categorically distinguish certain basic contrasts. Over thenext few months the capacity emerges to discriminate all of the phoneticdistinctions needed to acquire natural languages.13 However, as observed byJusczyk and his associates (Jusczyk, Pisoni, Walley, and Murray 1980; Jusczyk,Pisoni, Reed, Fernald, and Myers 1983; Jusczyk, Rosner, Reed, and Kennedy1989), there are numerous parallels between enfants’ processing of speech soundsand their processing of complex non-speech sounds, so that general auditorymechanisms might be responsible for the initial development of speech percep-tion (Jusczyk 1992: 43). Kent (1992) has, in like fashion, drawn explicit parallelsbetween the development of speech production and general biological develop-ment, especially motor development. How do we relate these facts to the issueof autonomy and modularity in development? As we saw previously in the


discussion of innateness, one can grant that a cognitive system can be understrong biological control and still manifest experience-dependent learning (see,e.g. Kent 1992; Locke and Pearson 1992). Jusczyk (1992), for example, iscommitted to the view that knowledge of the sound system is in some sensegiven. The infant’s knowledge of the specific properties of her L1 develops soquickly that acquisition processes must be exploiting autonomous representations.However, they are interacting constantly with stimuli and non-language specificperception. In short, one can observe parallelisms across cognitive domainswithout denying autonomy. The converse also holds; the existence of auton-omous representational systems does not preclude the deployment of generalauditory or motor mechanisms.

3.4 Problem four: It cannot be true that all grammatical restructuring takesplace as a direct consequence of a failure to process input bottom-up

In a modular system the prompt for the acquisition mechanism to go into actioncan only be the failure of the parser to correctly analyse input arriving fromprocessors lower down in the analysis system. This is because each module canonly analyse module-internal information or inputs derived as outputs of suchprocessors. In particular, whether the current grammar is compatible with thelearner’s mental model of the language, his represented beliefs about the currentsituation or how conceptual representations is irrelevant. Conceptual representa-tions cannot trigger acquisition. Interpreted in the context of the P&P theory, twoobvious drawbacks from this assumption arise. The first is that it predicts rapidrestructuring of the L2 interlanguage grammar whenever novel input requires re-structuring. Since parameters are binary, there can be no doubt about the conse-quences of parameter-resetting. If setting “+P” doesn’t work, then setting “−P”is the only alternative. The fact that learners may and do tolerate several represen-tations of the same grammatical information over time is incompatible with theclaim that restructuring occurs on-line in response to a parsing failure. Flynn’sfrequent assertions that L2 learners need time to “work out the consequences ofparameter-resetting” is difficult to interpret if we attempt to understand parame-ter-(re)setting in terms of modularity, parsing and the triggers for learning. Theassumption also fails to explain why restructuring occurs even when the learner’srepresentation seems to accurately match the input (Bowerman 1981a, 1982a, b,1987; Karmiloff-Smith 1986, 1989; de Bot et al. 1995).


4. Whither Linguistic Competence?

Recall that Schwartz defines the term “Linguistic Competence” as the knowledgewhich results from acquiring language via modular processing. This usageconstitutes a radical departure from the way this term is normally used inlinguistics and psycholinguistics. Chomsky (1965: 4) originally introduced theterm linguistic competenceas a general cover term for whatever knowledge aspeaker-hearer requires to understand or produce a sentence of his language. Thatknowledge was considered to include semantics, writ large, and I see no reasonto abandon that usage. To adopt Schwartz’ position is to use the terms “linguisticcompetence” and “language” to denote an ever smaller range of phenomena,leaving many of the things we want to discuss and analyse outside of thepurview of a theory of “language”. This is hardly an outcome to be desired.Schwartz’ Linguistic Competence could not include semantics and lexicalknowledge since they fall outside the modules. We were obliged to placesemantics outside of Linguistic Competence because there is no real distinctionbetween semantics and pragmatics and pragmatics must belong to the domain ofnon-modular knowledge. Linebarger (1989: 201–2) has made the important pointthat the distinction between what counts as syntax and what counts as semanticshas been considerably obscured in generative grammar. This has obviousconsequences for claims that syntactic processing is or is not influenced byinformation encoded in conceptual representations. If semantic information wereto be distributed across modules, it would make it extremely difficult to testclaims about the encapsulation of information, or indeed about the autonomy ofrepresentational systems. I shall argue below that we do find semantic informa-tion distributed across modules. Finally, consider that maybe only the phonologyis modular in Schwartz’ sense. If so, then Linguistic Competence would reduceto phonological knowledge alone. I doubt if even Schwartz would be willing tolive with this result.

4.1 What does a psychogrammar really consist of?

Having argued that language acquisition theory must concern itself with the develop-ment of psychogrammars, I will now try to establish just how rich that constructis, and by implication, how impoverished the construct Schwartz invokes is.

4.1.1RulesBaker (1991) has argued that psychogrammars must include rules in addition touniversals. He argues for a language-specific rule of movement (Not-movement)


which violates several assumptions of P&P theory (and a fortiori the Minimalistprogram), namely it mentions a language-particular contextual term, is obligatory,and requires the presence of a construction that exhibits idiosyncratic lexicalrestrictions. In addition, Baker argues that the properties are not the incidentalresult of the application of universal principles (Baker 1991: 389). Consequently,the phenomenon in question falls within the so-calledperipheryof the grammar,rather than its core. It should be understood, given the nature of the phenomenon,that this terminological distinction can hardly relate to the conceptual, semanticor syntactic importance of a structure — negation in English is of centralimportance. Rather, it falls within the periphery because it is rule-governed,rather than the consequence of parameter-setting.

Baker (1991: 399–400) proposes the analysis in (7.5) to account for thefacts in (7.6).

(7.5) a. A finite verb must move to the left ofnot. This rule requires a spe-cial-purpose verb phrase.

not V (obligatory)[+Tense]

Condition: V must be [+Special]

b. The special purpose verb phrase as defined in (7.5d) and (7.5e) fallswithin the general class of limited-use phrases.

c. A limited-use phrase can be employed only when it is specificallycalled for by the grammar.

d. do is a verb and takes a VP as a complement.e. For most English verbs, the special-purpose variant of a VP is formed

with do. Modals, perfecthave, andbehave special-purpose VPsidentical in form to the general-purpose phrase.

(7.6) a. *Carol not will send the package.b. Carol never/always/frequently (will) send(s) the package.c. *Carol not sends the package.d. Carol will not send the package.e. *Carol sends not the package.f. Harold never WAS very polite.g. *Harold WAS never very polite.h. Carol does not send the package.i. *Carol does send the package.j. *Carol does never send the package.k. Carol DOES send packages.l. Carol SENDS packages.


Sentences (7.6a, c) show that the VP-scope-taking adverbnot cannot appear tothe left of a tensed verb, while (7.6b) shows that other adverbs can appear inprecisely this position.14 Sentence (7.6d) shows that modals can appear to the leftof the adverb while (7.6e) shows that non-modal and non-auxiliary verbs cannot.Sentences (7.6f, g) show that Focus blocks the appearance of the auxiliaries andmodals to the left of the adverb. Sentences (7.6h–l) show thatdo must beinserted whennot appears and may occur when the predicate is focused.

Recall that there are core grammar analyses of negation anddo-supportwhich do not use lexically-specific rules to account for the facts (Pollock 1989and Chomsky 1991c). These analyses are construed in the SLA P&P literature asan exact account of the linguistic knowledge of native speakers and L2 learnerswho have attained the relevant proficiency. They posit novel functional cat-egories (Tns, Neg, Agr), general movement schemas, and a parametric differencebetween languages that have “strong” Agr and those that have “weak” Agr,where these terms are meant to refer to the semantic-role assigning properties ofAgr. So in English, tense gets lowered onto the verb stem in VP because Agr is“weak” and only non-semantic-role assigning verbs can raise, while in a lan-guage like French, all verbs raise. See the intermediate derived structures in(7.7). We saw that precisely this parametric difference between the two lan-guages is designed to explain why in French the adverb is normally to the rightof the verb (Jean voit souvent son amie) while in English it appears to the left ofthe verb. (John often sees his friendbut *John sees often his friend)

(7.7) a. TP

DP

John + Nomi

Tns′

Tns

Pres

AgrP

ti

Agr′

Agr VP

ti VP

V ′

see his friend

Adv

often


b. TP

DP

John + Nomi

Tns′

tj

j

AgrP

Agr′

Agr

ti

VP

Adv

often

V ′

V0 DP

see+Pres his friend

In order to explain the existence ofdo-support in English, it is hypothesised thatNeg heads a projection of its own above VP and that lowering of the Tns to anembedded position beneath it leads to an Empty Category Principle violation.15

It must be emphasised that there are many accounts of these facts in thelinguistics’ literature, so what is relevant to the discussion is the adequacy of anygiven account. Baker (and Iatridou 1990) make a case that in order to get anaccount in terms of principles and parameters of UG, there are unacceptablecosts. Baker lists (i) granting every adverb in English (but not in French) twod-structure positions as modifiers of Tns and as modifiers of V. This move is adhoc. (ii) There must also be dual lexical specifications for the same adverbs sothat they will project into the syntax in the correct fashion. (iii) This move alsoentails a second but otherwise unmotivated parametric choice within UG. (iv)The analysis also entails complications in the representation of modals andauxiliaries. (v) Since the differences between raising verbs and verbs which donot raise has been attributed to semantic-role assigning differences, there oughtto be semantic differences across the relevant sets of verbs to explain well-known dialectal differences (John doesn’t have a car/John hasn’t a car). In myEnglish (where both forms exist), there is no obvious difference in meaning,although these two sentences might differ in register.16 (vi) Pollock treatsdo inimperatives, e.g.Don’t be cruel!as a quite distinct phenomenon from dummydo.Rather he regards it as main verbdo although this is entirely inconsistent withthe semantics ofdo in this sentence. The only motivation for this move is that itis required by the analysis. (vii) He postulates an empty verb Ø, a null version


of dummy do to account for simple affirmative sentences, e.g.John left. Notonly is this move ad hoc but it raises some rather obvious difficulties forlanguage acquisition. Why would a language learner postulate both a phoneticallynull and a phonetically full dummy verb? Chomsky’s analysis posits an inter-mediate Agr present at S-structure but missing at LF, which is equally ad hoc.

In short, the P&P analysis of English negation is problematic. Let us assumethat Baker’s conclusions in this instance are well-founded. Then the conclusionsfor us in acquisition are straightforward — psychogrammars consists not only ofrepresentations constructed out of the interaction of principles and parameters,they also includes representations constructed on the basis of rules. We mustassume that these rules are acquired since they are language-specific. Indeed, ifBaker is correct, they are lexical-item specific. The consequences are obvious: toexplain this type of cross-linguistic variation, the LAD must include mechanismscapable of learning the rules. What could this mechanism be except a mechanismwhich induces rules?17

Let us suppose that we grant that rule-learning must be one of the possibleoutputs of the language acquisition mechanisms. What mechanisms must we thengrant? One move to make (in the spirit of Schwartz’ approach) would be todistinguish two classes of rules, say k-acquired and i-learned rules. If one indeedtook this option, one would then have to demonstrate empirically that the rule-learning needed to explain the distribution and interpretation ofnot and do inEnglish constitute an instance of k-acquired rules. K-acquired rule learning wouldbe different from i-learning in that it would be bottom-up, automatic andmodular. The demonstration of empirical differences between k-acquired rulesand i-learned rules would be anything but straightforward. Let me therefore turnto another class of problems, involving the interaction of meaning and form.

4.1.2Meaning and formMeaning and form are intertwined throughout the grammar. This is hardlysurprising since language is normally used to convey meaning. The question ofinterest for a modular theory of parsing is: Can one design a theory of parsing inwhich conceptual structures and mental models do not drive the construction ofphonological and morphosyntactic representations? At the moment the answer isopen, but, as we have seen, it is well understood in contemporary parsingtheories that conceptual information is used at various points during a parse. Itis simply not clear whether it is determining the nature of a syntactic parse ormerely selecting among a number of options made available by an informatio-nally encapsulated syntactic processor.


The question for a theory of language acquisition is quite different: Can oneacquire the properties of language specific phenomena without deployingsemantic information in order to properly delimit the class of structural phenom-ena? I’m going to try to make the case that you can’t, and moreover I’m going to tryto show to what extent semantic constructs are already embedded in the theory ofgrammar. Consequently, it will be virtually impossible to make the kind of grammar/semantics and acquisition/learning bifurcation that Schwartz is trying to make.

I have been able to locate in the literature 3 different potential problems forSchwartz’s approach: (i) prosodic meaning, (ii) the status of language-specificsemantic phenomena, in particular, constructions whose use depends on thedeployment of pragmatic information (iii) the nature and status of the lexicon.

i. Prosodic meaningThe prosodic systems of tone, pitch-range, loudness, tempo and rhythm can allindicate expressive (non-logical) aspects of meaning. In other words, we usethese systems to infer information about the speaker’s state of mind, his attitudestowards what he is saying, or to some proposition in the on-going discourse(Crystal 1969: Ch. 7). Increased loudness can indicate anger. Increased tempo canindicate excitedness. Particular tone contours can be used to infer sarcasm, doubtor disbelief, etc. In short, various aspects of the acoustic-phonetic signal servesas a basis for drawing conclusions about the speaker, which are of an obviouslypragmatic sort. In the Schwartz model, this kind of inferencing should take placein the central processor. Notice, however, that the central processor has no directaccess to the acoustic-phonetic attributes of the signal. Consequently, the centralprocessor doesn’t have the relevant input. It is also important to note that theparticular acoustic-phonetic property-meaning correspondence is language orlanguage-community specific. We are not talking about universals here. So thecorrespondences must be learned. If the central processor cannot see the prop-erties of phonetic representations, and if it cannot influence the processing of thisinformation, it is not obvious how the relevant correspondences betweenacoustic-phonetic property and pragmatic inference could be acquired.18

A related, but not so clear set of cases involve the acoustic-phoneticcorrespondents of information structures, i.e. of new and old information or focusconstructions. The stress placement in the sentences of (7.8) are relatable topresuppositions, presuppositions being encoded in conceptual structures.

(7.8) a. What HAPPENED?The BOOK fell over.The BOOK fell OVER.

*The BOOK FELL over.


b. WHAT fell over?The BOOK fell over.

*The book FELL over.c. Did you throw the book against the wall?

No, it just FELL OVER.*No, the BOOK fell over.

That the placement of nuclear stress has implications for interpretation is not indebate (Halliday 1967; Chomsky 1970; Jackendoff 1972, 1995; Selkirk 1984).Nor is it in doubt that the proper interpretation of such discourse depends uponmental models of the ongoing discourse, stored information about the world, etc.(Culicover and Rochemont 1983; Rochemont 1986). What is, however, ofcontrovery is whether the acoustic-phonetic properties can be directly read by theconceptual system or whether there is a morphosyntactic feature, namely[+Focus], assigned to morphosyntactic representations on the basis of theprosodic characteristics of stimuli, which in turn serves as input to the conceptualsystem (Jackendoff 1972, 1995; Selkirk 1984; Culicover and Rochemont 1983;Rochemont 1986; Winkler 1994). It is normally assumed in generative treatmentsof information structure that there is a mediating syntactic feature. The argumentsfor this assumption, as far as I can tell, are theory internal rather than empirical,in other words, it is precisely to preserve separate and non-interacting compo-nents in the Y-model of transformational generative linguistics (Chomsky andLasnik 1977) that the syntactic feature is needed.19 This model is shown in (7.9).

(7.9) d-structure

s-structure

phonological form (PF) logical form (LF)

phonetic interpretation conceptual interpretation

The bifurcation of the grammar into two distinct “interpretive” components PFand LF makes it essential to have abstract features like [+Focus] so that bothinterpretive components of the competence grammar get the right input.

The model in (7.9) is a competence model. It certainly does not correspondto a model of parsing. What assumptions would be needed to preserve theinformation-encapsulation of the grammar? Minimally, one would need toassume that there were a unique set of acoustic-phonetic or phonologicalproperties which could be put into correspondence with the [+Focus] feature, inturn assigned to a morphosyntactic constituent, which would then be fed into the


conceptual system to be interpreted. Unfortunately, there is no such unique set ofproperties — as Chomsky (1970) made clear, the same structure and prosodycould derive multiple foci. The actual selection of a relevant focus thus dependson the use of information in the current MM of the discourse. Consequently,learning the correspondence between the feature and the prosody means thatpragmatic information must interact with phonetic information.

ii. Pragmatics, syntactic structures, and the language facultyPrince (1988) has pointed out that the term “pragmatics” is not well understoodinsofar as it is often used to characterise a disparate set of phenomena. Someaspects of interpretation of sentences in discourse are not linguistic in that aninference does not require any knowledge of the language beyond the ability toprocess the literal meaning of the utterance. She provides the cases in (7.10).

(7.10) a. It’s cold in here.b. Shut the window.

(Prince 1988: 166)

Prince observes with respect to (7.10a) that it can, in some particular context,pragmatically implicate (7.10b). In other words, the uttering of (7.10a) will beconstrued as if it meant (7.10b). In at least some contexts, that is precisely themeaning of (7.10a) that the speaker will have intended. Prince, however, addsthat the existence of cases such as (7.10) does not mean that there is no linguisticinferencing at all, i.e. inferencing in which drawing the correct implicaturedepends precisely on the knowledge of what a given linguistic structure canmean in a given context. She then proceeds to investigate a number of caseswhere the inferencing must be language-specific, and hence acquired with thelanguage. For example, English has a specific construction for presenting focusedinformation, namely theit-cleft.

(7.11) a. [Whether the Israelis found Eichmann alone, or whether someoneinformed them, is not known. Both Wiesenthal and a second Nazi-hunter, Toviah Friedman, have claimed that …]i. … they found Eichmann.ii. … it was they who found Eichmann.

b. [Just last week Eichmann’s supporters claimed he would never befound and this morning Wiesenthal and Friedman announced that …]i. … they found Eichmannii. #… it was they who found Eichmann.(Prince 1988: 168)


Both the clefted and non-clefted sentences in (7.11a) are fine because they bothcan be construed as having the presupposition SOMEONE FOUND EICHMANNand the new information SOMEONE = WIESENTHAL AND FRIEDMAN. Incontrast, (7.11bii) provides a presupposition SOMEONE FOUND EICHMANNwhere none is possible. Prince then goes on to demonstrate that the informationstructure of the cleft construction does not follow from some nonlinguisticiconicity and that a closely related language, namely Yiddish, has no constructionwhich syntactically highlights the focused constituent, while syntacticallysubordinating the presupposed information. Yiddish has a functionally equivalentconstruction — thedosconstruction. See (7.12).

(7.12) a. … zey hobn gefunen aykhmanen they have found Eichmann

b. … dos hobn zey gefunen aykhmanen this have they found Eichmann… it have they found Eichmann(Prince 1988: 169)

The construction in (7.12b) consists of a dummy NP in initial position, a raisedauxiliary verb (V2 position), postposed subject and VP. The same structure canbe found in thees-construction which has quite a different semantics. So, thebasic point is that the functions of these different constructions are the samecross-linguistically but their syntax is language-specific, and so, obviously, is thecorrespondence between the syntax and the pragmatic functions. I conclude thatthe correspondence must be acquired.

Now let us return to our basic question: How could a learner learn therelationship between the syntax and the pragmatics of these constructions?According to the Schwartz proposals, the acquisition must proceed in such a waythat the syntax can be acquired independently of the semantics, bottom-up. Butsurely there is nothing in syntactic parsing which requires thatIt is John whobroke the glassshould have a different discourse implicature thanJohn broke theglass. See (7.13).

(7.13) A: Someone broke a glass in the kitchen.B: It was JOHN who did it.A: I beg your pardon?B: JOHN broke the glass.

#John broke the GLASS.

In the cases in question, even if we assume that the syntactic representationincludes a Focus feature onJohn in (7.13), for example, it is still the case that


the learner must be able to learn the appropriate meanings (what Focus entails)and establish the appropriate functions for the structure in discourse. Parsing maynot require working backwards (or downwards) from the pragmatic system to thesyntax but it is difficult to see how the pragmatic functions could be acquiredand the correspondences between the syntactic form and the meaning madewithout such a move.

iii. The nature and status of the lexiconSchwartz regards the lexicon as part of the language module, not surprisinglysince it is hard to imagine a language without the information presumed to bestored in the lexicon — forms, meanings, and form-specific morphosyntacticinformation. However, this makes no sense from either a processing perspectiveor from the perspective of the contents of the lexicon. As Marslen-Wilson(1987: 71) has emphasised, understanding language involves connecting formsand meanings. Word recognition is at the heart of this since it is the representa-tions of both, stored in longterm memory, which serves as a bridge between, forexample, what we actually hear and the syntactic and semantic properties of thesentences which are projected from words. Marslen-Wilson points out that wordrecognition involves three functions: lexical access, lexical selection and lexicalintegration. Lexical access involves the activation of stored information in thelexicon. Lexical selection involves choosing an appropriate candidate forintegration into higher order syntactic and semantic representations. Marslen-Wilson and his colleagues have shown that word recognition is very very fast.Words can be accessed and selected before sufficient acoustic-phonetic informa-tion is available for word identification on the basis of matching a storedrepresentation of form to the processed signal. As I pointed out above, Marslen-Wilson has argued that signal processing is modular up to the point of lexicalaccess (i.e. it is fast, automatic, informationally encapsulated, etc.).20 However,as stimuli are processed on-line by phonetic and phonological processors,multiple lexical entries are accessed and then assessed for their syntactic andsemantic appropriateness in the current context. Assessment is clearly interactive— contextual representations (pragmatic information) are used on-line to assessthe appropriateness of a particular lexical entry for the ongoing parse. What thismeans for our purposes is that the lexicon itself is not modular.

This conclusion should hardly be surprising when we consider again whatthe lexicon does. Jackendoff (1983: 9, 1987, 1995) has described the lexicon asa correspondence system linking phonology to syntax, and syntax to conceptualstructures. (This view of the lexicon has been explicitly encoded in the functionalarchitecture of the language faculty shown in Chapter 8.) Almost by definition,


then, the lexicon must not be informationally encapsulated. Moreover, studies oflexical structures over the last 25 years have led to a considerable enrichment ofthe semantic elements assumed to be part of lexical entries — argument struc-tures (Grimshaw 1990), semantic roles (Gruber 1965; Jackendoff 1972, 1983,1990b; Higginbotham 1983, 1985), event structures (Davidson 1967; Higgin-botham 1983, 1985; Parsons 1990; Grimshaw 1990; Pustejovsky 1991), andaspect (Tenny 1987; Grimshaw 1990). These semantic elements constrain wordformation processes, as well as the correspondences between arguments ofpredicates and potential arguments in sentences. They and certain non-lexicalsemantic properties, e.g. predication (Williams 1980; Rothstein 1985; Bowers1993), provide general constraints on the well-formedness of sentences. This lastaspect is critical. Semantic elements are now considered to be licensing elementsfor syntactic constructions. So we can legitimately ask the question: What is thenature of modularity in a theory of grammar in which a rich variety of semanticconstructs are required to license syntactic structures? What could it possibly be?

Let me get at the problem from another direction. What exactly is the natureof lexical semantics vs. pragmatics such that the former might be included in thelanguage module while the latter definitely is not? The answer is anything butclear. It is hardly convincing to claim that “lexical semantics” is whatever wediscover plays a role in licensing syntactic positions, while “pragmatics” iseverthing else. This is not a principled response.

Finally, I note that Schwartz (1993) explicitly argues the lexical informationis learned. This basically renders vacuous her assertion that the grammar is amodule for language acquisition.

5. Summary

All of the evidence reviewed above suggests that the psychogrammar involves amuch richer construct than the principles and parameters which hold the spotlightin linguistic theory. Consequently, it involves a much richer notion than Schwartz’Linguistic Competence. A model of the acquisition of a psychogrammar musttherefore countenance the acquisition of language-specific morphosyntactic rules,possibly like the rule of verb-movement-over-negation proposed by Baker. Itmust also explain how learners can learn to link specific interpretations both withsyntactic constructions and prosodic structures. It must explain lexical acquisi-tion. All of these aspects of linguistic knowledge would appear at present torequire the development of a theory of induction, in particular, a theory ofinduction in which linguistic structures interact in constrained fashion with


conceptual information. We have seen in this chapter that Schwartz has attempt-ed to exclude induction from the theory of second language acquisition on thegrounds that linguistic processing is modular and, in particular, that informationfrom the conceptual system cannot interact with grammatical information. I haveshown that there is no empirical basis for this claim. Moreover, the Fodorianversion of modularity is seriously flawed as a framework for characterisinglanguage processing in competent and fluent monolinguals. I have emphasisedthat the connection between a model of on-line parsing in mature L1 speakers isnot, in any event, obviously relevant to a theory of language acquisition in adultL2 learners. The connection must first be articulated. There are therefore nogrounds for excluding i-learning from a theory of SLA, and many good reasonsto adopt it.

Notes

1. A weak argument is nonetheless an argument. A non-argument is that adopting the P&P theoryallows one to discuss second language acquisition in terms of “serious” theories of grammar.It may be true that this is the correct explanation for the amazing institutional success in ourfield of the P&P theory. To which one can only comment: “Say, it ain’t so, Joe!”

2. Logically speaking, modularity does not entail autonomy. It might be that there are separateprocessors processing the same distinctions in the same representational format. This seems arather perverse way for nature to have arranged things.

3. There is much talk of “modularity” in current linguistic literature — unfortunately since what isat issue are things like case theory, binding, and so on. It is not clear if grammarians are makingclaims about the autonomy of the components they attribute to the grammar, or if they intendthe term in the way that Fodor did. In the latter case, one would expect the putative module tocorrespond to a specific processor, to be subtended by fixed neuroanatomical structures, to beautomatic, fast, and informationally encapsulated, etc. By these criteria, there is no evidence thattheta theory, the binding theory, or Case theory are modules. To refer to these components ofthe grammar as “modules” is likely to create enormous and unnecessary confusion.

4. Naturally, there are nay-sayers. Leonard and his colleagues have argued in a variety of studies(see, e.g. Leonard, Sabbadini, Volterra, and Leonard 1988) that SLI is due to a problem inauditory perception which is not limited to language. Bishop (1994: 523), however, points outthat this analysis is inconsist with Leonard et al.’s own data which shows that noun plural /s/created fewer problems for English-speaking SLI children than third person singular /s/. Aperceptual deficit alone does not explain this observation. Bishop himself considered twoalternative accounts (i) the Misattributed Markers Hypothesis (a grammatical deficit whichforces children to rely on semantic cues to direct their use of morphosyntactic affixes), and (ii)the Vulnerable Markers Hypothesis (grammatical distinctions are intact but control of thedistinctions is inhibited by processing complexity). Bishop (1994: 532) notes that the Misattri-buted Markers Hypothesis cannot be adequately tested using spontaneously produced corpora.His own experimental work did not support the Vulnerable Markers Hypothesis. He suggestsnonetheless that some children appear to be affected by a slow parser which “cannot keep up


with the input delivered by a message conceptualiser or, alternatively, an influence ofphonologically complex material on the formulation of the next stretch of an utterance” (Bishop1994: 532–33).

5. Notice that the hypothesis that autonomous systems are connected by sets of correspondencerules follows from these assumptions of sensitivity to specialised inputs and shallow outputs.

6. Asking this question involves asking if Krashen’s references to the LAD arede reor de dictu.If he had something specific in mind then it is likely that Schwartz’ model is a radical departurefor the reasons stated. If, however, Krashen meant merely “Whatever you linguists mean by UGand the LAD, that’s what I mean too”, then Schwartz’ model can be seen as a consistentmodification. Schwartz’ views on the modularity of acquisition remain incompatible withKrashen’s claims about k-acquisition based on understanding what one cannot parse.

7. In fairness to Schwartz, it is likely that even the earliest cited works may not have beenavailable to her when she was writing her thesis, completed in 1987.

8. It is not clear that so much should be riding on the distinction anyway. Studies of implicitlearning abound which show that humans can learn implicitly structural and non-structuralgeneralisations (Berry and Broadbent 1984; Reber 1976, 1989). There is even research whichshows implicitmemoryfor linguistic and non-linguistic stimuli, i.e. that recall can occur withoutany conscious recollection (Tulving, Schachter, and Stark 1982; Roediger 1990; Jacoby, Toth,and Yonelinas 1993).

9. One should not be led away from the veracity of this claim by the fact that much of theliterature on problem-solving attempts to couch it in terms of domain-general procedures. Thatis a consequence of discussing problem-solving in performance terms (as a skill) rather than ascompetence.

10. Tanenhaus et al. (1985) make a similar observation.

11. Linebarger (1989: 199) calls this “input autonomy”.

12. Karmiloff-Smith (1992: 6) rightly decries the constant confusion of autonomy and modularityto be found in the linguistics literature. She writes that a knowledge domain is “the set ofrepresentations sustaining a specific area of knowledge: language, number, physics, and soforth. A module is an information-processing unit that encapsulates that knowledge and thecomputations in it… the storage and processing of information may be domain specific withoutbeing encapsulated, hardwired, or mandatory.”

13. As noted previously, these capacities appear to be given a priori and are not induced (Streeter1976; Trehub 1976; Werker and Lalonde 1988; Best, McRoberts, and Sithole 1988; Werker andPegg 1992).

14. Adverbs vary according to their scope and semantics. Jackendoff (1972: Ch. 3) refers to 4classes — Speaker-oriented adverbs, as in (i), subject-oriented adverbs as in (ii), predicateadverbs, as in (iii), and sentence-final modifiers, as in (iv). The adverb in (v) has the entireproposition in its scope.

(i) Frankly, John doesn’t intend to leave Marsha.(ii) John carefully kept the truth from Marsha.(iii) John answered the questions promptly.(iv) John did the work alone.(v) John never answers the questions.

15. There are various definitions of the ECP in the literature. For the sake of concreteness, I stateChomsky’s (1981: 274–5) definition, which may be one of the most explicit, in (i):


(i) Generalized ECP:If α is an empty category, then(a) α is PRO if and only if it is ungoverned,(b) α is trace if and only if it is properly governed(c) α is a variable only if it is Case-marked.

16. This is obviously a speculation on my part and I hesitate to make it since introspection isnotoriously unreliable. Certainly, the two sentences in the text seem to contrast in formality tome, but thenJohn hasn’t a bloody dime to his nameis just fine and definitely informal.

17. Following a similar line of argumentation, Culicover (1999) argues for lexeme-specificmorphosyntactic categories, lexically idiosyncratic constructions. Independently of the line ofreasoning I have developed over the last ten years, he also argues for a correspondence-basedapproach to constraining induction.

18. Robert Bley-Vroman (p.c.) has pointed out to me that this problem could be fixed if it wereassumed that there was a separate non-linguistic input system conveying the acoustic informa-tion directly to the central processor. I disagree. The phenomena that I am referring to areparalinguistic, they are indeed instantiated in linguistic stimuli and evaluated with respect to thesemantic contents of those stimuli. The inferences we draw from listening to a sentencearticulated with certain paralinguistic properties are not the inferences we draw from listeningto a sequence of arbitrary sounds articulated with the same properties. I don’t think this problemwill go away quite so easily.

19. Culicover and Rochemont (1983) argue that the two aspects Focus interpretation and prosodicprominance are not commensurate so that one cannot reduce to the other. Winkler (1994)disputes the claim, which leads me to conclude that the issue is not yet settled..

20. Marslen-Wilson and his colleagues have not concerned themselves with the problem of prosodicmeaning, a problem which, as we have seen, suggests that the phonology may not be complete-ly encapsulated.

C 8

The evidence for negative evidence

1. Introduction

In previous chapters I have discussed theoretical and metatheoretical debates inorder to motivate the Autonomous Induction Theory, a theory which includesboth bottom-up and top-down processing and which allows a place for correc-tion, feedback and other forms of metalinguistic information to play a role insecond language acquisition. In this chapter, I want to examine the empiricalevidence that this move is necessary. Three classes of studies will be examinedin Section 2. First of all, I will examine some of the literature looking atinteractions between native speakers and non-native speakers. I then go on toreview some of the literature on the effects of grammatical instruction on L2knowledge. Then I look specifically at studies of feedback and correction. Theheart of this section will be a review of my own experimental work on this topic.I will then go on in Section 3 to present some new experimental evidence whichprovides additional confirmation of my claim that learners can learn abstractlinguistic relations and properties from feedback and correction. I must empha-sise, however, that for all three types of studies results are very mixed. Thusconsider the literature on interaction and SLA. Although it has been argued thatconversation structures the input in such a way as to facilitate learning, theresults show only that interaction can lead to greater comprehension on the partof the learner, and then perhaps only on certain tasks. Despite claims to thecontrary, the literature cited does not show that indirect forms of feedback causegrammatical restructuring. Or, consider grammatical instruction. Classroomstudies are notoriously difficult to conduct because of the large number offactors which can influence the results on tests. The clearest evidence for theeffects of grammatical instruction therefore comes from experimental studiessuch as those examininginput processingor those involving the learning ofartificial languages. The former research attempts to demonstrate that instructioncan have an effect on how learners perceive and parse stimuli. The latter


examines specific aspects of learning under highly controlled conditions. Finally,the studies of feedback and correction also give mixed results. Some of thisresearch shows that feedback and correction can help learners learn lexicalexceptions to rules, some of it shows that feedback and correction can helplearners move back from overgeneralisations. It looks as if some types oflinguistic properties can be acquired in the manner described, but there is noreason to believe that generalisation from these results to just any property of thegrammar will be possible. In other words, there is no support at present for aclaim that feedback, correction, or metalinguistic instruction are essential to theacquisition of all types of linguistic knowledge. Thus, we must show somescepticism towards the hypothesis that feedback, correction or metalinguisticinstruction aremajor factors in determining central properties of interlanguagegrammars and that they are necessary to account for SLA. We have already seenstrong conceptual and empirical reasons to reject any such claim. However, thisstill leaves a role for inputs of this sort as a developmental factor. An explicittheory of feedback and correction will lay out the proper role of these factors,attributing to them no more nor no less than they do in fact accomplish.

2. The empirical studies of indirect negative evidence, metalinguisticinstruction, and feedback and correction

2.1 Indirect negative evidence

Various researchers have argued that indirect forms of negative evidence arisefrom the nature of talk to learners, and, in particular, that the structure ofconversation will lead the learner to realise that certain forms in his productionare not possible.1 Long (1980, 1983), in particular, has developed Krashen’sinput hypothesis (see Chapter 1) and has argued that interaction aids learning.Recall that Krashen hypothesised that language learning proceeds when thelearner comprehends more than he can parse. I pointed out that this hypothesisseems to require a non-modular faculty of mind; certainly it requires an interac-tive theory of language processing. The reason is that since the parser cannotcompute a parse of the stimulus, the meaning derived must be derived viainferencing. The information stored in the conceptual system must then be ableto influence the parsers.

Krashen has never provided any details of how this might happen, and itshould be apparent now that there are numerous obstacles in the way of thei + 1Hypothesis. The research derivative of Krashen’s work suffers from the same

THE EVIDENCE FOR NEGATIVE EVIDENCE 291

deficiency, namely the absence of any clarification as to how indirect negativeevidence might actually work. Long’s particular version, the Interaction Hypoth-esis, is based on the observation that comprehension checks (where a nativespeaker asks a question to see if she has understood correctly something the non-native speaker has said), topic shifts and clarification requests occur more oftenin conversations involving non-native speakers (NNS) and native speakers (NS)than conversations among NSs. This is, of course, reasonable since inadequatemastery of the sound system or structures of the L2 would create comprehensionproblems for the NSs. Both Long (1985) and Schachter (1986) have argued thatsuch types of behaviour, as well as failures to understand, silence, and otherresponses to errors, provide indirect forms of feedback and promote SLA byfacilitating comprehension. Long (1981, 1983) has formulated the InteractionHypothesis in (8.1).

(8.1) The Interaction HypothesisSpeakers in conversations negotiate meaning. In the case of conversationsbetween learners and others, this negotiation will lead to the provision ofeither direct or indirect forms of feedback, including correction (models),comprehension checks, clarification requests, topic shifts, repetitions, andrecasts. This feedback draws the learner’s attention to mismatches be-tween the input and the learner’s output.

This has become the standard claim of the interaction literature (Gass and Varonis1985b, 1989; Pica, Young and Doughty 1986, 1987). The claim is that errors inthe learner’s speech lead to NS comprehension problems which in turn inducesfeedback, which provides the learner with the basis for a systematic comparisonof the contents of his grammatical representations and the feedback. It is this lastassumption which is central to the utility of the Interaction Hypothesis. Were itto turn out to be the case that learners could not represent mismatches betweentheir own production and the stimuliat the relevant level of analysis, then theissue of how interaction helps would be left in the air. I return to this issuebelow. The Interaction Hypothesis amounts to the hypothesis that interactionenriches the input to the learning mechanisms but we need to knowhow it coulddo this. None of the standard literature on interaction addresses this question.

Some studies (Pica and Doughty 1985; Varonis and Gass 1985a, b; Pica1987, among others) have investigated the organisation of conversation and ofhow negotiation furthers conversation towards specific communication goals.However, as Gass and Varonis (1994: 285) point out, this research has not shownany effects of negotiation on acquisition. Studies focusing specifically on thatquestion give mixed results. Thus, Sato (1986) found no facilitating effects of


NS speech on the acquisition of past tense marking in English by two Vietnam-ese L1 speakers. Brock, Crookes, Day, and Long (1986) also claimed little effecton learning based on free conversations. Crookes and Rulon (1985) examined theeffects of negotiation with different tasks, e.g. free conversation versus two-waycommunication tasks. The latter evoked more feedback, but the study did notestablish increased learning. Pica, Young and Doughty (1987) showed facilitatedcomprehension on a picture arrangement task as a direct result of negotiatedinteraction. Gass and Varonis (1994) showed similar results. Loschky (1994: 306)argues that the literature shows only “mixed support” for a relationship betweenincreased comprehension and acquisition, and shows instead a relationshipbetween acquisition and adjustments by the participants in their speech.

It should be kept in mind that the majority of the studies cited haveexamined the effects of feedback on speech production only, despite thesupposed focus on comprehension and parsing. Loschky’s own study is the onlyone focusing on comprehension and the processing of stimuli using listeningtasks (instead of using production data). It shows that negotiated interactionfacilitates comprehension of language one is listening to at that moment,2 butthere was no relation between levels of comprehension and levels of acquisition.Finally, Pica (1988) and Pica, Holliday, Lewis, and Morganthaler (1989) haveargued that negotiation leads to better output from learners when it includesdirect or indirect feedback from an uncomprehending native speaker. The relevanceof this claim for SLA is, however, not clear since it is not obvious why failures tounderstand by anyone should lead to restructuring of the learner’s psychogrammar.

As noted, Long’s Interaction Hypothesis states that the role of feedback isto draw the learner’s attention to mismatches between a stimulus and thelearner’s output. This hypothesis seems to be widely shared by proponents of theidea that one can learn a grammar on the basis of the “negotiation of meaning.”To make sense of this we need to know what is meant by these terms. If “input”means stimulus, and the term “output” means what the learner actually says, thenthe claim would be that the learner can compare a representation of his speech(an acoustic/phonetic representation) to the intake as I have defined it (an analogrepresentation of the speech signal). Why this should assist the learner inlearning properties of the morphosyntax or vocabulary is, however, not clearsince the learner’s problems may be problems of incorrect phonological ormorphosyntactic structure. To restructure the mental grammar on the basis offeedback, Long’s claim would have to mean that the learner is able to constructa representation at the relevant level and compare her output — at the right level— to that. It would appear then, although this is never made explicit in thisliterature, that the Interaction Hypothesis presupposes that the learner can


compare representations of her speech and some previously heard utterance at theright level of analysis. But this strikes me as highly implausible cognitivelyspeaking. Why should we suppose that learners store in longterm memory theiranalyses of stimuli at all levels of analysis? Why should we assume that they arestoring in longterm memory all levels of analysis of their own speech? This iswhat would be required for learners to carry out the suggested comparisons.Certainly nothing in current processing theory would lead us to suppose thathumans do such things. On the contrary, all the evidence suggests that intermedi-ate levels of the analysis of sentences are fleeting, and dependent on the demandsof working memory, which is concerned only with constructing a representationof the sort required for the next level of processing up or down. Intermediatelevels of analysis of sentences normally never become part of longterm memory.Therefore, it seems reasonable to suppose that the learner has no stored represen-tations at the intermediate levels of analysis either of her own speech or of anystimulus heard before the current “parse moment.” Consequently, he cannotcompare his output (at the right level of analysis) to the stimulus in any interest-ing sense. The only intermediate levels of analysis which are normally relevantfor LTM are lexical elements, and other elements stored in the lexicon (idioms,phrases, formulae, etc.).3 Moreover, given the limitations of working memory,negotiations in a conversation cannot literally help the learner to re-parse a givenstimulus heard several moments previously. Why not? Because the originalstimulus will no longer be in a learner’s working memory by the time thenegotations have occurred. It will have been replaced by the consequences ofparsing the last utterance from the NS in the negotation. I conclude that there isno reason to believe that the negotiation of meaning assists learners in computingan input-output comparison at the right level of representation for grammaticalrestructuring to occur.

Do studies of indirect forms of feedback, especially those based on preciseif complex communication tasks (such as figuring out how to identify a non-natural object from a description and a choice of pictures when speaker andhearer cannot see one another), show anything at all? I think so. It would appearthat negotations help learners establish form-meaning pairs, i.e. the referents forparticular sounds, or the sounds expressing particular meanings. Thus, theseforms of stimuli help learners learn limited forms of lexical representations, thesound-meaning correspondences themselves. There is no evidence at present thatother types of acquisition are involved, especially viewed from the perspective ofparsing and speech comprehension. When we consider the claims from theperspective of production, the studies reviewed suggest that negotiation helps thelearner make more precise her choice of lexical item. This might strengthen the


learner’s encoding of a given form and lead to greater practice, which in turnwill lead to a lower activation level of the same item in the future, making iteasier to remember the right word. That means that recall of the relevant itemwill be enhanced. This is not an insignificant consequence because it means thatthe learner will be better able to say directly what he means rather than resortingto the various performance strategies adults often use in the face of lexical gapsor recall problems. Notice, however, that such an effect falls squarely under therubric “performance phenomena.” That negotiated interaction can accomplishanything else has not been demonstrated, and the case to be made for it remainsindirect, as Gass and Varonis (1994) and Loschky (1994) stress. Much moreresearch is needed showing a relationship between the amount or type ofnegotiated input and the amount or type of learning which occurs. In particular,some thought needs to be given to the causal factors — How could negotiationof meaning and interaction cause learning to take place?4

2.2 The metalinguistic instruction studies

There is a significant body of studies which ask the question: Does grammaticalinstruction have a positive effect on language acquisition? Results are againmixed, with some researchers answering in the affirmative (Gass 1979; Light-bown 1983, 1987; Long 1983; Pica 1983; Spada 1986; Eckman, Bell, and Nelson1988; Doughty 1991), others in the negative (Perkins and Larsen-Freeman 1975;Felix 1981; Ellis 1984, 1989; Pienemann 1984; Eubank 1987).5 Some of thisresearch is concerned with showing that classroom learning does/does not followhypothesised universal developmental orders observed in naturalistic acquisitionand that grammatical instruction does/does not alter the orders observed. Theclass of studies turns out to involve the examination of grammatical instructionon the restructuring of linguistic knowledge. Since, in contrast to the precedingliterature, these studies address the question of whether instruction helps learnersto learn specific properties of grammars, I will examine some of them in detail.

i. The Harley aspect studyHarley (1989a) studied the effects of form-focused instruction on the learningof French verb aspect in the context of Grade 6 early total French immersionclasses in Ontario (Canada). This study thus dealt with the appropriate contextsof use for the distinction between verbs marked for the [±punctual] distinction(referred to in the literature as theimparfait/passé composédistinction).6

Subjects belonged to experimental or comparison classes, the first groupreceiving approximately eight weeks of form-focused instruction with increased


opportunities for production of the target forms. The comparison group receivedother kinds of stimuli which included the relevant distinction. Pupils were testedby means of a close test and an oral interview task. On an immediate post-test,the instructed group outperformed the comparison group. On a delayed post-testthree months laters, there were no significant differences between the two groups,raising serious doubts about whether instruction had led learners to restructure theirgrammars.

ii. The White verb-raising/adverb studiesIn Chapter 4, I introduced a study by White (1991a) in which she discussed therelevance of negative evidence within the framework of learnability research.There I examined the study from the perspective of clustering effects in L2learning and argued that this study fails to confirm the predicted clusteringeffects of parameter-(re)setting theory. Here I want to focus on what the studysays about the effects of metalinguistic instruction.

It is known from the learnability literature, e.g. Berwick (1985), Manziniand Wexler (1987), Wexler and Manzini (1987), that certain types of over-generalisations might be uncorrectible on the basis of exposure to stimuli alone.On the well-motivated assumption that feedback and correction have littleinfluence on early first language acquisition, these researchers have formulatedthe Subset Principle to ensure that the child develops a grammar generating thesmallest language consistent with the data. Such a grammar will be in a subsetrelation with grammars which generate the same correct data plus other ungram-matical data. White (1989b: 143–4) puts the matter this way: assume data sets Xand Y construed as sets of sentences as in (8.2). (8.2) illustrates grammars in aSubset Condition.

(8.2)X

Y

The learnability problem is as follows: Y sentences are compatible with twogrammars, the grammar that generates Y and the grammar that generates X.Suppose that the L1 learner is learning a language which only containssentences like Y. For this language, the appropriate grammar will be the onewhich generates Y but not X. If, on hearing a Y sentence, the learner hypo-thesises the grammar that generates X, this will result in overgeneralisations(i.e. X sentences) that cannot be disconfirmed on the basis of positive evidence.


They simply do not occur in the language being learned.(White 1989: 144).

White (1989a, 1989b: Ch. 6) makes the point that if adult learners are transferringcertain types of knowledge from the L1 grammar, this process might lead tounacceptable representations which are nonetheless compatible with availablestimuli. Stimuli would then never lead to the detection of errors. The learner’sinterlanguage grammar would correspond to a superset of the grammaticalsentences of the language in question. Consider in this regard a learner ofEnglish who transfers her Italian patterns of subject instantiation. Recall thatItalian exhibits null subjects.

(8.3) a. (Ho) Vado al cinema.(I go-1 to the cinema‘I am going to the cinema.’

b. Sperava di trovare la soluzione.tried-3 to find the solution‘S/he tried to find the solution.’

If the learner transfers the optionality of Italian subjects to English, we predictthat she will incorrectly produce sentences like (8.4).

(8.4) go to the cinema.

The correct English input will always be compatible with an interlanguagegrammar which permits optional subjects. Therefore, normal stimuli, i.e. withoutfeedback, or other metalinguistic information, will not provide the cues to thefact that the grammar is incorrectly generating a superset of the L2, namelysentences with explicit subjects and sentences with null subjects.

White (1989a) examined the ability of French-speaking learners of Englishto accept grammatical sentences and reject violations involving adverbs andverbs. Recall that French and English differ in that adverbs can appear betweenthe French main verb and its direct object complement while in English this isexcluded.

(8.5) a. John drinks his coffee quickly.b. Carefully John opened the door.c. Mary often watches television.d. *Mary watches often television.

French adverbs partially overlap in their distribution with the patterns shown in(8.5) but specifically the equivalent to (8.5c) is ungrammatical and the equivalentof (8.5d) is fine.


(8.6) a. Jean boit son café rapidement.b. Prudemment Jean a ouvert la porte.c. *Marie souvent regarde la télévision.d. Marie regarde souvent la télévision

White (1989a) characterises this difference in terms of a binary parameter of UG— the Adjacency Condition on Case assignment — whose settings meet theSubset Condition of (8.2). To describe the facts Chomsky (1986) proposed aparameter [±strict adjacency] which applies to Case assignment. The setting[+strict adjacency] generates a language like English which does not permitadverbs to intervene between the verb assigning Case to the direct object and thatNP. The alternative setting generates languages which permit but do not requiresuch intervening adverbs. If the francophones transfer their knowledge of Frenchto the task of learning English, the hypothesis is that they will transfer the[−strict adjacency] parameter-setting to English. This means that they willunderstand or produce sentences like (8.5a, b), and will parse or produce (8.5d).7

White did not examine her subjects’ comprehension or production. Instead,subjects (adults) performed three separate acceptability tasks: a paced acceptabil-ity judgement task, an unpaced multiple choice acceptability judgement task, anda preference task in which subjects rated pairs of sentences as to which one wasbetter. The paced and unpaced acceptability judgement tasks required subjects todecide if sentences were more or less “grammatical” or “correct/incorrect”. Thepreference task required no absolute classification but rather asked merely for arelative assessment. Native speakers were also tested to provide comparison data.The results showed that native anglophones consistently agreed in acceptinggrammatical sentences like (8.5a, b, c) while rejecting sentences like (8.5d). Thus,White showed that her tasks elicit consistent and uniform responses from nativespeakers. Learners also consistently accepted grammatical sentences but inaddition they exhibited a tendency to accept sentences like (8.5d). Whiteconcluded that adult L2 learners’ grammars do not obey the Subset Principle.

The Case Adjacency Parameter did not last too long as a theoretical accountof the phenomenon in question, potentially undermining the assessment that adultlearners do not follow the Subset Principle. White (1991a) reformulated thecharacterisation of this knowledge in terms of the verb-raising analysis ofEmonds (1978, 1985), Pollock (1989) and Chomsky (1991c), specifically, in bothlanguages the adverbs are generated in the Spec position to VP and verbs moveto the left of them. According to this revised analysis, in French, all finite verbsmove out of VP, raising to AgrS (INFL, or to some other head position in thedomain of the subject), while in English only auxiliaries and modals can occupythe same position. Finite verbs cannot raise, anddo-support is triggered instead.


(8.7) AgrSP

SpecAgrSP AgrS′

NP Agr

verb

VP

AdvP V′

V NP

t

(all irrelevant movements have been omitted from the tree)

According to this revised analysis, a subset of finite verbs raise in English, whilein French all finite verbs raise. The verb sets thus meet the Subset Condition.

White (1991a) demonstrates that francophone learners of English do indeedproduce errors like that in (8.5d), just as her earlier study had shown that theyaccept such sentences. Her subjects in the later study (138 children in the 11–12year age range) were divided into two groups, one of which received explicitinstruction about the meaning and distribution of English adverbs. The compari-son group spent an equal amount of time receiving instruction on questionformation.8 Analysis of the results showed a main effect of treatment. Therewere significant differences between the subjects instructed on adverbs and thoseinstructed on questions. On an acceptability judgement task, the adverb group’sperformance was superior to the question group on Subject Verb Adverb Object(SVAO) stimuli, indeed there were no differences between the adverb group andnative speaker controls on this measure. On the same task, there were alsosignificant differences between the groups on the acceptable Subject AdverbVerb (SAV) order in favour of the adverb group. Results on a preference taskshow comparable differences between the two instructional type groups, but arealso revealing of important differences between the adverb L2 learner group andnative speakers. White (1991a: 148–9) observes that the adverb L2 learner groupreject Subject Verb Adverb Prepositional Phrase (SVAPP) (Jane goes sometimesto the movies) in preference to SAVPP (Jane sometimes goes to the movies). Thismeans that they have incorrectly grouped this pattern with the ungrammaticalSVAO pattern. A sentence manipulation task provided similar results. A follow-up study one year later of one of the adverb-instructed classes revealed SVAOerror scores similar to those on the pre-test. The effects of the instruction clearlydid not last.


This study shows that the acceptability judgement tasks used elicit consistentresponses from L2 learners for grammatical stimuli, stimuli which mightcorrespond to patterns of stimuli the learners have actually been exposed to overthe full course of their acquisition of English. The results suggest, moreover, thatsubjects can learn linear ordering relations on the basis of grammatical instruc-tion and apply that knowledge on acceptability judgement and preference tasks.It also suggests that the knowledge acquired generalises to knowledge not taught— the SAVPP pattern. Learners are apparently using linear information todifferentiate between what is acceptable and what is not, but in so doing, are notdistinguishing between subcategorised and non-subcategorised complements(argument complements versus adjuncts). Under the early characterisationanalysing adverb distribution in terms of an adjacency parameter, this resultwould have been problematic since the use of the parameter hinges on this verydistinction. If subjects are not making the distinction between sisters and non-sisters to case assigners, they could hardly be using the parameter.9 Under therevised analysis of adverb distribution, this problem disappears but the fact of thematter remains unaccounted for. If the distinction between direct object comple-ments and adjuncts is relevant for hierarchical embedding (the first being a sisterto the verb, the latter being immediately dominated by VP but outside V′), thenit is not apparent why it isn’t exploited by learners. To sum up, the resultsappear to suggest that the French learners of English overgeneralise the distribu-tion of the adverb, permitting it to appear (incorrectly) between the verb and itsdirect object. Instruction leads the learners to reject such strings but still alsoleads them to reject patterns SVAPP which are in fact acceptable.10

White characterises her study as an investigation of the effects of negativeevidence on parameter-(re)setting. However, there are several reasons to questionthis interpretation, as we have seen. The question is: Are such results to bedescribed as restructuring of the mental grammar? Rejecting White’s claim aboutparameter-resetting does not force us to conclude that learners have not learnedinformation of grammatical relevance. Indeed, the most parsimonious account isto say that the instruction did lead to grammatical restructuring. In the discussionwhich follows, I shall therefore simply assume that all results which indicate thatlearning occurred are also support for the claim that grammatical restructuringoccurred. However, there are methodological reasons for interpreting White’sresults with caution. First of all, note that while she mentions that the instruction-al materials specifically emphasised that adverbs could not go in the SVAOposition, White provides no other information about the provision of negativeevidence to the experimental groups. In particular, we know nothing about thefrequency or systematicity of error correction, whether it was direct or indirect,


verbal or written, and so on. We are, however, told that the normal teachingpractices in the programs the francophone students attended do not focus on theinstruction of form or on the correction of errors. Should we suspect that theprovision of feedback and correction in this study has been insufficientlycontrolled? In the absence of further information, probably yes. Studies of errortreatment in language classes (Chaudron 1977; Courchene 1980; Lucas 1975;Fanselow 1977 and Salica 1981, see also Chaudron 1988) have noted that itsprovision is often infrequent and unsystematic. Chaudron (1986) in a state-of-the-art review of this issue stated that the median percentage of phonological errorscorrected in these studies was 54% (X = 48%) and the median percentage ofgrammatical errors was 49% (X = 51%). In other words, half of the errors inthese studies went uncorrected. Swain and Carroll (1987) in a study of errortreatment in French immersion classes observe quite different figures: 77.3% oferrors went uncorrected. The French immersion classes, like the English classesdescribed by White, focus on using the language to communicate about topicsother than the language. They are “communicative” in orientation. This means thatthe provision of feedback and negative evidence might have been extremelylimited. For this reason, White’s study should probably be seen as pertaining tothe effects of metalinguistic instruction on grammatical restructuring rather thanas pertaining to the relevance of feedback and correction for the development ofcorrect morphosyntactic patterns, as she intended. I have included it in thissection for that reason.

iii. The Doughty studyDoughty (1991) conducted a study of 20 ESL learners with various mothertongues in order to investigate the effects of instruction on the acquisition ofrelative clauses involving “extraction” from a Prep Phrase. The linguisticobservation behind the study is that such relative clauses, e.g.(I met) the girlfrom whom you got a present, do not occur in every language. Cross-linguistical-ly, they are said to be relatively “marked” in comparison to relative clausesinvolving extraction from a subject NP ((I met) the girl who knows you) or adirect object NP ((I met) the girl who you know). Markedness here means lessfrequent typologically, and more difficult to learn. It stands to reason, therefore,that if the ESL learner’s L1 does not include such more marked relative clauses,learning them will present certain difficulties.

Doughty’s experiment involved computer-provided instruction. Learnerswere divided into three groups for the purposes of the stimuli. One group ofexperimental subjects got instruction which used techniques focusing on themeaning of the stimuli. A second experimental group got instruction which used


techniques focusing on rules. A third group served as a comparison group whowere exposed to stimuli consisting of relative clauses but did not get theinstruction. All subjects spent 10 days participating in the experiment and studiedfive or six items per day. Time on task was very carefully controlled, with theexperimental groups spending 4 minutes on each item while the comparisongroup spent two and a half minutes on the items.

Results showed significant differences between the experimental groups andthe comparison group in favour of the former. In particular, learners were ableto generalise from the instructed marked relativisation environments to lessmarked but not instructed environments. In addition, Doughty found that bothinstructional techniques were effective in facilitating learning.

iv. The Spada and Lightbown studiesSpada and Lightbown (1993) report on a quasi-experimental study with franco-phone children (aged 10–12) learning English in Quebec. Such children aretaught a number of courses supplemental to the regular academic program via anintensive communicative language teaching approach over a 5-month period (seeLightbown and Spada 1990; Lightbown 1991, for descriptions of the classes andprogram). The focus of this particular study was on the effects of instruction onspecific aspects of acquisition. Spada and Lightbown studied the effects of form-focused instruction and correction on the use of questions in an oral communica-tion task. Subjects received over a two week period 9 hours of form-focusedinstruction involving questions with the wh-wordswhat, where, andwhyand theauxiliariescan, be, anddo. Thus, activities were designed to draw attention tothe fact that these verbs “raise” into the head position of some functionalcategory (INFL, AgrS, TENSE, or some such category; see the discussion inprevious chapters). Subjects performed tasks unscrambling interrogatives whichwere out of order, guessing games requiring the use of questions, and judgementtasks in which they had to decide if stimuli were well-formed. Oral performanceof experimental subjects was compared to students at the same level (grade 5)from a regular intensive-English instruction class. All groups improved from pre-test to post-test to follow-up test (5 weeks after the instruction). The experimen-tal groups also improved over the longterm as measured by testing 6 monthsafter instruction. The comparison group was not given the longterm test.

Spada and Lightbown recorded the classroom interactions in the experimen-tal classes along with 4 hours of instruction in the comparison group class. Theytranscribed this data and analysed both the teachers’ language and the students’language, thus controlling the nature of the feedback. The teachers’ language wasanalysed in terms of the number and types of questions they asked, and the


amount and type of feedback they gave relating to question formation. Teachersmodelled correct questions, gave feedback on student productions, asked displayand spontaneous questions. See (8.8).

(8.8) Examples of teachers’ questionsa. spontaneous modelling: Her mother is a teacher. So, “Is her mother a

teacher?”b. metalinguistic question: Now where do we put theis or theare or

theam?c. repetition:

S: Where he go?T: Where he go? (peculiar or exaggerated intonation)

d. correction: No, that should be “Where do you live?”e. routine questions: Can you make a question from this sentence?f. spontaneous questions:

S: On the weekend we played store.T: Who did you play with?

Analysis showed that the absolute number of questions used by the teachersvaried, with the teacher in the comparison class asking the most (1480 comparedto the experimental group A teacher’s 731 and the group B teacher’s 1065).Moreover, the types of questions varied across the classes. The comparison groupteacher used far more spontaneous questions than the other two during therecorded periods (151.5 compared to A’s 4.3 and B’s 34.2). The comparisongroup teacher used much less feedback (49.8 compared to A’s 70.0 and B’s81.0). There were comparable amounts of modelling (24.8/24.3/27.0). Finally, theuse of routine questions varied, with the comparison group teacher and theexperimental group B teacher using similar amounts (152.3 vs. 145.0) and thegroup B teacher using much less (70.8). Overall responses to error also varied.The comparison group teacher responded to 84% of student errors, group Ateacher responded to 85%, while the group B teacher responded to 54%.

The students’ language was analysed in terms of the total number andaccuracy of the questions used. Students in the experimental groups used farmore questions than the comparison group (group A = 315, group B = 730,comparison group = 194). However, the accuracy rate was highest in the compari-son group (80% compared with group A’s 74% correct and group B’s 61%correct). These higher accuracy rates were also reflected in an analysis of thedifferent types of questions the students asked.

Since there was no “clean” difference between the comparison teacher’sbehaviour and that of the experimental groups’ teachers in terms of the amountand type of questions asked, and the amount and type of feedback given to


errors, it is not possible to attribute student results to particular types of teacherverbal behaviour. In particular, it is not clear to what extent acquisition wasbased on the amount and type of correct stimuli heard (which could providepositive evidence for a particular analysis) as compared to the amount and typeof feedback and correction (which might provide negative evidence for aparticular analysis).

v. The Alanen studyAlanen (1992, 1995), reported on in Tanaka (1999), conducted a study of theacquisition of two locative suffixes and four kinds of consonant alternations ina simplified form of Finnish. Subjects were 36 anglophones who were dividedinto four subgroups: three experimental groups and one comparison group. Oneexperimental group examined texts in which target forms were italicised, asecond experimental group was instructed in rules relevant to the forms andalternations, a third experimental group received instruction and was alsoexposed to the italicised forms. All subjects participated in two treatmentsessions of about 15 to 20 minutes, at a 7-day interval.

Results showed an effect of the instruction of rules related to the forms,with both group two and group three outperforming the comparison group.Moreover, the group instructed on rules alone did better than the group gettingonly italicised stimuli.

vi. The Robinson studiesRobinson and his colleagues have conducted a number of studies looking atvarious aspects offocus on form. Robinson and Ha (1993), Robinson (1996,1997a, b) have examined a variety of instructional techniques on learning inexperimental conditions as well as the automaticity of rule use within a frame-work dealing with instance-based learning. Robinson (1997b), for example,trained 60 native speakers of Japanese on the double object construction ofEnglish (see below) under one of four training conditions, namely the “implicit”condition during which subjects were trained on an exercise in reading andremembering the positions of words in sentences, the “incidental” conditionduring which subjects were trained on an exercise in understanding the meaningof sentences, and the “enhanced” condition which used the same sort of exercisebut during which a box appeared around words and verb stems in such a waythat the number of syllables of the verbs would be boxed in in addition to theto-object. Finally there was the “instructed” condition which consisted of anexplanation of the rule. See Robinson (1997: 230) for details. Subjects were thentested on prior and novel material. Results showed no effect of learning condi-tion for familiar material. There was a partial effect for instruction on novel


material over the other learning conditions, with some effect for the enhancedcondition over the implicit condition. In addition, learners in the instructedcondition responded faster to novel grammatical sentences than did learners inthe other groups. Robinson concludes

Instructed learners are clearly superior to learners in other conditions in theirability to generalise the knowledge developed during training to novel transferset sentences… the instructed condition is superior in accuracy to all otherconditions on new grammatical sentences. However, the implicit and incidentalconditions perform with high accuracy on these sentences, about 80%, and areequivalent to the enhanced condition. As the results for performance on newungrammatical sentences show, however, accurate performance on the newgrammatical sentences is not evidence of the acquisition of generalisableknowledge. Implicit learners wrongly accept around 80% of the ungrammaticalsentences… the instructed condition is superior to all others in judging newungrammatical sentences. (Robinson 1997: 237–9)

This study then provides strong support for the utility of instruction in meta-linguistic information.

vii. The VanPatten and Cadierno studies on “input processing”VanPatten and his colleagues have turned their attention in a number of studiesto the question of how metalinguistic instruction can influence language learning.This research is based on the premise, made explicit in VanPatten (1993: 436)that second language acquisition is based on the processing of stimuli throughwhat he calls the accommodation and restructuring of “intake” into the gram-matical system. The idea that SLA is based on the processing of stimuli is thusone element that VanPatten’s work shares with the Autonomous InductionModel. VanPatten (1984) observed that English learners of Spanish adopt NVN= Subject Verb Object relations. This observation is consistent with the Competi-tion Model research which has shown that anglophones are transferring their L1strategies for mapping semantic roles onto NPs, and that English speakerstypically use linear strategies in ambiguous strings. This parsing strategy,however, is frequently invalid for Spanish, which has much freer phrase orderpatterns than English. Moreover, VanPatten (1984) showed that anglophones willignore stimuli that have to be parsed if they don’t fit the English linear order.Such stimuli include the prepositiona in the stringVisita a la muchacha el chico‘Visits to the girl the boy’ (= “The boy is visiting the girl”) or the pronounla inMario la conoce bien‘Mario her knows well’ (= “Mario knows her well”).Anglophone learners of Spanish appear to treat such stimuli as “noise”. Similar-ly, they will ignore case marking on pronouns which clearly indicates that a


pre-verbal pronoun is a direct object, e.g.Me gusta el helado‘Me+dat pleases theice cream’ (= “I like the ice cream”).

These data about the interpretation strategies of anglophones learningSpanish are important for several reasons. Firstly, they reveal one of the majordifferences between real language acquisition and the assumptions of theidealised learnability research:adult parsers do not always “fail” whenever theyencounter unanalysable stimuli, at least not in the sense that they fail to assign aninterpretation to unparsed stimuli. Rather, transferred parsing routines will mapinterpretations onto the stimuli and ignore unanalysable parts of speech. Suchdata suggest that formal models of learning, based on the assumption of detect-able errors, are seriously lacking in that they do not accurately model “noise” inthe input and do not explain how, when or why the learner begins to deal withit. The Autonomous Induction Theory shares this weakness. An explanatorytheory of SLA must, however, provide some account of how and why aninterpretation can emerge even when individual parsers fail to analyse an input.Secondly, this body of research suggests why feedback and correction mayultimately be essential to an account of the triggering of the learning mechanismsin SLA. Feedback and correction will be the mechanisms which make it clear tothe learner that his parsing strategies are wrong and that ignored stimuli providecritical cues to the proper analysis of the sentence.

VanPatten and Cadierno (1993a, b) explored the nature of forms of instructionasking how it can alter learners’ knowledge. The major premiss behind such workis the idea, as just mentioned, that language acquisition must be explained in termsof how stimuli are processed, and that studies of learner output will not accomplishthis.11 They define traditional foreign language instruction in the following way:

Normally, this instruction focuses on the manipulation of learner output. Inmost foreign language classrooms, instruction occurs by explaining a gram-matical concept and then having learners practice producing a given structureor form… (VanPatten and Cadierno 1993a: 226?)

Input processing, in contrast, is designed to change how the stimuli are per-ceived. The authors conducted an off-line study which dealt with the acquisitionof Spanish clitic objects. Subjects were divided into three different groups. Onegroup received traditional grammar instruction, which meant in practice thatexplanations of the form and distribution of object pronouns were given. Thesewere followed by production practice, characterised as being first “mechanical”,then “meaningful”, and finally “communicative”. A second group, who receivedinput processing instruction was also given explicit instruction on object pro-nouns. In addition, they were also explicitly told not to rely on word order to


understand sentences. This group did not receive output practice, but rather dida variety of communicative tasks which utilised stimuli involving sentence-initialobject pronouns. In other words, the stimuli contained sentences which could notbe correctly interpreted using an SVO parsing strategy, but rather could only becorrectly interpreted using an OV, OVS, or OVSPP parsing strategy. The thirdgroup served as a comparison group. It did not receive any explicit instructionabout object pronouns. All three groups were given a pre-test and post-testsconsisting of a comprehension test and a production test. The comprehension testinvolved listening to stimuli and selecting an appropriate picture from 2 optionsshown. The production test involved completing sentences based on pictures.

Analysis of the results showed a main effect for test (showing improvementfrom pre-test to post-test), and for treatment. The processing instruction groupdid better than the other two groups on the comprehension post-tests and didequally well on the production post-tests as the traditional grammar instructiongroup. Both instructed groups did better on the production post-tests than thecomparison group. The authors interpret their results as indicating that processinginstruction and structured input cause restructuring of the learners’ grammars, buttraditional grammar instruction does not.12

Cadierno (1992, 1995) conducted comparable experiments focusing on theacquisition of Spanish verb tense (present vs. past) morphology. The problem ofinterest in this case was the tendency of learners to initially analyse lexical itemsfor their referential content, ignoring the contribution that inflectional morphol-ogy, e.g. tense marking, makes to the semantics of the sentence. As has beennoted many times, by many authors, adult learners tend to initially have diffi-culty with the expression of temporal notions marked morphologically and preferto express such notions “lexically” via adverbs (see Clahsen et al. 1983;Andersen 1991, 1993).13 The methodology in the Cadierno study was the sameas that discussed above, meaning that there were 3 groups of subjects differingin whether they got instruction or not, and in what kind of instruction theyreceived. In this case, verbal tense morphology was used as a unique cue totemporal reference. Traditional grammatical instruction involved presentinglearners with past tense endings and then allowing them to practice using thesesuffixes in sentences expressing past time. Manipulation involved rewritingpresent tense sentences in the past tense, performing sentence completionactivities requiring the use of a past tense verb form, and completing question-answer activities involving the use of the past tense. Input processing instructioninvolved tasks which focused learners’ attention on past tense morphology in theinput, practice in how to assign present vs. past tense, and activities focusing onthe content of sentences. Instruction focused especially on the cues marking past


tense, and on the interpretation of the forms (contrasting them, in particular, tothe present tense forms). Subjects were anglophone adult learners of Spanish.

The results were similar to the previous study, showing a main effect fortest (showing improvement from pre-test to post-test), treatment, and a significantinteraction between group and test. The group receiving structured processinginput did significantly better on the comprehension post-tests than either thegroup receiving traditional grammatical explanations plus production practice orthe comparison group receiving no explanation.14 The former also did better thanthe other two groups on the production post-tests, there being a significant maineffect for instruction type, for test and a significant interaction between instruc-tion and test. In this case, the traditional instruction group did significantly betterthan the no-instruction group, as did the input processing group, and there wasno significant difference between the latter two groups. The conclusions are alsothe same, namely that input processing is essential for restructuring the learners’grammars but that traditional instruction, focusing on practising the forms,merely affects metalinguistic knowledge.

The results of these experiments are very interesting and clearly show thatinstructional activities which lead the learners to attend to particular forms canproduce superior results to activities which focus merely on manipulating output.However, the interpretation of these results from a theoretical perspective isdifficult. Any conclusions regarding the superiority of processing input over theprovision of metalinguistic information, or the complete lack of utility of meta-linguistic information do not follow. The reason for this should be obvious: bothinstructed groups received metalinguistic information. The one difference wasthat the traditional grammar instruction group did not, in addition, process stimulifor comprehension but rather were forced to direct their attention to productionactivities. The structured input group, in contrast, got both metalinguisticinformation and exposure to relevant stimuli. VanPatten and Oikkonen (1997)therefore conducted a partial replication of the VanPatten and Cadierno (1993a, b)studies. They observed correctly that the original research confounds inputprocessing and monitoring. Since the structured input group got the same explicitinstruction as the traditional grammar instruction group plus information that NPV NP sentences were not necessarily subject–verb–object sentences, the authorsnoted that the processing group might have used explicit metalinguistic knowl-edge about the order of stimuli to monitor their own behaviour on the interpreta-tion tests and explicit metalinguistic knowledge about pronouns to monitor theirbehaviour on the production tests. In that case, they would have used metalinguisticinformation, rather than direct processing of the stimuli, on both types of tests.


In the replication study, there were again 3 groups of subjects. One receivedprocessing instruction (i.e. explicit information + structured input activities), onereceived explanation but no practice, and the third group received only thestructured input activities. The comparison group here is the group receivingprocessing instruction. They received metalinguistic information about the formand distribution of Spanish object pronouns, the order of constituents expressingmajor grammatical relations, the role of the prepositiona, the tendency tointerpret verb-initial NPs as subjects and that this “first noun strategy” was nota reliable cue for Spanish. Following the explanation, this group receivedstructured input involving the interpretation of sentences with various phrasalorders, then responded in Spanish to the content of various kinds of stimuli withtheir personal opinions (e.g. “I agree” or “I disagree”, “That’s true”, “That’s nottrue”), made inferences based on stimuli and so on. The second group receivedthe same metalinguistic information as the previous group but did not receiveany structured input. This group received no practice of any kind, but did get theexplanation spread out over four days so that we may assume there was repeti-tion of the information provided. The third group received no explanation but didreceive the structured input. This study, unlike the previous ones, thus attemptsto zero in on the relative roles of explicit information versus practice as variablesin causing learning of the relevant phenomenon. Testing took place over oneweek. Results on the comprehension tests showed a significant main effect fortreatment in favour of the comparison and the structured input (no metalinguisticinstruction) groups over the explanation only group. Results on the productiontests showed a significant main effect for treatment. In this instance, thecomparison and the structured input groups did equally well, and the comparisongroup did better than the explanation only group. From these results the authorsconcluded that improvement on the comprehension post-tests is caused by thepresence of structured input activities and not by the presence of explicitmetalinguistic information. They exclude the possibility that explanation iscausally related to improved performance on the production tests because thegroup which received only explicit explanation did not do better than thestructured input group. This leads them to question the claim that explicitinformation is necessary to grammar learning.

Taken together, these studies are important for they establish that secondlanguage learning takes place on the basis of the parsing of stimuli, lest anyonehave any doubts on this score. In particular, they show that activities which focusexclusively on manipulating speech or writing do not lead to language learning.One can also argue that they independently motivate the distinction betweenconscious metalinguistic learning and unconscious induction. It is the latter which


seems to be relevant for input processing, and is teased apart from the meta-linguistic instruction in the final experiment. Apparently, implicit learningoccurring during the structured input tasks leads to the identification of cues inthe stimuli relevant for the analysis of grammatical roles. Extrapolated to theearlier experiments, we might say that implicit learning also leads to the identifi-cation of the cues relevant for tense marking.

If we step back from the question of the role of metalinguistic informationon learning and ask a more general question: Can you manipulate the environ-ment in such a way that language becomes learnable?, then the results of thesestudies are extremely positive.15 The role of the instruction from VanPatten’sperspective is not to allow the learner to compute comparisons between stimuliand speech output, but rather to allow the learner to attend to, identify, andinduce the functions of certain cues. What is induced? Learners can i-learn that theprepositiona is a cue that the adjacent NP is a direct object complement regard-less of whether the phrase precedes or follows the verb. Similarly, the tensemarkers on the verb are cues for the interpretation of the sentence with respectto present or past time. That such markers can be learned on the basis of “form-focused” instructional activities is important given the comparative difficulty thatverbal morphology causes in production for learners at even advanced levels ofL2 proficiency (Larsen-Freeman 1983; Bardovi-Harlig and Bofman 1989).

viii. The Izumi and Lakshmanan studyIzumi and Lakshmanan (1998) examined the role of instruction which explicitlyinforms the learner that some form is not acceptable in a study investigating theacquisition of the English passive by speakers of Japanese. Japanese has twokinds of passive — a “direct” passive and an “indirect” passive. Examples ofeach are shown in (8.9).

(8.9) a. John-ga Bill-na/niyotte yob-(r)are-taJohn- Bill-by call--

‘John was called by Bill.’b. sono-geki-ga Shakespeare-niyotte kak-(r)are-ta

that-play- Shakespeare-by write--

‘That play was written by Shakespeare.’(Izumi and Lakshmanan 1998: 68)

The authors report that the structural ambiguity arises because the Japanese verbrare is itself ambiguous functioning as an auxiliary element without semanticrole assignment properties, and as a verb which does assign semantic roles.Izumi and Lakshmanan then hypothesise that Japanese learners of English willtransfer the lexical properties ofrare to the learning of the English passive,


assigning passivebedual status likerare. This would then lead them to produceboth indirect and direct passives in English. In that case, learners would requirenegative evidence to retreat from the overgeneralisation.

15 Japanese learners of English participated in this study, assigned to fourdifferent proficiency levels (ranging from high-beginner to advanced). Subjectswere assigned to either a comparison (11 subjects) or to an experimental group(four subjects). The experimental group included at least one subject from eachproficiency level and included only subjects who accepted or had producedindirect passives. They received formal instruction on the English passive oneweek after a pre-test, while the comparison group did not. Subjects performed atranslation task, a picture-cued production task, and an acceptability judgementtask. Instruction sessions were held on two days for about an hour and a half. Onthe first day, instruction consisted of systematic contrastive information includingnormal passive stimuli (likely to be construed as positive evidence as to thegrammaticality of the strings) and information about what is not possible inEnglish. This instruction was explicit and designed to draw the learners’ attentionto the ungrammaticality of the indirect passive in English. On the second day,subjects reviewed the first day’s information and then practiced making passivesentences. Five days later, both groups were tested again.

Results of the pre-tests showed that subjects in both the experimental andcomparison groups produced and accepted the indirect passive in English. Resultsof the post-tests revealed significant differences between the instructed and thecomparison group in favour of the former. The authors conclude that themetalinguistic instruction was highly effective in leading the subjects to under-stand that the indirect passive is not possible in English, and to modify theirbehaviour accordingly. However, given the size of the sample, caution is requiredbefore generalising to other learners.

ix. Experiments in the learning of artificial languagesIn Chapter 5, I discussed research dealing with the learning of artificial lan-guages in the context of a discussion of distributional analysis. Some researchusing artificial languages as the target language has focused on the differencesbetween explicit and implicit learning (Reber 1976, 1989; Reber, Kassin, Lewisand Cantor 1980; Mathews, Buss, Stanley, Blanchard-Fields, Cho, and Druhan1989; see also Carr and Curran 1993). Following in this tradition in particular isresearch by DeKeyser (1995), Hulstijn (1989, 1992), de Graaf (1997a, b), andRobinson (1997a, b). Some of these studies have focused on implicit and explicitlearning, see also the other papers in Hulstijn and DeKeyser (1997), in particularHulstijn (1997) which lays out the logic of experimentation with artificial


languages, DeKeyser (1997) which focuses on the nature of automatisation oflearning, and Yang and Givón (1997) which contrasts implicit learning of pidginstimuli vs. more complex “fully grammatical” stimuli.

DeKeyser (1995) investigated the ability of learners to induce or deduce therules of an invented “natural” language Implexan. This is an agglutinative SVOlanguage with number and case marking on the noun. Number marking iscategorical; case marking, in contrast, is prototypical. Verbs are marked categori-cally for gender and prototypically for number. It was hypothesised that proto-types would be harder to learn than categorical rules, and that the type of rulewould interact with the type of learning. Thus, explicit learning (from explicitrule to instances) would be more effective for learning categorical rules and lesseffective for learning prototypes. In the pilot study reported on, six learnerslearned the Implexan over the course of 20 learning sessions during which theysaw pictures on a computer screen along with a corresponding sentence. Subjectswere to infer some sort of meaning for the graphic stimulus on the screen. Thetreatment group were taught grammatical rules of Implexan before doing thefirst, third and tenth sessions. The comparison group received no metalinguisticinstruction. Subjects were tested on 20 sentences out of 124 stimuli with ajudgement task at random times during each learning session. Two weeks afterthe last training session all subjects were given a judgement and a productiontask of the same 44 sentences. Initial responses to the judgement tasks suggestthat subjects were responding randomly. Protocol analyses were then carried out.The author argues that the study provides limited support for the hypotheses thatprototypical rules are harder to learn than categorical rules, that explicit learning(i.e. learning based on grammar instruction) works better than implicit learningfor categorical rules, and that both work equally well for prototypical rules. Thestudy is, however, a pilot study and needs to be replicated.

de Graaf (1997a, b) investigated the role of explicit instruction in thelearning of inflectional morphology (singular vs. plural noun marking, formal vs.informal imperative mode) and word order (position of the negator, position ofthe object) of an artificial language eXperanto, a modified version of Esperanto.Fifty-six Dutch-speaking participants comprised the subject pool and weredivided into two groups. One group (the “explicit” group) received explanationon the grammatical structures after exposure to dialogues and comprehensionactivities. The other group (the “implicit” group”) were exposed to repetitions ofthe materials in the dialogues and comprehension activities to ensure equalamounts of exposure but were not otherwise instructed. Subjects were tested threetimes during the experiment on four tasks — a 60 item sentence judgement task,a 60-item gap-filling taks, a 30-item Dutch-eXperanto translation task, a 45-item


judgement and correction task. Results showed that the explicit group outper-formed the implicit group on all 4 tasks over all 3 test periods. In addition, aneffect for the complexity of the learning problem was found with scores onsimple items significantly higher than scores on complex items, due to effects ofinstruction. However, no interaction between complexity and instruction wasfound, nor was there a specific effect for type of learning (morphological vs.syntactic) demonstrating the relationship between specific types of acquisitionand instruction (or focus on form more generally) remains obscure. This studyraises in an acute way the issue of the level of analysis that the learner iscarrying out in that it failed to provide any evidence that learners were in factable to use instructional information to differentiate between morphological andsyntactic information.

x. Summary of the instruction studiesAlthough there are problems in the interpretation of each of the studies surveyed,taken together, they provide some evidence that metalinguistic instruction has adefinite effect on learner behaviour with respect to a small number of linguisticphenomena which, nonetheless, cover a broad range of types of linguisticknowledge (direction of semantic role assignment, semantic sub-classes of verbs,various aspects of word order, verbal morphology, consonantal alternations). Thestudies by White, or Spada and Lightbown are probably the most complex sincethey deal with the true nature of instruction in the classroom. However, theirresults are not clear since they fail to show a systematic relationship between thestimuli in the classroom and what the learners come to know. Much clearerresults come from the VanPatten and Cadierno studies which have shown thatcertain kinds of metalinguistic instruction can work (instruction focusing on cuesrelevant for parsing grammatical roles and linear order, cues for tense markingand the expression of time relations). They have also suggested how it mightwork. The most intriguing studies may well be those involving the learning ofartificial languages for these permit one to control most carefully the nature ofthe input for the learning of specific types of formal structures, or for investigat-ing the relative efficacity of various kinds of evidence. The Robinson studiesoffer clear support for the utility of metalinguistic instruction provided asexplicit pedagogical rules. Some support is provided for implicit and enhancedforms of focus on form by both the Robinson studies and the Doughty study,although how these types of stimuli work remains to be worked out in detail.

Some might argue that a certain scepticism as to whether these studies showthat instruction has altered the interlanguage grammars of the learners is necess-ary. Opponents of the hypothesis that metalinguistic instruction can indeed cause


learning in autonomous cognitive systems would insist on such scepticism in theabsence of explicit models of how the instruction in question could play itsputative causal role. As we seen, most of the studies actually provide the learnerswith lots of stimuli from which they could i-learn the relevant properties of thetarget language. In that case, it may be that instruction assists the learner indeveloping greater control over certain aspects of his speech production, or mayassist in performing essentially metalinguistic tasks, such as making acceptabilityjudgements. Moreover, as the de Graaf studies show, these types of experimentsalso do not resolve the issue of the relevant level of analysis at which learningis occuring. We might think we are instructing on “syntax” or “phonology” butwhat the learner actually represents is a separate matter. It is early days yet forthis type of research and we must await further studies before we can safelyassert that explicit instruction clearly can lead the learner to restructure hermental grammar, thereby representing distinctions which had not been encodedpreviously. Demonstrating that instruction is necessary requires yet anotherresearch step.

2.3 The feedback and correction studies

i. The Tomasello and Herron studiesTomasello and Herron conducted three studies looking at the role of differentkinds of feedback on the learning of aspects of French grammar by adult nativespeakers of English. The subjects were students in a French-language classroom.These studies tie in with those just reviewed in that, in all cases, the subjectswere given grammatical instruction about French. Tomasello and Herron (1988)investigated the instruction of 8 targetted forms of French. These are listed in (8.10).

(8.10) French forms under investigationdu (contraction ofde+ article le, when used as a preposition)au (contraction ofà + article le, when used as a preposition)mon (possessive adjective used before a feminine noun beginning with avowel in apparent violation of agreement constraints because the form isthe same as that used with masculine nouns)ne (verb)pas de(une is replaced bydeafter certain negated verbs)dites (irregular form of the verb)cet (masculine demonstrative specifier used before nouns beginning with avowel, varies within the paradigm withce)meilleur (irregular form of the comparative of bon)-er imperative (irregular form of the second person, familiar imperative)


It should be noted that these forms constitute exceptions to generalisations of onesort or another. The targetted forms were characterised in terms of their degreeof difficulty and then randomly assigned to one of two treatment conditionstaught in one term. In the subsequent term, the assignment was reversed so thateach structure was taught in each condition. Forms were introduced illustratingrelevant generalisations via oral pattern drill. This initial instruction did notinclude the forms in (8.10). The targetted exceptions were then introduced undera “Garden Path condition” or a comparison condition. First of all, students wereasked to examine fill-in-the-blanks strings on the blackboard which includedstimuli where the exception would have to be used. In the comparison condition,the teacher pointed to the novel stimulus and explained to the students in the L2that the form used in the relevant stimulus was exceptional. She then illustratedby providing a model and an explanation of its nature. In the Garden Pathcondition, the teacher led the students to actually make errors by overgeneralisingthe instructed pattern and then corrected the error. The forms were tested threetimes using fill-in-the-blanks tests like those used during the instruction. Resultswere very variable across the structures tested with some forms being reproducedcompletely correctly on the final test and close to completely correctly as earlyas the first test (e.g.meilleur, mon, dites, and cet), while others were muchharder to master. The results were significantly higher under the Garden Pathcondition. Although the authors insist that the mechanism explaining thesedifferences is not known, they speculate that the forms investigated and thecorrection provided lead to the perception of a contrast between the formgenerated by the learner’s rule and the form actually used. It is unlikely that thisis the correct explanation because under both conditions we may assume thatlearners have represented in their conceptual system the generalisation inducedduring the instruction. The explicit provision of metalinguistic instruction wouldprovide a contrast just as much as the correction of errors. The difference is, ofcourse, that correction provides a model which the learner can encode and storein longterm memory, and which might be rehearsed and strengthened each timethe learner makes a mistake. Learners who got models introduced at the momentof instruction of the forms may have formed only weak representations of thecorrect forms.

Herron and Tomasello (1988) looked at similar phenomena but investigatedthe relative efficacity of modelling the correct forms versus feedback whichhelped the students to identify and locate their own errors. One set of Frenchstructures was corrected, while another was explicitly modelled. Results showedsignificant differences between the two treatment contexts in favour, for moststructures, of the feedback contexts.


Tomasello and Herron (1989) examined the effects of correcting errorsresulting from transfer from the L1 to the L2 interlanguage grammar. Thephenomena examined are listed in (8.11).

(8.11) a. the elimination of the article in a predication stating a profession:Je suis professeure.I am professor‘I am a professor’

b. écouter‘to listen to’ c-selects a direct object:J’écoute la radio.‘I am listening to the radio’

c. the use ofavoir to express one’s age:J’ai 43 ansI have 43 years‘I am 43 years old’

d. the use ofaller to express destination:Je vais à Potsdam chaque semaine.‘I go to Potsdam each week’

e. the use ofprendre, emporterandemmenerto render the English “totake”:Je prends un taxi.‘I will take a taxi’J’emporte mon passeport quand je quitte l’Allemagne.‘I take my passport when I leave Germany’J’emmène mon chien avec moi quand je voyage.‘I take my dog with me when I travel’

f. the use of two verbs to express “to visit”:visiter NPand rendre visiteà NP

g. the use of two verbs to express “to know”:connaîtreandsavoir.h. the use ofaller to render transportation by car when destination is

mentioned:Je vais nullepart en voiture.‘I don’t drive anywhere’vs. Je prends toujours la voiture quand je fais le marché‘I always drive when I go shopping’

Structures were randomly assigned to either the Garden Path and the comparisonconditions during one term and assigned to the other condition in the followingterm. Instruction began with the teacher teaching a French expression and thenasking students to translate four English sentences written on the blackboard.These sentences were designed to encourage transfer errors. In the comparison


condition, the problematic correspondences were explained, modelled, and thestudents were warned to pay attention. In the Garden Path condition, the studentswere led to make errors and these were corrected. Forms were tested three times.Once again, there was considerable variability across the targetted forms withsome eliciting perfect responses by the final test as well as on the initial testwhile other forms elicited few correct responses initially and did not reach 80%correct by the final test. The authors again speculate that the correction techniquemay work well when learners must withdraw from an overgeneral generalisation.

These studies offer more support that feedback, and in particular correction,can help learners learn the correct information needed to perform on productiontasks. In each of the studies examined, correction appeared to help the learnerrestructure his grammatical knowledge in the direction of the L2 target, learningexceptions to generalisations involving lexical substitutes for expected strings oflexical items (du, au), exceptions to verbal paradigms, alternate forms forspecific words, learning the form-meaning correspondences of certain predicatesin French which deviate from those of English by expressing slightly differentsemantic features, or learning alternate subcategorisation patterns. These studiesshow that correction can have a positive effect particularly on elements likely tocause problems for learners precisely because they are exceptional.

In a previous review of these studies, Carroll, Roberge, and Swain (1992)and Carroll and Swain (1993) observe that the Tomasello and Herron studies donot address the one critical question for negative evidence within learning theory:Can learners induce grammatical generalisations on the basis of feedback andcorrection?Unless it can be shown that negative evidence can lead learners toinduce novel categories, structures or patterns in the L2, it will be clear that itsrole in a theory of language learning must be quite limited. The burden oflearning the principal properties of a grammar would then fall on the observationof properties of the stimuli — induction without feedback or correction. More-over, it might be argued that feedback and correction, if useful only for limitingtoo general generalisations is only enhancing an input which would signal thelearner’s problem anyway. In other words, normal stimuli would in the course oftime provide exactly the same information as the feedback and correction makingit a possibly helpful but unnecessary part of the learning process.

ii. The Carroll and Swain studiesCarroll et al. (1992) attempted to address precisely this issue. We examined therelative efficacity of explicit correction in learning the selectional properties oftwo noun-forming suffixes in French. We chose to focus first on this feedbacktype because correction is often taken as the most “natural” and frequent form


of feedback. In fact, it turns out to make complex cognitive demands of learnersif they are to assign an interpretation to the correction rather than rejecting it asirrelevant “noise.” Correction, in particular, is an indirect or tacit form ofnegative feedback, although it does provide a model of the desired form. I returnto this issue in Chapters 9 and 10. The subjects (79 native speakers of English)consisted of two groups of adult intermediate and advanced learners of Frenchwho were trained to draw an explicit relationship between French verbs andcorresponding nouns. Stimuli were of the form shown in (8.12) and weredesigned to draw the subjects’ attention to the formal and semantic relatednessof the verb and noun forms.

(8.12) InFrench, one can sayMarie a bien attelé les chevaux(‘Marie has harnessedthe horses well’). Once again,Marie a bien attelè les chevaux. One can alsosay,Marie a fait un bon attelage des chevaux(‘Marie did a good harnessing ofthe horses’). Once again,Marie a fait un bon attelage des chevaux. Theword attelé resembles the wordattelage, and they have a similar meaning.

In the case of the -age nouns, the stimuli all involved sentences in which theverb was immediately followed by a direct object. After training on this relation-ship, subjects were trained in a similar manner to draw a relationship betweenverbs and -ment nouns. In this case, the verbal stimuli were contained insentences where there was either no complement at all, or else the complementinvolved an adjunct PP. The stimuli were thus designed to illustrate the generali-sation shown in (8.13).

(8.13) Within the stimulus set, a transitive verb forms its deverbal nouns bysuffixing -age to the verb stem. Within the stimulus set, an intransitiveverb forms its deverbal nouns by suffixing -mentto the verb stem.

After the training sessions, all subjects saw cards on which were written Frenchsentences accompanied by an English translation. The French verbs on the cardswere graphically highlighted. Subjects were asked to read the sentences aloudand then to state the appropriate noun corresponding to the highlighted verb. Theexperimental groups were given feedback or corrected whenever they made anerror. A comparison group was not corrected. Following the feedback sessions,all subjects saw new items and were again asked to provide the appropriate nouncorresponding to the verb stimulus. No feedback was provided at this point.

Results of ANOVAs showed that the groups which received correctionperformed significantly better than the groups which received no feedback butt-tests done comparing differences between the experimental and the comparisongroups for each of the non-feedback sessions revealed no significant differences


between the groups. Carroll et al. (1992) interpreted these results in terms of fourdistinct questions.

(8.14) a. Does error correction have an effect?b. Can error correction help adult learners construct morphological gene-

ralisations?c. Can error correction help adult learners restrict the domain of applica-

tion of generalisations in a principled way?d. Assuming that it has some effect, does error correction have the same

effect on adult learners regardless of how much of the language theyalready know?

The response to question (8.14a) was “Yes, error correction had an effect”,namely that the experimental groups guessed the correct form of the nounsignificantly more often than the comparison group. However, the response toquestion (8.14b) was in the negative since there were no significant differencesbetween the groups on novel items suggesting “that the experimental subjects didnot extract the expected generalisations from the feedback.” Instead, the authorssuggested that experimental subjects were being helped to memorise words bythe feedback. This is not an insignificant result if it shows that lexical learningis aided by feedback, but it hardly leads one to predict a major role for feedbackin the development of grammatical knowledge.

Carroll and Swain (1993) used the same methodology to investigate whetherdifferent types of feedback and correction could assist Spanish learners ofEnglish in inducing the correct phonological and semantic constraints on doubleobject or “dative” verbs. As is well-known, a subset of English verbs alternatesbetween an NP PP subcategorisation and an NP NP subcategorisation.

(8.15) a. John gave an apple to Mary.b. John gave Mary an apple.

Equally well known (see Pinker 1989, for details) is that the alternation is subjectto certain limitations. On the one hand, verbs must consist of a phonologicalfoot. This means essentially that the verb stem consists of a single syllable or oftwo syllables with stress on the first. The verbgive can alternate but the verbdonatecannot; the verbtell can alternate but the verbexplaincannot.

(8.16) a. *John donated the museum a painting.b. *John explained me the story.

This constraint appears to be very difficult to learn from primary data alone,since it leads to incomplete learning or fossilisaton on the part of many learnersof English (R. Hawkins 1987; Mazurkewich 1984a, b, 1985). French, Dutch, and


German learners of English, for example, who produce otherwise native-likespeech still will make errors like those in (8.16).

The second constraint is semantic; the object of the preposition can be eithera recipient hence [+animate] or a goal [±animate] but the alternating first objectin a double object construction must be a recipient.

(8.17) a. John sent a picture to the border.b. *John sent the border a picture.c. John sent the boarder a picture.

In the experiment reported on, adult Spanish speakers saw sentences of Englishshowing the alternation, along with translations. The stimuli in the trainingsessions looked like (8.18).

(8.18) Training example (on card)Peter wrote a letter to Theresa.Peter wrote Theresa a letter.

Verbal instructions (read out loud by the experimenter as the subjectsexamined a card containing the stimulus shown above)

We are doing a study concerned with English as a second language. I willgive you a sentence and I would like you to think of a different way ofsaying the same thing. For example, in English you can sayPeter wrote aletter to Theresa. Once again,Peter wrote a letter to Theresa. But you canalso sayPeter wrote Theresa a letter. I repeat:Peter wrote Theresa a letter.These two sentences,Peter wrote a letter to TheresaandPeter wroteTheresa a letter, have the same meaning; they alternate.

We did not teach the subjects any metalinguistic information or explicit rulesabout the alternation. We gave subjects models of the relationship, drew theirattention explicitly to the information (independently inferrable) that the stimulimeant the same thing, and taught them one bit of metalinguistic vocabulary (theword alternate) to facilitate the running of the rest of the experiment.

As in the previous experiment, subjects were divided into an experimentaland a comparison group. In the experimental sessions we were able to get thesubjects to make errors. This is because a strictly formal relationship, inducedfrom the stimuli in the training session, is overgeneral. It fails to exclude thephonological and semantic exceptions. It is interesting in itself to observe that wehad no difficulty in getting subjects to make a formal generalisation of therelevant sort. They readily cognised the alternating relationship in the eight itemsof the training session even in the absence of explicit metalinguistic training.Subjects were divided into five subgroups. We corrected errors made by the


experimental group. The comparison group was not corrected. In this experimentwe actually added a wrinkle by offering different kinds of feedback to sub-groups of experimental subjects. See Carroll and Swain (1993) for details. Thefeedback sessions were then followed by sessions when subjects saw newmaterial and were asked to guess if particular stimuli alternated or not.

Analysis of results showed signficant differences between the experimentalsubjects and the comparison subjects in favour of the experimental subjects. As inthe previous experiment, the provision of feedback helped the experimental subjectslearn the particular stimuli. This time, however, it also helped them zero in on thecorrect generalisation. How this might have happened, I will take up in Chapter 9.

In Section 3, I will report on the last experiment in this series which alsoprovides evidence that negative evidence can lead learners to induce linguisticgeneralisations.

iii. The Tanaka (1999) studyTanaka (1999) investigated the acquisition of the Japanese subject (ga)/topic (wa)distinction in a computerised study involving 52 adult learners with variousmother tongues. 25 of the subjects were native speakers of English, and all of therest were learners of Japanese who also spoke English, a fact which is of import-ance since the materials included information presented in English. The experi-ment was conducted in three sessions over several days. Subjects saw 58cartoons on a computer screen which involved a discourse context established inEnglish by the first three boxes of the cartoon. They were required to provide thetext for the fourth box in Japanese by selecting one of four options from amultiple-choice test. The list of options included a focus NP marked byga(followed by a non-focus NP + copula), a non-focus NP marked bywa (followedby a focus NP + copula), a focus NP marked bywa (followed by a non-focusNP + copula), and a non-focus NP marked byga (followed by a focus NP +copula). Subjects typed in a number corresponding to their choice of responseand were then asked to indicate how certain they were of its correctness.

Subjects were divided into several treatment groups. Two groups (MO andM) received feedback if they made incorrect choices during the experiment. Twogroups (MO and O) were required to produce vocal responses (which wererecorded). Two groups (M and C) did a reading task during the time that theoutput group were producing output. The feedback provided was metalinguisticin nature and consisted of detailed information about the use ofwa andga astopic and focus markers. The testing phase then consisted of novel items.

Results indicate that feedback groups scored significantly better than non-feedback groups. Tanaka also reports that subjects who received feedback rated their


certainty of response more accurately than those who did not. She suggested that thisis because they have greater knowledge of the domain of knowledge in question.

iv. Summary of the correction and feedback studiesIn this sub-section, I have reviewed several studies which involve explicit andimplicit kinds of feedback to learners and/or correction (i.e., a model), all ofwhich indicate that learners can modify their behaviour on that basis. Once again,the various studies involve a limited number of linguistic phenomena covering abroad range of types (exceptions to morphosyntactic generalisations, restrictionsof derivational suffix attachment, semantic and phonological constraints on thedouble object construction, pragmatic function markers). In several of thesestudies, learners were asked to apply what they had learned to novel items andwere successful in doing so, more successful than learners who had received nocomparable feedback or correction. These studies provide pretty solid evidencethat learners can learn information associated with individual lexical items basedon feedback and correction. More importantly, they show that learners can learnabstract properties about the target language on the same basis. Overall, thesestudies provide considerable support for the hypothesis that L2 learners canrestructure their grammars on the basis of correction and feedback. In the nextsection, I will provide some new data which point to the same conclusion.

3. The -ing affixation/morphological conversion study

This study was done as the third in the series reported on above.16

3.1 The subjects

The experiment was conducted with 100 adult ESL learners whose primarylanguage was Spanish. These subjects had all previously participated in the studyreported on in Carroll and Swain (1993). They were all literate, and the vastmajority had had some post-secondary education. At the time of the experiments,they were enrolled in various low-intermediate ESL classes in the Toronto(Canada) area from which they had been recruited. Participation was voluntaryand all subjects were paid. To ensure uniformity of language learning levelbeyond that provided by the subjects’ grouping in their ESL programs, we hadpreviously administered an acceptability judgement test to everyone. This testedvarious types of grammatical problems exemplified in a set of 50 sentencesrecorded on tape and presented orally. See Carroll and Swain for further details.


Subjects were required to identify each sentence as correct or incorrect. Mini-mum and maximum scores were established.17 All of our subjects had scoresfalling between the limits selected.

3.2 Design and methodology

The design and methodology followed that of the two previous experiments.

i. The sessionsThe acceptability judgement task had been administered to all subjects in aninitial meeting preceding the double object experiment. Several months later, thecurrent experiment was conducted with each subject individually on two separateoccasions. The first meeting consisted in giving the experimental sessions andour first test (Test 1). One week later we administered the second test (Test 2).All sessions were tape-recorded, transcribed and scored by the same individual.The complete set of items can be found in Appendix 1.

ii. The learning problemWe wanted our subjects to learn a particular contrast involving noun formationfrom verb stems. The verb stems in question can be simple or can be based onthe participal V+ing. Thus, one can relate sentences like those in (8.19) and(8.20) through the contrast in question.

(8.19) a. Can youhelpMargarita with her homework?b. I think she needs somehelp.

(8.20) a. Many peoplehelpme at odd jobs.b. I am grateful for thishelpingout.

The forms in (8.19) involve a contrast between a simple verb form and a simplenoun form with no morphology marking the shift in syntactic category. Thisrelationship is sometimes referred to ascategory conversion. The relationship canbe expressed as in (8.21) which indicates formally that conversion involves noaddition of an affix or stem to a base root or stem.

(8.21) a. N→ Vb. N

|V

What then constitutes the cues that conversion has occurred? It must be the casethat the morphosyntactic distribution of the forms in the two distinct sentencesis critical. In other words, the appearance of the formhelp in a position reserved


for verbs in (8.19), and its appearance in (8.20) in a position reserved for nouns,serve as the cues that the same form is a noun in (8.19) but is a verb in (8.20).Notice, however, that this explains very little. In an inductive learning theorywithout recourse to language universals one can legitimately ask the question:What prevents the learner from assuming that (8.19) simply indicates theexistence of a single category, a prototype with both nominal and verbal proper-ties but something that is neither [+N, −V] nor [−N, +V] as current categorytheory requires? Why must the learner learn a distinct and separate category forthese sentences? In addition, what prevents the learner from collapsing theclasses illustrated in (8.19) and (8.20) with the class of adjectives. It is knownthat participles and gerunds manifest mixed properties cross-linguistically(Spencer 1991: 27–30). One might respond that extended experience with theform help tells the learner that there is a version which can take verbal morphol-ogy, and a second form which can take nominal morphology. Unfortunately, incontrast to many languages, English has no unique inflectional morphologywhich will serve to tell the learner that a given instantiation of the word mustbelong to a specific lexical category, therefore, distributional cues must be themain cues. Derivational affixes will not necessarily help either since it is nowknown that Aronoff’s (1976: 47) Unitary Base Hypothesis, which states that thebase to all morphological operations must be syntactically specified, or at leastbe specifiable as a natural class, is not correct (Drapeau 1980; Aronoff 1994). Inany event, it will become obvious below that our subjects needed no suchextensive experience; they understood the contrast readily. In order to explain theease with which learners grasp this categorial distinction, two explanations arepossible. One is that they are transferring categorial properties from Spanish totheir interlanguage grammars based on a translation of the English words into thecorresponding Spanish lexical items. A simple rendition of the stimulus in (8.19)could be expressed in Spanish as (8.22)

(8.22) a. ¿Puedes ayudar a Margarita con sus lecciones?¿can+2 help+. Margarita with her+ homework+

b. Creoque necesita ayuda.believe+1+that need+3 help

It will seen that there is no identity of form between the Spanish noun and theSpanish verb since the verb must always be inflected for tense, person and number.One can, of course, argue that the stem is identical but this is irrelevant to theclaim that learners are transferring the syntactic class from Spanish.

A second hypothesis is that learners deploy representational systemsincorporating a set of morphosyntactic features, minimally [±N, ±V], and that UG


excludes the possibility that a single morphosyntactic word can be simultaneouslyspecified as [+N, −V] and [−N, +V]. Learners, on seeing the contrast in (8.19),and on identifying these contexts as precisely verbal and nominal contexts, wouldthen be forced to analysehelp as two separate words, one specified as a nounand bearing the features [+N, −V], the other specified as a verb and bearing thefeatures [−N, +V]. This is, I believe, the correct explanation and demonstrateswhat I mean when I say that induction must “respect” the properties of UG.Induction cannot lead the learner to specify a single form as having contradictoryformal featural specifications, moreover, it cannot leave elements appearing inmorphosyntactic structures underspecified for syntactic category.

The forms in (8.20) also illustrate conversion and can be described in terms of(8.21). The formal difference betweenhelpandhelpingis in fact predicted by (8.21)since V can be realised as a verb stem, or as a participle consisting of the verb stemplus the suffix -ing. The formal difference can be expressed as in (8.23).18

(8.23) a. [[help]V ]Nb. [[[help]V ing]V]N

The formal difference representing different internal structures of the two nounscorresponds to a semantic difference. Quirk, Svartvik, Greenbaum, and Leech(1991: 1064) characterise the -ing forms in nominal -ing clauses as able to referto a fact or to an action. In fact, the semantics of the noun phrases containingderived -ing nouns is a complex, combinatorial computation based on themeaning of the verb stem, the process semantics of the -ing suffix, and the seman-tics of noun complements.19 There are clear contrasts expressed in (8.24–8.25).

(8.24) a. *The singing was difficult to compose.b. The song was difficult to compose.

(8.25) a. The inspirational singing lasted for hours.b. The inspirational song lasted for hours.c. The inspirational singing lasted for hours, and the choir sang many

different ditties.d. #The inspirational song lasted for hours, and the choir sang many

different ditties.

The examples in (8.24) establish a contrast between the action associated withthe verbsing, and the product or thing which is both input and output of thesinging event.20 The activity of composing is precisely the activity which createsthe product. The action of singing is conceptually not equivalent to this event,although someone might spontaneously sing and compose a song. The examplesin (8.25) are designed to show that both the musical event and the musical


product can be characterised as lasting for a period of time, but only the -ingnoun can refer to repeated actions. Sentence (8.25b) must refer to a single event.The action interpretation is also illustrated in the common injunctions in (8.26).

(8.26) a. No smoking! No spitting! No loitering!

We wanted our subjects to associate an event interpretation with the -ing form,

Figure 8.1. A model of Lexical Phonology showing the interaction of word-buildingprocesses and phonological rules (based on Jensen 1990: 92)

Dictionary of morphemes

↓Level 1 morphology +boundary affixese.g., +ian, +al; irregularplurals

→←

Level 1 phonologye.g., word stress,trisyllabic laxing

↓Level 2 morphology# boundary affixese.g., #ism

→←

Level 2 phonology

↓Level 3 morphologye.g., regular inflection

→←

Level 3 phonology

↓Syntax → Surface structure

↓Postlexical phonology(vowel insertion,devoicing phrasal stress)

and to recognise that the form derived by conversion from a verb root or stemhas no systematic meaning beyond denoting a THING concept.

Beyond this, I need to point out that conversion word formation rulesinteract with the phonology of English in different ways. Certain lexical formsare subject to word stress, ablaut and rules like trisyllabic laxing, others are not.Consequently, many linguists (e.g. Siegel 1974; Kiparsky 1982; Mohanen 1986)have proposed that there are levels of word formation which interact with thephonology in an ordered fashion. The figure below is based on Jensen (1990: 92).


According to Figure 8.1, conversion rules are represented at different levelsdepending upon whether conversion acts on a verb to make a noun or acts on anoun to make a verb. Phonological distinctions, as well as certain semanticdistinctions, provide cues as to which process is involved in relating a givennoun–verb pair. This has certain consequences for our methodology.

Our stimuli presented all of the input first in the form of a verb, and thenelicited a noun form. Thus, we presented the data in such a way as to gloss overthe fact that the verb–noun relationship illustrated over the sentence pairs couldbe derived in principle via either a rule converting a verb into a noun, or via arule converting a noun into a verb. The methodology favours interpreting allinput as if derived via (8.21). Since certain phonological processes in Englishdifferentiate verb-to-noun conversion and noun-to-verb conversion, we mustexclude the possibility that our data illustrated noun-to-verb conversion.

It should be noted, first of all, that our stimuli generally involved simpleone or two syllable words, thus excluding any possible interaction of theconversion processes and either word stress or trisyllabic laxing. Secondly, wedid not restrict ourselves to verbs with only regular past tense forms; severalverbs used (e.g.fly, read, choose, give, etc.) have ablaut forms. However, noneof these ablaut forms appeared in our stimuli. Moreover, even if they had, itwould not have been problematic since the ablaut forms are in fact instances ofverb-to-noun conversion. Thus, despite the fact that English provides phonologi-cal cues for determining the order of derivation (verb-to-noun or noun-to-verb),our data were consistent with the intended analysis verb-to-noun.

To sum up, we presented our subjects with instances of verbs embedded ina syntactic context, and asked them to derive one of two types of noun: a nounderived by conversion from an uninflected verb root or stem, or a noun derivedby conversion from a present participal. In the training sessions, the -ing formsappeared in noun phrases which could be given an event interpretation (action,activity, accomplishment), while the simple root/stem conversions appeared innoun phrases which lent themselves to a THING or INDIVIDUAL interpretation.21

iii. The proceduresThe procedures began with an 8-item training session. Subjects saw texts like theone in (8.26) and simultaneously heard the texts in (8.27).

(8.26) Training example (on a card)Call me tomorrow morning!Give me acall in the morning!

(8.27) Verbal instructionsThis is also a study for learning English as a Second Language, somewhat


different from the one we did together before. This time, I will give youa sentence with a special word, a verb, and I would like you to think up arelated word, a noun, in a second sentence. Here is an example:Call metomorrow morning! Again: Call me tomorrow morning! You can also say:Give me a call in the morning! I repeat:Give me a call in the morning! Theverb call in the first sentenceCall me in the morning! has a similar mean-ing and form to the nouncall in the second sentenceGive me a call in themorning!

Subjects saw and simultaneously heard a second pair of sentences relating asimple verb to a simple noun form. Then, they were presented one-by-one withtwo cards that had a stimulus sentence and a response with a blank to be filled in.

(8.28) Verbal instructionsNow I will give you more sentences. I would like you to read aloud thefirst sentence, then read the second sentence and fill in the blank with anoun with a meaning similar to the verb underlined in the first sentence.

(8.29) Elicitation stimulus cardsA. Can youanswerthis question?

Sorry, I don’t know the __________.B. Steve likes tofish.

Yesterday, he caught a large __________.

The A and B cards were followed by two more examples illustrating for thesubjects the formal identity and semantic relatedness of the verb and noun pairs.These were followed by two more response elicitation cards. If any of thesubjects’ responses were incorrect during the elicitation part of the trainingsession, it was repeated from beginning to end once.

Immediately following the training session on the bare-stem conversion,subjects were trained on the -ing conversion. The training format was the same,with alternating pairs of complete illustrations and elicited response stimuli. Onceagain, if subjects erred on any of the four elicited response stimuli, the completetraining session was repeated once.

Each subject was told that sometimes the noun in the second sentence (theone with the blank) would be identical to the verb in the first sentence, andsometimes it would not. They were to decide when the noun–verb pairs wereidentical and when they were not and to furnish an appropriate form. Theexperimental groups were then given information about the feedback they wouldreceive. Prior to the experimental session, each subject received informationtailored to his or her feedback group. Since our subjects had participated in aprevious experiment using the same methodology, we assigned them to the same


treatment group they had previously been assigned to. We were not worriedabout subjects being familiar with the design, on the contrary, if it made theprocedures understandable it was a good thing.22 In contrast, we were worriedthat assigning subjects to a different treatment group might confuse them.

The experimental session consisted of four parts: an initial feedback sessionand a guessing session, followed by a second feedback session and a secondguessing session. There were 12 cards in each part so that subjects saw andheard 48 distinct stimuli (see Appendix 2).

(8.30) Experimental designTraining session — 8 items V — N conversion

(possibly twice)8 items V — N+ing conversion

(possibly twice)Experimental session– 12 feedback items– 12 guessing items– 12 feedback items– 12 guessing items

48 total

Test 1 – 48items (randomised)Test 2 – 48items (Test 2 repeated one week later)

During the feedback sessions, experimental subjects received feedback wheneverthey erred in responding. During the guessing sessions, no one received feed-back. Subjects were divided into five treatment groups of 20 each according tothe type of feedback they received. Subjects in Group A were told they werewrong whenever they made a mistake, and were given a metalinguistic explana-tion about why their response was wrong. Subjects in Group A were told thatthey would receive such an explanation if they made a mistake. Subjects inGroup B were told that they would simply be informed if they made a mistakeso they got negative feedback of the “That’s wrong” sort only. We called thisexplicit utterance rejection. Subjects in Group C were told that if they made amistake, the sentence would be repeated with the correct form of the noun. Thisis modelling of the correct form and is comparable to that studied by Tomaselloand Herron in their experiments. Subjects in Group D were told that if they madea mistake, they would be asked if they were sure that their response was correct.This type of indirect feedback is comparable to that which the interactionistspreviously reviewed have suggested can cause grammatical restructuring. Thegroupings thus correspond to a hierarchy of explicitness in the feedback received,


with Group A receiving the most explicit form of negative feedback and GroupD receiving the most implicit form of negative feedback.

(8.31) Subject groupingsGroup A (19 subjects) — explicit feedback plus a metalinguistic explanationGroup B (20 subjects) — explicit utterance rejection (e.g., “No, that’s

wrong”)Group C (20 subjects) — modelling (correction)Group D (20 subjects) — indirect metalinguistic feedback (e.g. “Are you

sure?”)Comparison Group (20 subjects) — no feedback.

3.3 Predictions

The null hypothesis was that there would be no significant differences amongthe different groups. If, on the contrary, feedback did help learners learn thesemantic constraints differentiating conversion and -ing suffixation, then GroupsA-D ought to have performed significantly better than the Comparison Group.Should it be the case that some but not all forms of feedback assist learning, thenvariation among the treatment groups should be observed. If explicitness offeedback is what assists learners, then Groups A and B should do better thanGroups C, or D. If it is the actual content of the information which helps learnersto locate errors, then Group A should do better than all of the rest. If modellinga correct form is what helps, then Group C should do better than the others. Ifà la Craik and Tulving (1975), it is degree of processing which aids in acquisi-tion and recall, then Group D should do best.

3.4 Major findings

Figure 8.2 shows the mean percent correct responses for the feedback items bygroup and by session. These along with standard deviations are shown in tabularform in Table 8.1.


Table 8.1.Means and standard deviations by group and session for the feedback items

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

Initial Test 1 Test 2

Group A

Group B

Group C

Group D

Comparison

Figure 8.2.% Correct — Feedback items

Initial Feedback Session

Group* N Mean Standard Deviation

ABCD

20202020

.74

.71

.68

.77

.08

.11

.11

.11

Comparison 20 .54 .12

Test 1


ABCD

20202020

.85

.79

.84

.81

.11

.12

.11

.10



Test 2


ABCD

20202020

.77

.74

.77

.81

.11

.11

.10

.10


*Group A = group getting explicit feedback plus a metalinguistic explanation; Group B = explicitutterance rejection group; Group C = modelling (correction); Group D = indirect metalinguistic feedback.

Table 8.2 shows the result of a two-way repeated measures ANOVA run onthese data. It indicates a main effect for between-subjects differences based ongroup. This is significant (p< .002). It also reveals a main effect for session.Within-group differences based on session are also significant (p= .000). Thereis a significant group by session interaction (p< .004).

Table 8.2.Results of repeated measures ANOVA for the feedback items

Source SS DF MS F F prob.

Between Subjects:GroupsSubjects within groupsWithin Subjects:SessionGroups by sessionResidual

2.97

1.35

0.492.48

0.410.100.84

099

200

004095

002008190

.12

.03

.20

.01

.00

04.71

46.4402.96

.002

.000

.004

Multiple between-group comparisons of means (using least square differences)were made to determine which groups were significantly different from eachother. Results are shown in Tables 8.3, 8.4, and 8.5.


Table 8.3.Between-group comparison of means of feedback items on the initial feedbacksession

Mean Group§ Group

Comparison A B C D

.54 Comparison

.68

.71

.74

.77

CBAD

****

––––

––––

–––*

––––

“*” denotes pairs of groups significantly different at the .05 level§ Group A = group getting explicit feedback plus a metalinguistic explanation; Group B = explicitutterance rejection group; Group C = modelling (correction); Group D = indirect metalinguistic feedback.

On the initial feedback session, all groups were already performing significantly betterthan the Comparison Group. In addition, Group D (the group receiving the most implicitform of feedback) performed significantly better than Group C (the corrected group).

On first test following the feedback session (Test 1), all of the experimentalgroups performed significantly better than the Comparison Group.

Table 8.4.Between-group comparison of means of feedback items on Test 1

Mean Group§ Group

ComparisonA B C D

.53 Comparison

.79

.81

.84

.85

BDCA

****

––––

––––

––––

––––


At Test 2 (one week later), all groups are still performing significantly better than theComparison Group. All the experimental groups except Group D, however, declinein performance. At this point, the difference between Group D and Group Bbecomes significant.


Table 8.5.Between-group comparison of means of feedback items on Test 2

Mean Group§ Group

ComparisonA B C D

.55 Comparison

.74

.77

.77

.81

BACD

****

––––

–––*

––––

––––


When we consider the items which are repeated across feedback and test session(the feedback items), results once again indicate that feedback helps adult SLAlearners learn and recall the forms of individual words (see Carroll et al. 1992;Carroll and Swain 1993), a now unsurprising result. Let us therefore turn to thediscussion of the guessing items which alone indicate if learners have extracteda generalisation about conversion and the interpretation of the -ing forms.

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

Initial GuessingSession

Test 1 Test 2

Group A

Group B

Group C

Group D

Comparison

Figure 8.3.% Correct — Guessing items


Figure 8.3 shows the mean percent correct responses for the guessing itemsby group and by session. These along with standard deviations are shown intabular form in Table 8.6.

Table 8.6.Means and standard deviations by group and session for the guessing items

Initial Guessing Session


ABCD

20202020

.60

.55

.59

.62

.12

.11

.11

.13


Test 1


ABCD

20202020

.61

.59

.58

.64

.11

.13

.11

.14


Test 2


ABCD

20202020

.57

.60

.58

.67

.13

.14

.10

.13


*Group A = group getting explicit feedbeack plus a metalinguistic explanation; Group B = explicitutterance rejection group; Group C = modelling (correction); Group D = indirect metalinguistic feedback.

A two-way repeated measures ANOVA were run on these data. There is a maineffect for group; between-subjects group differences just reach significance(p< .05). This time there is no within-subjects effect for session but a group bysession interaction appears, just reaching significance at the .05 level. See Table 8.7.


Table 8.7.Results of repeated measures ANOVA for the guessing items

Source SS DF MS F F prob.

Between Subjects:GroupsSubjects within groupsWithin Subjects:SessionGroups by sessionResidual

3.77

0.86

0.363.41

0.020.070.77

099

200

004095

002008190

.09

.04

.01

.01

.00

2.50

2.032.05

.048

.135

.043

Multiple between-group comparisons of means were made to determine whichgroups were significantly different from the others. Results are shown in Tables8.8, 8.9, and 8.10.

Table 8.8.Between-group comparison of means of guessing items on the initial guessingsession

Mean Group§ Group

Comparison A B C D

.52

.55

.59

.60

.62

ComparisonBCAD

–––**

–––––

–––––

–––––

–––––

“*” denotes pairs of groups significantly different at the .05 level§ Group A= group getting explicit feedback plus a metalinguistic explanation; Group B = explicitutterance rejection group; Group C = modelling (correction); Group D = indirect metalinguistic feedback.

Groups A and D again perform significantly better than the Comparison Groupon the initial guessing test. Now Groups B and C do not perform significantlybetter than the Comparison Group.


Table 8.9.Between-group comparison of means of guessing items on Test 1

Mean Group§ Group

Comparison A B C D

.53

.58

.59

.61

.64

ComparisonCBAD

–––**

–––––

–––––

–––––

–––––

“*” denotes pairs of groups significantly different at the .05 level§ Group A = group getting explicit feedback plus a metalinguistic explanation; Group B = explicitutterance rejection group; Group C = modelling (correction); Group D = indirect metalinguisticfeedback.

Table 8.9 shows how well the groups did relative to one another on the first testof the guessing items. Once again, Groups A and D outperform the ComparisonGroup. In contrast, Groups B and C do not perform significantly better than theComparison Group.

One week later, this test was repeated. Results are shown in Table 8.10.

Table 8.10.Between-group comparison of means of guessing items on Test 2

Mean Group§ Group

Comparison A B C D

.56

.57

.58

.60

.67

ComparisonACBD

––––*

––––*

–––––

––––*

–––––


Most groups either maintain their performance or decline somewhat. In particu-lar, Group A is performing less well so that only Group D (whose performanceactually improves slightly at Test 2) is still performing significantly better thanthe Comparison Group. At this point, because of the declines in the other experimen-tal group results, Group D is also performing better than Group A and Group C.


3.5 Discussion

These results clearly show a learning effect for the feedback items. As noted,this was an expected result based on previous findings. The results for theguessing items were less impressive but far more interesting. The between-groups difference reaches significance at the .05 level from which we concludethat our learners are learning a generalisation on the basis of the feedbackgiven.23 Moreover, these effects are variable according to the type of feedbackgiven. While all types of feedback helped learners to learn the feedback items,only the explicit metalinguistic explanation (feedback type A) and the indirectprompting (feedback type D) helped learners towards a generalisation. This resultdoes not literally run counter to my predictions, but is difficult to interpret. Thefact that Groups A and B did not both do significantly better on the guessingitems suggests that the explicitness of the feedback is not helpful in this instance.Rather, it would appear that it is the metalinguistic information itself which isleading Group A to perform in a superior way. But if that is true, then GroupD’s results are really surprising since they have been given no explicit informa-tion at all. The fact that group D continues to improve might mean that we maybe observing an effect of depth of processing but then why do we not observea gradation from most inferencing to least inferencing?24 Such a gradation wouldbe expected if the degree of processing was leading to the learning of therelevant generalisation. Finally, it is noteworthy that modelling/correction (typeC feedback) does not help the learners towards a generalisation.

At this point, it is perhaps useful to contrast these results with those fromthe previous experiment with the same subjects learning the constraints on theEnglish double object alternation. In that experiment, there were also significantbetween-groups differences on the guessing items (p= .000). The effects offeedback were again variable but differed from the results shown here. In theprevious experiment, Group A (the group getting an explicit metalinguisticexplanation) outperformed the Comparison Group and Groups B and D at theinitial guessing session. Group C (the corrected group) also performed signifi-cantly better than the Comparison Group. Group D did not. At Test 1, all of thetreatment groups did significantly better than the Comparison Group, a resultmaintained one week later (see Tables 8.11, 8.12, and 8.13).


Table 8.11.Between-group comparison of means of guessing items on initial guessingsession (from Carroll and Swain, 1993)

Mean Group§ Group

Comparison A B C D

.42

.55

.55

.60

.64

ComparisonBDCA

–****

–––––

––––*

–––––

––––*


Table 8.12.Between-group comparison of means of guessing items on Test 1 (from Carrolland Swain, 1993)

Mean Group§ Group

Comparison A B C D

.39

.55

.55

.60

.61

ComparisonDBCA

–****

–––––

–––––

–––––

–––––



Table 8.13.Between-group comparison of means of guessing items on Test 2 (from Carrolland Swain, 1993)

Mean Group§ Group

Comparison A B C D

.34

.52

.55

.55

.63

ComparisonBCDA

–****

–––––

––––*

–––––

–––––


There are various ways to interpret these differences in the results by oursubjects across the two experiments. One might hypothesise that the conversioncontrast was much harder to learn and, therefore, that the feedback was alsomuch harder to exploit. A careful comparison of the mean scores of each groupon the guessing items across the two experiments, however, reveals comparablescores. In addition, one can see a small range of scores on the conversioncontrast (range .52 to .67) vs. a much larger range (.34 to .64) for the doubleobject alternation results. In other words, performance on the conversion was lessvariable and the lowest mean scores achieved were much higher. Performancecould thus be said to be “better” on conversion.25 Means on the feedback itemsshow a similar behaviour (ranging from .65 to .84 for the conversion experi-ment vs. .35 to .60 for the double object alternation experiment). The scores forthe conversion feedback items are much higher than the scores for the doubleobject items, but this might reflect the fact that in learning the double objectconstruction one is learning the subcategorisation properties of the verb whichrequire that one be attentive to and process the syntactic context in which theverb occurs. Learning to make the correct selection between the bare rootconversion item and the -ing variant does not hinge on the syntactic representa-tion of the stimulus sentence since both are nouns and the syntactic informationin the stimuli are the same for both. Alternatively, the improvement might beattributable to familiarity with the design of the experiment, and have nothing todo with the learning of the double object construction. In any event, the affixa-tion/conversion contrast was notharder to learn (even if we assume a compensa-tory effect for familiarity with the design of the experiment) so we can reject theidea that the feedback on the second experiment was harder to exploit.

Another interpretation is that feedback regarding the constraints on the


double object alternation was more usable than feedback about conversionindependently of the relative difficulty of learning one or the other phenomenon.The problem with this hypothesis is to locate the difficulty in using feedback. Inboth experiments, subjects had to acquire and manipulate semantic information(the semantic constraint limiting double object alternation to verbs expressingtransfer of possession in the one case and the interpretation of the -ing suffix asexpressing events in the other case). It therefore cannot simply be true that feedbackis easy or hard to use when it is directing the learners’ attention to semanticdistinctions. At this stage of our knowledge, the differences in the effectiveness ofthe different types of negative evidence is quite mysterious and must remainunexplained. I must be content merely to have shown that negative evidence canlead adult L2 learners to draw generalisations about the relationship betweenmorphological form (or, alternatively, word-building processes) and word meaning.

4. Summary

In this chapter, I have reviewed a number of studies examining the ability ofdifferent types of metalinguistic information (grammatical instruction, inputprocessing, feedback and correction) to cause the restructuring of learners’psychogrammars. The research on metalinguistic instruction provides mixedresults that such instruction can work and work with some fairly abstractlinguistic generalisations. Results are far from conclusive and we still need someplausible psycholinguistic models of how instruction functions. Much moreresearch in this area needs to be done. The studies on input processing involvefactors which are easier to control and provide us with clearer results, namelythat being forced to process stimuli that have previously not been parsed leads togrammatical restructuring. Nonetheless, here too more experimentation is needed.I have also reviewed research which demonstrates that learners can learnexceptions to generalisations, and indeed induce the generalisations themselveson the basis of both direct and indirect forms of feedback. This conclusion is onfirmer empirical grounds, although further studies with other language pairswould be useful. This caveat in place, it seems safe to conclude that adults canlearn exceptions to generalisations on the basis of negative evidence. I noted,however, that positive evidence could in principle also produce the same result,meaning that if this were all that feedback and correction were accomplishing,their role in learning theory would be minimal. Results from the learning ofartificial languages, however, suggest that negative evidence can lead to theimplicit learning of various types of abstract structural information. My research


has attempted to show the same thing, using real languages. Finally, I presented newexperimental results which confirm the results of my earlier studies. Adult learnerscan learn abstract linguistic generalisations on the basis of various types of explicitand implicit feedback and are not restricted to instance-based learning or modelling.

How do we relate this to the broader issues discussed in previous chapters?I have concluded from these various studies that they provide anempiricalbasisfor rejecting the Schwartz vision of modularity insofar as it makes claimsrelevant to second language acquisition. This empirical basis can be added to thearguments and facts reviewed in Chapter 7. However, this research is still quitelimited in the range of linguistic phenomena investigated. We have no idea as yetif any of the phenomena such as the distribution and constraints on null subjects,the distribution of reflexives or reciprocals and the constraints on the domains oftheir binding, or the relationship between finiteness, tense, agreement and V2position, which L2 research tells us develop differently from patterns of L1acquisition, can be influenced in the right direction by feedback and correction.Both the Schwartz model and the Autonomous Induction Theory predict that thebasic properties of these phenomena will not need to be acquired because theyare already represented in the learners’ representational systems. However, theAutonomous Induction Theory predicts that to the extent that these phenomenainvolve inductive learning, then their acquisition can also be facilitated by theprovision of feedback and correction. Only further research will show if thatassumption is correct. My theory, moreover, predicts that a number of phenom-ena connected to categorisation could be learned on the basis of feedback sincecategorisation involves the acquisition of preference rules.

Recall that the theory also places certain restrictions on where feedback andcorrection can possibly have effects: (i) it cannot cause the learner to learn basicfeatures of any level of grammatical representation. It therefore cannot cause learnersto learn, say, an articulatory feature or a morphosyntactic feature not present inthe L1. Abstract systemic properties of V2 phenomena, such as the putativetriggering of verb-raising by the features of the inflectional system, will not belearnable from feedback and correction. I predict that no systemic properties ofreflexivisation will be learnable on this basis either. (ii) Feedback and correctioncannot cause learners to learn distinctions “too far removed” from the conceptualsystem in the sense that there is no possible correspondence between theconceptual units and the grammatical categories. I have suggested that phoneticcategories are “too far removed” from the conceptual system in just this way.

This places some pretty severe limitations on the role that feedback andcorrection can play in a theory of i-learning. Other restrictions will be discussedin the next chapter.


Notes

1. That explicit correction and feedback could play a major role in acquisition based on conversa-tions between NSs and NNSs has already been questioned. Chun, Day, Chenoweth, andLuppescu (1982) found little direct or explicit feedback in conversations between English-speaking NSs & NNSs. Day, Chenoweth, Chun, and Luppescu (1984) confirmed this result. Itis possible that the provision of explicit feedback is regulated by cultural or sociolinguisticnorms. This question has not, to my knowledge, been investigated and should be. It is possiblethat some cultures may be relatively more indulgent of learners’ errors and therefore less likelyto provide correction or feedback. Of course, if the provision of feedback is not universal, itcould hardly explain the representational problem of SLA.

2. But not necessarily on-line. Loschky’s study did not use on-line measures of comprehension.

3. Presumably, this is also where Hamlet goes if you’re Kenneth Branagh. Given the IntermediateLevel of Awareness Hypothesis, Hamlet gets stored as sequences of phonological forms, not assequences of morphosyntactic representations, since the parts in Hamlet get learned consciously.

4. As far as I can determine the proponents of negotiation are committed to non-UG assumptions.Needless to say, negotation of meaning will not solve the representational problem of SLA. Mycomments here have focused therefore exclusively on how it might explain developmentalchange, assuming the relevant properties of the representational systems are given.

5. The picture is actually more complicated than this. As Cadierno (1995: 179–80) points out, therelevant research asks much more specific questions, such as: Does grammatical instruction alterthe developmental paths learners take? Does it lead to greater grammatical accuracy on varioustasks? Does it speed up the developmental processes? Does it ultimately lead to greaterknowledge? Individual researchers have responded positively to one of these questions andnegatively to others.

6. In contrast to most of the other studies reported on below, this study examined child L2learners (approximately 10–11 years of age).

7. Notice that this claim is different from the claim that the learners transfer the acceptabilitypatterns of (8.6) to English. Transferring the parameter-setting leaves open the status of (8.5c);learners might produce and accept such sentences or they might not. Transferring the acceptabil-ity patterns of (8.6) entails that francophone learners should reject (8.5c).

8. White (1991a: 140) notes that she had assumed that this group would get positive evidenceabout adverb placement in English. She discovered, however, that adverbs occur ratherinfrequently in classroom discourse.

9. Sentences of the sortJohn fell slowly himself/John walked late nightsdemonstrate conclusivelythat the constraint on the distribution of adverbs is truly one on the type of complementreceiving Case rather than on the adjacency of an NP. Adjunct NPs can be separated from theverb by adverbs. (Thatnights is truly an NP is shown by its plural marking.)

10. How does the Autonomous Induction Model account for this data? Unconscious i-learningprocesses would allow learners to extract information about the ordering of all units at eachlevel of analysis. In addition, learners can extract information about the hierarchical structureof adverb phrases and their place in the morphosyntactic representation to the extent thatexpressions can be put into correspondence with relevant units represented in ConceptualStructures. In the theory of correspondence adopted here, arguments map onto specific positionsin surface structure, as do adjuncts. Thus, Agents, Experiencers, Themes preferentially map ontoNP subjects (e.g., daughter of IP). Patients preferentially map onto NP direct objects (e.g.


daughter of V′). Functions expressing manner of action or other similar adverbial concepts mustmap onto a position in the morphosyntactic representation whereby the adverb will have the VPin its scope. This will preferentially be a Spec of VP position. Thus, learners can, given thesemapping preferences get from a Conceptual Structure representation to a minimal morpho-syntactic representation on the basis of UG-consistent correspondences. Finally, francophonesinitially seem to be mapping semantic roles and functions onto surface structures positionsbased on the properties of French verbs and their Conceptual Structures and placing adverbphrases in terms of French surface patterns. In the constraints-based theory of grammar adoptedin the Autonomous Induction Theory, differences in surface structure cross-linguistically willbe accounted for in terms of differences in the well-formedness constraints of the grammars ofthe native French and the target language English. In the example under consideration, therelevant constraints hold of the morphosyntax and regulate the ways in which AdvPs can beattached through the operation of unification to higher nodes.

11. Unfortunately, VanPatten and Cadierno are very vague about what the processes involved are,contenting themselves with talk of “strategies and mechanisms that promote form-meaningconnections during comprehension” (VanPatten and Cadierno 1993a: 226).

For us, intake is that subset of the input [understand here “stimuli”, SEC] that alearner comprehends and from which grammatical information can be madeavailable to the developing system. (VanPattern and Cadierno 1993a: 227).

This definition presupposes that information is represented in the conceptual system first (as aconsequence of parsing) and then can be derived from it and made relevant for the grammar,which entails at least a partially interactive functional architecture.

12. The authors suggest that the traditional grammar instruction led to the development ofKrashenien “learned competence” or Schwartz’ Learned Linguistic Knowledge. Given the natureof the instruction in this study, it is indeed possible that the learners derived encyclopaedicknowledge of a linguistic sort. It is, however, inaccurate to characterise the information derivedfrom input processing instruction as part of linguistic competence. For Schwartz at least, anymetalinguistic information is part of Learned Linguistic Knowledge.

13. I prefer to characterise this tendency as a preference for expressing temporal notions withprosodic words, as opposed to morphosyntactic words which are prosodically cliticised. Ihypothesise that the preference in fact reflects the greater ease in extracting prosodic wordsfrom the speech stream.

14. None of the post-tests were, however, significantly different from one another, the main effectfor test being due to the three post-tests being significantly different from the pre-tests(Cadierno 1993: 186).

15. I do wish to take issue with one interpretation of the results which is that they can be said toprovide support for the distinction between Linguistic Competence and Learned LinguisticKnowledge à la Schwartz. This is clearly not so since it is obvious from the characterisation ofthese experiments that all tasks are off-line. They therefore do not address the question ofwhether grammar learning is modular or interactive. In particular, they must not be interpretedin such a way as to equate the “input” group with bottom-up processing and the “explanation”group with top-down processing. This construal would be completely unmotivated and a grossdistortion of the way in which the experiments were conducted. It cannot be excluded that inprocessing the structured input semantic information was interacting with syntactic processing.See Cheng (1995), VanPatten and Sanz (1995) and VanPatten (1996) for further discussion.


16. Given the emphasis on UG in SLA research, our choice of linguistic problems may seem odd.They focus on different aspects of lexical organisation, as opposed to phenomena associatedwith properties like structure-dependency, c-command, or parameters. The original motivationin selecting our problems was empirical rather than theoretical. We wanted to attempt to fill avery large empirical gap; at the time we knew almost nothing in SLA about the acquisition ofstructural aspects of the lexicon (derivational morphology, argument structure, lexical con-straints on syntactic operations, etc). In the time since we began our experiments, other studieshave also addressed morphological acquisition, in particular Lardiere’s (1995) work onderivational morphology and Juffs’ (1996) work on argument structure.

17. Our objective was merely to exclude subjects whose knowledge of English was too rudimentaryto do the test, or very advanced. The minimum and maximum scores used for subject selectionwere 14 and 34 correct responses out of a possible 50 sentences, the exact cutoff points beingarbitrary. At the beginning of the study, we had selected a much narrow range of possiblescores. The range actually adopted was greater because our experimenter’s subjective evaluationof the subjects during preliminary discussions suggested to her that there were mismatchesbetween the learners’ auditory comprehension and verbal abilities, on the one hand, and theirscores on our written test, on the other. In other words, she felt that some of the subjects gettinghigher scores were not “advanced” learners of English, while some of the subjects with lowerscores were well beyond “beginner” status. In the end, the group turned out to be fairlyhomogeneous, at least as far as their performance on the selection test is concerned. The meanscore was 23.5 and the median was 24. Standard deviation was calculated: Sx = 3.86. Obviously,with such a low standard deviation, most subjects’ scores fall within 1 s.d. of the group mean.Not all scores however do. Subjects whose scores exceed 1 s.d. from the mean are grouped inthe following way: Group A, 6 subjects’ scores are less than 2 s.d. from the group mean, 3 ofthese are relatively high scores on the pre-test. One subject had a score less than 3 s.d. from thegroup mean. Group B, 4 subjects’ scores are less than 2 s.d. from the group mean, 2 of theseare relatively high. One subject’s score is less than 3 s.d. from the group mean. It was themaximum of 34. Group C, 5 subjects’ scores are less than 2 s.d. from the group mean, 4 ofthese scores are relatively high. Group D, 5 subjects’ scores are less than 2 s.d. from the groupmean, 2 are high. One subject’s score was less than 3 s.d. from the group mean. Group Z, 5subjects’ scores are less than 2 s.d. from the group mean, 2 of these are relatively high scores.These data show that the scores that are relatively high and relatively low are more or lessevenly distributed across the five groups.

18. There are also -ing nouns which appear to have a noun base. Quirk, Svartvik, Greenbaum, andLeech (1991: 1548) claim there are two principal interpretations for such nouns (i) noncountconcrete aggregates referring to the material from which an object is made, e.g.tubing,panelling, carpeting, etc., (ii) the “activity connected with”, e.g.cricketing, farming, blackberry-ing. These cases may turn out to be a subset of the cases we wished our learners to learn, sincein most instances conversion can turn the noun stem into a verb, which can then undergo -ingaffixation. Henceto panel a room, to carpet the floors, to farm 100 hectares. I do not recogniseto tube a construction site, but it does not seem so bad. On the other hand,to cricketand toblackberry, also not part of my idiolect, seem much worse and would always be replaced by theidiomsto play cricket(compare *to hockey, *to baseball, *to football, *to basketball) andto pickblackberries/to goblackberrypicking. to bowl/bowling, tohurdle/hurdling, tohi-jump/hi-jumping,etc. fit the characterisation given in the text.

19. Whether the resulting noun denotes an action, activity, accomplishment, or state event dependson the semantics of the noun phrase in which it occurs, and this depends in turn in part on thesemantics of the base verb plus the theta role it assigns to a complement.writing can be an


action as inhis writing of the message took hoursbut it can also be an accomplishment as inhiswriting of the novel took years. I can find no obvious semantic constraints on -ing formationsince there are instances involving the full typology of events:his knowing the facts/his sittingon the chair(a static state),his sitting onto the chair(a dynamic action),his singing(a process),his dying(a momentary event),his writing a novel(both a protracted event and an accomplish-ment). These examples also illustrates the complexity in the lexicon since there are product orresult nounsknowledge, song, and death, but the product or result noun forwrite is alsowriting, as inHe gave all of his writings to the university, and the state resulting from theprocess of sitting is rendered by the same form in -ing.

20. I should take the opportunity to clearly distinguish deverbal nouns of the sort we are interestedin from the gerundive, e.g.John’s chainsmoking cigarettes drove us all crazy. Chomsky(1972: 16) observes that gerundives are fairly freely formed from subject-predicate typepropositions, that the semantics of the gerundive is transparently related to that of the corre-sponding sentence, thatJohn’scannot be replaced by determiners (*the chainsmoking cigarettesdrove us all crazy), and that adjectives cannot appear in the nominal (*John’s sickeningchainsmoking cigarettes drove us all crazy). In addition to the gerundives, which Chomskyderives transformationally, i.e. via a syntactic rather than a lexical process, he discusses derivednominals, such asarrangement, transformation, referralwhich are created by lexical processes,and a third mixed type, e.g.John’s refusing of the offer, the growing of tomatoes. This third classcan co-occur with determiners. Chomsky rejects adjectives in these cases, e.g. *John’s apparentrefusing of the offer or the eccentric growing of tomatoes by northern gardeners. I, on the otherhand, find these okay, and far more productive than Chomsky was willing to allow.

21. Some of the guessing sessions involved ambiguous stimuli or stimuli which contradict thisclaim. Since these were not corrected, they could not confuse the subjects, and providedessential evidence as to whether or not a generalisation had been made.

22. It should also be kept in mind that several months passed between running the first experimentand the second, and that the types of learning problems investigated were quite different.Consequently, there is no reason to suppose that having done the first experiment would leadto demonstrably better results on the second. Furthermore, there is no reason to assume thateven if there were a learning effect, it wouldn’t be the same for all groups.

23. The means for the Comparison Group are .52, .53 and .56 on the initial guessing, Test 1 andTest 2 sessions respectively. The means for the experimental groups are not a great deal higherthan the .56 result. If any of the experimental subjects had been using an arbitrary responsepattern, such as giving only -ing or only bare stem responses, their mean scores on all sessionswould have been .50. If subjects had chosen an equally arbitrary strategy such as alternating-ing/0-stem responses, their mean scores on the initial session and test sessions would havebeen around .79 and .50 respectively. An arbitrary response strategy of 0-stem/-ing would haveled to mean scores of around .41 and .50 respectively. To preclude the possibility that this wasin fact what our experimental groups were doing, we conducted a protocol analysis of allsubject responses. No such response patterns were observed. Three subjects in the experimentalgroups, however, exhibited a marked tendency to respond with a given type of noun on theguessing sections of the feedback session. One subject in Group A had only -ing responses(= 12) in the first guessing section of the experiment, another subject in Group A had only one0-stem response in response to the same stimuli (11 -ing responses), a third subject (this timefrom Group D) had 11 -ing responses on the first guessing session and 12 -ing responses on thesecond guessing session. These three subjects, then, exhibited a behaviour pattern probablyattributable to the experimental design: “Carry on with a given response until someone correctsyou.” Why the -ing form predominated is not obvious at the moment.


24. One possible response is that our typology does not, in fact, correspond to a typology of leastinferencing (Type A feedback) to most inferencing (Type D). I think this is quite plausible, buthave no ideas at the moment how to measure the extent of inferencing involved in theinterpretation of feedback types.

25. Note that the highest scores are less than 70%, meaning that subjects still have considerableroom for improvement. Consequently, we do not want to argue that our conversion subjectswere performing so well on the distinction, independently of the provision of feedback, that itcould not have made any difference.

C 9

Feedback in the Autonomous Induction Theory

1. Introduction

In the last chapter, we saw some limited forms of evidence that metalinguisticinstruction, and both direct and indirect forms of feedback and correction cancause restructuring of the learners’ psychogrammar. In particular, we saw thatexplicitly drawing the learners’ attention to cues to grammatical function andlinear order can cause them to reanalyse stimuli in new, more native-like ways.We also saw that feedback and correction can lead to encoding of lexical forms,and form-meaning associations, to learning that certain forms are exceptions tolearned generalisations, that learners can learn generalisations themselves andconstraints on generalisations on the basis of both direct and indirect forms offeedback. In earlier chapters, I noted some of the sorts of restrictions that thetheory of Representational Modularity places on a theory of input. Theserestrictions are an important part of the constraints on i-learning adopted in theAutonomous Induction Theory. In this chapter, I want to develop in more detailthe answer to the question: “Howmight it work?” To take seriously the empiricalstudies of native-speaker/learner interaction, discussed in Chapter 8, as well asthe other types of evidence on behalf of an explanatory role for feedback andcorrection, this question must be answered. In this chapter, I will rework this asthe question: “Can feedback and correction lead the learner to detect the fact thatan error has been made?” I also discuss how they might help the learner tolocate errors. I then go on to discuss these matters using the data from thedouble object study discussed in the preceding chapter. This analysis will lead usin Chapter 10 to a discussion of the problems of interpreting feedback andcorrection. There we will see that even more restrictions will have to be placedon the theory of feedback and correction, limiting its range of functions in atheory of i-learning but increasing thereby, in my view, the explanatory value ofthe Autonomous Induction Theory.


2. Focused attention and detectable errors

2.1 Focused attention

Feedback, correction, and negative evidence are value-laden labels for particularsorts of utterances that a learner must interpret. In ways that I will make precisein Chapter 10, an utterance can count as feedback or correction only if a learneris willing to construe some bit of language as expressing a corrective intentionon the part of some speaker. We as researchers may choose to identify certainutterances in specific contexts of communication as feedback but we must notlose sight of the fact that no utterance is intrinsically corrective in nature. Thismeans that we must categorise the potential functions of feedback, and correctionin terms of the relative information value of an utterance in a given context fora given learner. We mustrelativise feedback in terms of the consequences someutterance has on the reorganisation of information in the learner’s grammar.1 InChapter 1, I distinguished between the negative evidence and modelling functionsof correction. The learner can infer from correction that a particular form is notpart of the L2 grammar but she also gets some stimulus to be analysed bottom-upin normal fashion by the linguistic processors. From this stimulus, the processorscan derive important new structural information. How does this happen?

The weakest effect would merely be to draw the learner’s attention awayfrom the content of her own utterance (her communicative intention and/or herconceptual representation), after producing it, to its form. While the exact functionof attention in second language acquisition is still unclear (Schmidt 1990, 1993,1994; Tomlin and Villa 1994; for a broader focus see Jackendoff 1987: Ch. 13;Velmans 1991), I will assume here that the acquisition of formal properties oflanguage from feedback does requires attention. Recall from Chapter 4 that themodel of the language faculty adopted here assumes the Hypothesis of Levels,namely that each faculty of mind processes information from the environment viaa chain of levels of representations. Working memory can contain multiple setsof representations, which arise during the processing of stimuli when there are“indeterminacies” in the analysis of the input (Jackendoff 1987: 279). Workingmemory, recall, also contains a selection function.2 This function

… at each moment designates one of the sets as most coherent or salient… itis involved constantly throughout processing in resolving low-level nitty-grittydetails of linguistic structure (Jackendoff 1987: 279).

Jackendoff (1987) therefore describes attention as more detailed processing at aparticular level of analysis. What this means is that at that particular level of

FEEDBACK IN THE AUTONOMOUS INDUCTION THEORY 349

representation, more richly specified structures are built. If one function offeedback and correction is to shift attention from conceptual processing to form,it would entail a shift in the level of detail of processing from conceptualrepresentations to one of the levels of form. In principle, this shift might permitmore detailed processing at that level of representation where encoding isinadequate. However, I have also adopted the Intermediate Level Theory ofAwareness, which has as a consequence that the shifts in question would be fromthe conceptual level to phonological form.3 The theory thus precludes a shift toa more detailed analysis of s-structures or phonetic representations insofar asfeedback and correction raise the learner’sconsciousawareness of an error. TheIntermediate Level Theory of Awareness would lead us to hypothesise thatfeedback and correction could only draw the learner’s attention to distinctionsencoded or encodable in prosodic structures. This would include stress shifts,order of syllables, rhymes and differences in the tones of intonation contours ortonated words. I noted previously that all of the literature on the topic ofinteraction and focus on form (e.g. Sharwood Smith 1991, 1993) presupposesthat all levels of representation relevant for the learning of a grammaticaldistinction are accessible on the basis of activities which focus on form. Thispresupposition has not been investigated and merits empirical confirmation.Certainly the theory elaborated here is far more constrained than, e.g. SharwoodSmith’s, and significant differences are predicted in what empirical phenomenawe should expect.

If attention leads to more detailed processing of an input, at some givenlevel of analysis where ambiguity arises among possible analyses, then correctioninvolving repetitions of a given stimulus may permit just this kind of moredetailed processing. Consider in this regard the observation that correction leadsto the establishment of form-function pairs. Part of that learning involves thedetailed encoding of a phonological representation. We might hypothesise thatinitial exposure to a word leads to the encoding of acoustic representations,indeed, we should hypothesise that the learner is encoding multiple acousticrepresentations very close to the actual acoustic properties of the stimuli. This isnecessary because of the nature of co-articulation effects. The acoustic propertiesof skimmia in The skimmia in the garden blooms as early as Decemberaredifferent from the acoustic properties ofI bought a healthy skimmia plant fouryears ago. The encoding of acoustic properties while permitting discriminationand possibly even word recognition on the parsing side of things will not permitthe encoding of a prosodic word on the production side of things. For that, thelearner needs a phonological encoding of the word. We might therefore hypo-thesise that correction involving the repetition of a word under conditions likely


to draw the learner’s attention to its prosodic form leads to more detailedanalysis of the phonological properties of the word: fixing strong and weaksyllables in a foot structure (for stress encoding), encoding the internal structureof syllables as onsets, nuclei and coda, and the internal structure of segments interms of a phonetic feature analysis. This kind of detailed structural representa-tion of the word might then permit the articulation of the word since it wouldserve as an input to motor-articulatory processes. A second benefit of correctionin the form of modelling is that repeated exposure to a stimulus can strengthenthe parsing procedures needed to analyse it, making comprehension faster andmore reliable. Strengthening parsing procedures includes faster activation ofspecific schemata, and the integration of separate schemata into larger ones aslearned representations are recombined in novel ways. To sum up, correctioninvolving modelling of forms could lead to repeated exposure to stimuli underconditions likely to permit the more detailed analysis of the stimuli. This leadsto the re-representation of lower-level representations into higher order, moreabstract representations. Correction with modelling can also lead to improvedprocessing of a given stimulus.

So much for correction. Other forms of negative evidence do not model thelanguage. The question thus arises as to the evidence for a particular grammaticalanalysis that they could in principle provide. Two questions must be answered byany theory of feedback and correction: (i) What kinds of evidence can feedbackwithout modelling provide? (ii) What processes actually affect the restructuringof the learner’s grammar on the basis of these other forms of feedback?

2.2 Detectable errors

Let me deal first with the question: What kinds of evidence can feedbackprovide?

There are various ways in which this shift from attention to meaning toattention to form might be initiated in discourse, ranging from explicit commentson the form of the learner’s speech, e.g.You can’t say THAT in Englishto theindirect forms of feedback discussed in Chapter 8. These are indirect becausethey do not explicitly state the information that some utterance is defective,rather the learner must infer this information from the fact that there has been aninterruption in the normal flow of information. The on-going debate in the firstlanguage acquisition literature about the potential role of indirect negativeevidence turns precisely on the ability and necessity of learners making theintended inferences (Gleitman, et al. 1984; Hirsh-Pasek, Treiman and Schneider-man 1984; Demetras, Post, and Snow 1986; Bohannon and Stanowicz 1988;


Pinker 1989: 9–14). I have discussed in several places in this book the idea thatlearning is initiated when some difference arises between input to be encodedand what the system can currently analyse. If we refer to unanalysable input aserrors or system discrepancies, then we can say that learning begans when thesystem detects an error. Let us call this theDetectable Error Hypothesis(Wexlerand Culicover 1980: 122, Culicover and Wilkins 1984; Wilkins 1993/1994).Standard learnability assumptions are that systems detect discrepancies based oninput arising bottom-up. This means that an input at a given level of representa-tion cannot be analysed with extant procedures at the next level up. This isbecause either the right correspondence rules are not in place mapping, e.g. froma phonetic cue to a prosodic category, or else because the right integrationprocedures are missing at a single level of analysis. In this theory, we areassuming that information relevant to solving a parse problem might come froma higher level up. The same point can be made: detectable errors arise becausethe procedures are missing to map a cue or constituent at a higher level up ontothe relevant constituent at the next lowest level down, or the appropriateintegration procedures at that level are missing.

The Detectable Error Hypothesis can now be formulated:

(9.1) The Detectable Error Hypothesis:Learning requires detectable errors.

The Detectable Error Hypothesis is a central part of an account of why i-learningstarts, and why it stops in the face of infinitely variable stimuli. The basic ideais simple; the learner is, when parsing speech, not merely constructing represen-tations, the system is also constantly checking the computed representations fortheir adequacy in analysing the novel input. When there is a “good fit” betweenan analysis and the information stored in the system, everything is fine and theinput is identified. When the fit is not good, learning is initiated.

The point with respect to feedback can now be rephrased as: Does theprovision of feedback necessarily lead to the detection of errors? While theclaims inherent in (9.1) seem to be straightforward, the notion of what counts asan error for the learner must be clarified. In particular, we have to differenciatebetweendetectable errors defined on stimulianddetectable errors defined on thelearner’s own speech production.

(9.2) The Detectable Error Hypothesis (parsing)Learning requires detectable errors which arise when the parsing systemscannot parse an input. In the absence of discrepancies between input to theparsers and the parsing procedures, the learner’s system reaches stasis.


It is this sense of detectable errors which has led me to say, simplifying some-what, that learning takes place on the parsing side of performance, when theprocedures in place (which in turn reflect the learner’s grammatical competence)cannot analyse a stimulus. Feedback will have no effect on the learner’sgrammatical competence if he has already constructed procedures for analysingan input. In this case, feedback will be redundant. The greater proficiency thatmany learners have in parsing and comprehending speech over producing speechshows that detectable errors in the sense of (9.2) are not based on what thelearner can produce himself. For an explanation of control in production, weneed a different notion of the Detectable Error Hypothesis, relativized this timeto production.

(9.3) The Detectable Error Hypothesis (speech production)Gaining control of the grammar in speech production requires detectableerrors for these indicate differences between the learner’s knowledge stateand/or proficiency and that of others the learner wishes to emulate. In theabsence of detectable errors, the system reaches stasis.

The Detectable Error Hypothesis in (9.3) states that the learner requires evidenceof detectable errors in her speech production to be induced to re-encode produc-tion schemata. I postulate this as a first stab in the direction of explaining why“practice makes perfect.” But notice that it cannot be the case that hearing justany stimulus deviating from some internalised tacit set of norms (in the uncon-scious “feedback loop” assumed to regulate speech production) could serve asthe basis for the detection of errors in production. If that were the case, hearingspeakers of another dialect would cause all of us to categorise our own produc-tion as erroneous. Flege (1984) and Flege and Munro (1994) have shown thatlisteners can detect small variations from L1 norms in foreign-accented speech.This ability is what lies behind our capacity to recognise “foreign” and “dialect”accents. Our perceptual and linguistic systems remain extraordinarily sensitive todeviations from the central tendencies of our own community’s system. Thissensitivity, however, does not trigger endless readjustment of those norms. Thisfact is quite mysterious. It has been clearly demonstrated, for example, thatbilinguals living in an environment where the L2 is normally used for communi-cation purposes (e.g. as immigrants) can develop intermediate phonetic categoriesfor particular segment types of the L1 (Caramazza, Yeni-Komshian, Zurif, andCarbone 1973; Flege 1987), showing that adjustment within the L1 grammar cancontinue well after the language is normally said to have been learned. The idea,therefore, that children reach asteady stateafter which no more restructuring ofthe L1 system occurs is clearly an idealisation that must be relaxed to account


for the facts. There is no sensitive period for the acquisition of new phoneticcategories in perception. It remains nevertheless true that no wholescale restruc-turing occurs; the acquisition of a second language or of a second dialect doesnot inevitably lead to the attrition of the first.4 Recall from earlier chapters thatthis was one of the criticisms of the hypothesis that parameter-setting has a strictneurological basis. We can maintain our native variety more or less intact duringsecond language acquisition. It follows that we do not necessarily treat thedifferences between our own speech and that of a host group aserrors. It musttherefore be true that each speaker has a tacit theory or mental model of thespeech community he wishes to belong to and takes the speech patterns of thisgroup as his norm. This mental model can change if the speaker/hearer becomesa member of a new speech community. It is for this reason that the definition in(9.3) includes some specific references to the speaker’s belief systems andattitudes. The L1 speaker believes that the patterns of his L1 idiolect constitutean acceptable version of the native language, acceptable with respect to the tacitnorm. Input deviating from this norm will be attended to, processed, andclassified as structured variation — as a different dialect, or as a foreign accent.It will not, however, be used to redefine the speaker’s current state of knowledgeof the L1. In the case of the L1, the speaker/hearer appears to function with themotto: “I’m okay; you’re okay!” In the case of second language acquisition,however, the speaker believes that differences between her output and the inputreflect her own lack of knowledge. Her mental model appears to function withthe motto “You’re okay; I’m not so okay!” In this case alone, observed differ-ences could lead to detectable errors likely to lead to the restructuring of thegrammar.5

According to the Detectable Error Hypothesis (9.2), learning is initiatedwhen the listener cannot parse a given input at a given level of parsing. Learningceases when the combined operations of the processing system permit the learnerto arrive at an interpretation of a stimulus. If we can judge from the numerouscomments about adult migrants and immigrants “failing” to acquire the L2 (andI’m not sure that we can), then it would appear that the adult can cease to detecterrors of type (9.2) even when his production is severely flawed. The DetectableError Hypothesis (9.3) states that learning is initiated when errors are detected bythe learner in her own speech production. Learning ceases when the speaker/hearer’s output is compatible with her reference set or norms, encoded in somemental model of the speech community.6 Let us return to the issue of feedback:Does the mere provision of feedback guarantee that errors, in this technicalsense, will be detected? No, for there are many conditions on the provision offeedback which must be met for it to have effects on cognitive systems. Watson


(1984: 153), for example, pointed out that in experimental studies of the percep-tion of causality, a delay of three seconds in the provision of behaviour-rewardcontingencies is enough to prohibit learning in infants younger than six monthsold. He goes on to point out the significance of this for learning theory, whichis that infants rarely experience causal structures fitting the appropriate timeframe. Studies of mother-child interactions reveal that if this temporal constraintis imposed on learning, a child would perceive that only one quarter of hisvocalisations were being responded to. This type of research has importantimplications for investigations of feedback in general, and SLA in particular. Todate, studies of discourse and interaction have assumed that the mere presence offeedback somewhere in a discourse is sufficient to explain learning. But we cansee that this is clearly false. The provision of feedback must fall within a giventime span to be processed with respect to some linguistic phenomena whichconstitute errors. As Watson (1984: 155) puts it: “Noting occasional contin-gencies is not enough.” The exact time frame needed for adults to learn fromlinguistic feedback must be determined experimentally. Such research will tell uswhat the minimal attentional constraints are limiting the detection of errors.

2.3 Error location, or the blame assignment problem.

Consider now (9.4).

(9.4) (conversation is about orthodontists in Toronto)A: ..aber sehr oft sind diese Leute Juden und sie leben in der Nord

..but very often are these people Jews and they live in the northder Stadtof the city‘but very often these people are Jewish and they live in the north partof the city’

B: im Nordenin the+ north‘in the north’

A: der Nordenthe+ north

B: der Norden im Norden It’s masculine Der Norden(August 7th, 1993)7

The initial correction by native speaker B fits a common pattern, namely thereformulation or recasting of an error with a lexical item or phrase. The learner’sresponse to the feedback is also commonplace; she repeats it in part. Now thisexchange is revealing because the learner does not repeat the feedback verbatim


but rather uses the nominative determiner, which in German noun paradigms isa clear indicator of gender. She might have contrued the feedback as simply acorrection of her pronunciation of the word meaning NORTH. However, theform der Nordenis itself ambiguous since it could also fit the paradigm for agenitive or dative feminine noun, e.g.in der Norden. Speaker A either construesthis alteration in the form as a kind of request for additional information aboutthe gender of the noun, and provides it in the final utterance, or else as a newerror. He apparently wants to hearim Norden der Stadtand not *in der Nordender Stadt. The focus of the feedback thus becomes an explicit discussion of thegender of the noun, in addition to the modelling of the correct pronunciation.This case of feedback thus nicely illustrates the location of a problem and theexplicit provision of information deemed by the native speaker to be relevant forthe learner to revise her grammar. Many instances of feedback do not. In particu-lar, most of the indirect forms of feedback cited in the literature — failures tounderstand, repetitions of erroneous utterances and even recastings of errors donot locate the error. It is therefore not obvious that they can or do lead to thedetection of errors on the part of the learner. In Chapter 10, I will present severalexamples of such cases. This failure is what leads Pinker (1989: 12) to questionthe usefulness of correction and feedback in first language acquisition whereexplicit forms of feedback and metalinguistic information are virtually absent.

The usefulness of the information that a kind of sentence is ungrammatical ishighly questionable too. Sentences are generated by large numbers of rules andprinciples that vary cross-linguistically, not just one. So even a child who isable to make a binary good/bad decision faces a formidable example of whatartificial intelligence researchers call the “blame assignment” problem: figuringout which rule to single out for change or abandonment… in practice theproblem is even worse because the child may have no way of distinguishing“errors” that are due to syntax from those due to defective word meanings, badpronunciation, or conversational maladroitness.

Discovering detectable errors is not, in short, limited to finding a problematicform in one’s own speech on the basis of feedback or correction. The blameassignment problem, namely deciding which rule to single out for change orabandonment, has to be dealt with by “localising” errors. In the theory offeedback proposed here, locality is defined in terms of the point of interruptionof the on-going discourse. As Carroll (1995) has pointed out, and as we shall seein some detail in Chapter 10, feedback and correction are metalinguistic com-mentaries on speech which has normal communicative goals. The learner in (9.4)is trying to communicate about the non-linguistic world; the corrector is tryingto communicate about the learner’s utterance. Correction and feedback are thus


always a sort ofinterruption of the normal flow of information. Within thetheory, the fact that feedback is a form of interruption is thus very important. Itdefines a “mental space” to which the learner’s attention can be drawn andwithin which additional processing can occur.

This is not sufficient, however, because detected errors could arise from alarge number of causes. It is essential therefore that a theory of feedback stateclearly how feedback helps learners to locate the problem. Minimally, this meansthat the learner must conduct reanalysis at the right level. Is the problemphonological? Morphosyntactic? Articulatory? Pinker is quite right to stress thatarbitrary restructuring of the grammar would make the learner’s task harder, notsimpler. In my view, this important function should not be attributed to feedback;it should follow from the organisation of the language faculty and from the wayin which attention interacts with the autonomous representation systems. In theexample discussed here, the rules and forms the learner might restructure on thebasis of feedback are going to be limited to what the learner can attend to andbecome aware of — namely the rules and forms generating in production thestring in der Nord, i.e. these three lexical items and their features as realised inan intonated phonological phrase. The on-going feedback localises the error inthe phonological forms of the Preposition + Determiner + Noun string. Whilethis still leaves a number of options open for revision, it greatly reduces theblame assignment problem. There can be no question, therefore, of the feedbackbeing used to revise the learner’s rules of question formation or passive morphol-ogy here. Restructuring is thus not random. On the contrary, it is focused byattention, by the point of interruption of the discourse, and by constraints on thelevels of representation which can be the object of attention. In addition, sinceconscious awareness is linked to projected phonological representations, thelearner could only repair the phonological properties ofin der Nord, in particular,the articulation of the string.

It should also be pointed out that learners can develop “theories” of likelyproblems. In other words, learners will develop mental models of typical errorsthey make. Gender and case errors (again as realised in phonological forms forthe relevant gender- and case-bearing words) and errors in the location of verbsare typical problems for L2 learners of German (Clahsen et al. 1981), and typicalproblems are more likely to become the focus of corrective efforts. Thus,previous corrections might already have sensitised the learner in (9.4) to herdifficulties in selecting the right form of the determiner to use in a givenconstruction. The development of tacit or explicit mental models of one’s owndifficulties may further help to locate errors by directing the learner’s attentionto particular aspects of her production known to be likely trouble spots. Howev-


er, Pinker’s problem of locating the relevant level of analysis remains. Thelearner cannot know simply from the provision of a form or even of a phrase ifhis pronunciation is flawed, or if it’s his morphology, his syntax or his semanticswhich is causing the trouble.8 But then, neither can the corrector.

To sum up, the claim is that information provided by feedback and repre-sented ultimately in the learner’s conceptual system (either directly via decodingor indirectly through inferencing) can have an affect through focused attentionon lexical selection (of phonological forms) for insertion in a phonologicallyrealised s-structure, on the ordering of lexical items in phonologically realiseds-structures, or on the phonological and semantic contents of lexical entries. TheIntermediate Level Theory of Awareness hypothesises that only prosodicrepresentations can project into awareness. To the extent that feedback isdesigned to draw the learner’s attention to some error in her speech, it followsthat we ought to find effects of feedback only at these levels of representation.

2.4 Categorisation, i-learning, and feedback

I have now introduced a model of feedback and explicit negative evidence whichrestricts its activity to the prosodic level of representation. This still leaves openthe possibility that feedback in conjunction with instruction and correction(modelling) can influence the creation of categories in the various representa-tional systems of the processing systems and of the grammar.

I have already mentioned the puzzle of why native speakers of English findit so difficult to acquire and control the gender system of languages like Frenchor German in the face of plenty of positive and negative evidence about the regu-larities and irregularities in the system. Although the puzzle itself is well known,certain rather obvious aspects of the problem are seldom discussed and remainunexplained. The first is that anglophones can readily recognise what they cannotalways readily reproduce. When an anglophone who is, say, an intermediate oradvanced learner of French, hears, for example, the sentence in (9.5), he canassign a correct interpretation to it.

(9.5) Maryse a proposé qu’on fasse un tour de la ville.‘Maryse has suggested that we do a walkabout of the city’

Assigning a correct interpretation to (9.5) involves minimally recognising thewords and activating their particular conceptual representations, integrating theselexical conceptual representations into a morphosyntactic representation of thesentence and deriving some sort of propositional representation, and integratingthis conceptual representation of the sentence into an ongoing mental model of


the discourse. This means that the anglophone must assign a representation to theDetPun tour de la villeand, moreover, represent the semantic contributions ofthe Detun. This apparently is not a problem for anglophone learners of French.Extensive studies of anglophones in French immersion programs in Canada,learners who achieve advanced levels of knowledge and considerable proficiencyin the L2, suggest that their ability to comprehend speech can attain levels whereit is indistinguishable from that of native speakers (Swain and Lapkin 1982;Harley and Swain 1984). This ability requires the acquisition of the distinctionbetween definite and indefinite readings of DetPs. What does this prove? Itshows that learners have representations of determiners, one of the most import-ant cues to gender attribution. The same research shows, however, that profi-ciency in the use of the gender system is anything but native-like (Harley 1979).Years after beginning their immersion programs (at approximately age 4–6),anglophones continue to make gender errors in production with even commonand frequently heard nouns. Learners who begin learning French as adults reportsimilar difficulties. For example, when composing the example in (9.5), my firstreflex was to writeune tour de la ville, although I have read and heard theexpression dozens of times.9 Why is recalling the forms which mark gender sucha problem? Or, to put the matter more perspicaciously, why is it more of aproblem to recall thattour de la villegoes withun than it is to remember whattour de la villemeans, or how it is pronounced? Or indeed that it istour de laville and nottour à une ville? If all that is at stake is the recall of associatedmaterial, or memorised information, the fact that recalling the correct determineris more difficult than recalling the noun itself is quite mysterious.

One answer to the question is simply that the French gender system is morethan recalling strings of associated items. One can argue instead, as I have doneelsewhere (Carroll 1989, 1995) that the acquisition and deployment of the systemis quite complex. While we can treat the gender feature as a basic attribute of anoun, just like its conceptual representation and its phonological form, the cuesfor the correct classification are to be found on specifiers of the noun locatedelsewhere in the sentence.10 In the words of Kail (1989), the cues aretypologicaland notlocal. Another way to express the same idea is to say that learning thatspecifiers are cues for a formal relationship like gender must be derived from theeffects of sentence processing and not merely from memorising and analysingthe internal forms and functions of lexical items. This means that learning thatFrench has a gender system involves the operations of lexical segmentation, andparsing, in addition to whatever perceptual operations are required to discernformal features of words. These operations also interact with constraints onworking memory. We might therefore anticipate that learning a gender feature


for a given noun would be more complex than learning its meaning or itsphonological form. Moreover, the cues for gender in French seem to be largelyarbitrary. It is an arbitrary fact about French that there are two formstour one ofwhich is masculine (meaning only that it co-occurs with words likele,mon, petitor blanc) and refers to a motion or path, while the other is feminine (meaningthat it co-occurs with words likela, ma, petite or blanche) and refers to aparticular type of building. Byarbitrary I mean that the facts could be just theopposite and nothing else in the language would be affected. However, thecomplexity of the system does not explain of itself why learners have difficultylearning even with feedback and negative evidence. After all, French containsany number of complexities for anglophones, including the placement of clitics,the tense and aspect system, the expression of causation, auxiliary selection andso on. Both immersion students and adult learners of French do make observableprogress in these areas, with or without negative evidence, and can reach native-like proficiency in these areas of the grammar. In addition, despite the arbitrari-ness of particular gender assignments, there are obvious patterns within thesystem. Once one represents the suffix -tion as feminine, one tacitly knows thegender of every noun of which this form is the lexical head. See Carroll (1989)for more detail. It has also been claimed many times that gender systems displaypartial generalisations within sub-groups of the morphologically underived items(see Müller 1990; Surridge 1985, 1986 with respect to French; Köpcke andZubin 1983, 1984; and Zubin and Köpcke 1981, 1984, 1986 on gender inGerman). While I do not wish to question that one can find interesting correla-tions of the sort examined in these papers, their existence makes the problemmore mysterious. Why do English speakers not find it easy to “see”, representand recall the relevant subgeneralisations?

A second possibility, raised by Harley (personal communication 1984) isthat anglophones do not perceive the acoustic-phonetic differences between thegender markers, namelyle/la. It might be the case that anglophones can representthe differences between definite and indefinite determiners with a phonologicallyunderspecified representation of each, perhaps something along the lines of (9.6).

(9.6)σ

X[+lateral]

Y[+vocalic]

Det

Harley’s claim is consistent with the idea that processing is constrained “frombelow” by the relative perceivability of a stimulus. Forms cannot mark functions


within the learner’s system if they cannot “break through” lower-levels ofprocessing. Discrimination studies of immersion students (Taylor-Browne 1984),however suggest that they can in fact make the relevant distinctions. Harley’ssuggestion would also be explanatory only if other markers of gender, e.g.mon/ma, ton/ta, petit/petite, were not available to signal gender attribution. Evenif learners do not find salient the difference betweenle and la or even betweenun and une, which in Canadian varieties both tend towards [˜7], there still areother gender markers which are available, are frequent and potentially salient.Why can’t an accurate system and proficient mastery be rapidly derived on thebasis of these cues?

I have suggested (Carroll 1989) that anglophones, even young children inimmersion programs, exhibit a kind of disassociation between their receptive andproduction abilities which reflects the fact that their psychogrammars of Englishand French contain no specification for gender features. These learners, it ishypothesised, perform at the morphosyntactic level a kind of equivalenceclassification, mapping the relevant categories Noun and Det from English ontothe relevant phonological forms in the input, and storing these categories in theinterlanguage lexicon. I hypothesised, in conjunction with standard treatments ofmorphosyntactic categories that the features for the English noun and determinerare at least [+N, −V] but specifically do not include any specification for gender.In contrast, the features of the noun in the target francophone system are[+N, −V, +fem.], or [+N, V] with a default rule filling in a [−fem.] featurespecification.11,12As noted above, the cues for gender attribution are exhibited inthe agreeing categories, but the gender attribution involves categorising the noun.In formal terms, this is expressed in terms of features borne by the noun inlongterm memory. Anglophones who make an equivalence classification at themorphosyntactic level transfer into the interlanguage grammar, however, thefeatures of the relevant corresponding English lexical category. Only these areavailable for parsing decisions. Since gender agreement is not marked in English,there are no decision-procedures based on attending to formal variation availableto be transferred from the English parser to the developing interlanguage parser.Moreover, there are no formal gender features to be transferred to the inter-language grammar. Gender agreement is instead treatedby the parseras irrel-evant variation — as “noise”. To reiterate: expression of gender attribution mustbe made on the noun itself and this attribution is not made by the parser.

At this point one can argue that feedback, instruction, and negative evidenceabout gender attribution become essential for learning the system. Without them, thelearner would never arrive at the correct categorial classification. Let us grant thatthis is so. What, then, does current evidence, admittedly largely anecdotal, suggest?


The evidence suggests that instruction and feedback create awareness of theexistence of a gender system, that they draw the learner’s attention to thecommission of detectable errors, but they do not lead to the development ofnative-like control of the expression of gender in production. My account of thisis thatneither instruction nor feedback result in changing the specification of thenoun categories in the lexicon. The idea is that if gender were represented in thelearner’s lexical entries, it could simply be activated during production andagreement processes would ensure that the spellout of the determiners and otherspecifiers took place. If, in contrast, a gender specification is not part of thelexical entry of a noun, it can never simply be activated by activating therelevant noun. Since the claim is that instruction and feedback do not achievedramatic improvements in production proficiency in the case of gender, theconclusion must be that they do not alter the feature specifications for gender inthe lexicon.13

Do instruction and feedback have no effect? I cannot exclude, under thisanalysis that they might not lead to the piecemeal association of phonologicalforms, e.g.ton tour,mon tour, un tour, le tour, etc. It might be the case that thesestrings are stored in lexical entries as ready-made expressions to be activatedwhen needed. Notice that this does not entail learninggender attributionif wedefine that as learning the feature of the noun. Rather, the learner has anemergent gender which comes from having stored all of the correct strings andbeing able to activate the right one (something which could be done on the basisof the semantic features of the determiner). I suspect that this is precisely whathappens as anglophone learners develop greater control over the vocabulary thatthey have mastered. The difference between people like me and those adultanglophone learners who actually achieve nativelike proficiency in producinggender-marking (and they do exist) would then be that they are better at storingand activating such multiple sets of strings. It follows that the contents of lexicalentries would vary considerably among proficient and unproficient users ofgender, not in terms of the specification of a gender feature, but in terms of thenumber and types of these “pre-fab” strings. This is a testable claim.

Although gender acquisition is a relatively well-studied phenomenon, myanalysis shows that even more empirical investigation is required to attempt tofalsify the claim that the gender learning problem exhibited by anglophonelearners is commonplace and derives from a dissociation of parsing and produc-tion processes which leaves the noun specification transferred from Englishintact. Investigation should focus on four claims. The first claim has been thateven advanced anglophone learners can remain unsure about the correct classifi-cation of given nouns in production, although they will readily recognise that a


string is correct when produced by someone else. If additional studies confirmthis, we can take it as evidence of a disassociation between the L2 learners’abilities on the recognition side and their abilities on the production side.14 Thesecond is that this disassociation is based on a lexical equivalence classification,a form of correspondence mapping. It should be possible to find evidence for oragainst this.15 A third claim was that the effects of feedback and instruction inleading anglophones to the correct performance of gender marking appear to bevariable. Many learners of French, the author included, feel they have not beengreatly aided by being told “It’s LE tour de la ville, not LA tour”. We keepmaking the same mistakes year in, year out. We keep hearing the same correc-tions year in, year out. On the other hand, I have been told on several occasionsthat certain anglophone learners do not share this problem.16 Taking this claimat face value, it points to significant differences in the processes involved inproducing gender. Some anglophone learners may find learning and producinggender unproblematic, others clearly find it a travail. This also points to signifi-cant differences between L1 and L2 acquisition for the literature suggests thatgender acquisition is relatively unproblematic for infants. Gender attributionpatterns are acquired in between two and three, gender agreement involvingdeterminers and attributive adjectives (specifiers within NPs) is acquired rapidly,and is based on formal properties of the system rather than evolving fromsemantic or functional properties of the nouns (Karmiloff-Smith 1979; Levy1983; Müller 1990).17 The fourth claim is that whatever feedback and correctionare doing, they are not normally helping learners build associations betweendeterminers and nouns. We saw in Chapter 8 that feedback can function to createassociations between recognition representations and lexical conceptual represen-tations. If one presents learners with either an acoustic-phonetic or graphemicform of a word and a translation of that word in the L2, and provides feedbackabout some aspect of the form or the meaning, then learners will readily learnthose specific lexical items. Our experimental studies did not reveal what kind ofmental representations learners have stored but minimally it is an associationbetween the stimulus and a concept as expressed through the L1 translation, e.g.blanchissage–bleaching/BLEACHING. Even if we assume that our studies showno morethan this minimal level of association, we can nonetheless conclude thatfeedback facilitates associative learning.18 The question then arises as to whyfeedback and correction are not functioning to encourage associative learningbetween determiners and nouns in a stimulus. At this stage of the game, I amreluctant to claim that it never does, so I will go out on a limb and suggest thatthis is precisely what happens among exceptional learners. Exceptional learners,then, are storing sets of strings of the phonological exponents of determiners and


the phonological exponents of nouns, perhaps based on exceptional memorycapacity. The normal function of the parsers, however, is to identify and classifylexical categories in the speech stream and to store them separately in thelexicon. Feedback appears not to be able to interfere in this process.19

3. Learning the double object construction

Let us now return to the empirical evidence in Chapter 8. We saw there thatfeedback and correction helped our Spanish learners learn the phonological andsemantic constraints on the double object construction. How might feedback havehelped? To answer this question, we must first ask what kind of representationsthe learners might have constructed on the basis of the training sessions. Recallthe nature of the stimuli.

(9.7) Training example (on card)Peter wrote a letter to Theresa.Peter wrote Theresa a letter.

Subjects were asked to look at these cards and note any differences betweenthem. There are obviously several. First of all, there are the differences in thesequencing of the complements, secondly there is the presence of the preposi-tions to or for in the first sentence and their absence in the second. Analysis ofthe errors made by individual subjects clearly suggests that the first property wasmore readily noticeable than the second, and was detected independently of it.Many subjects made errors of the following sort.

(9.8) a. Stimulus: The students pronounce a new word for their teacher.Response: The students pronounce for their teacher new word.

b. Stimulus: You always say the same thing to everybody.Response: You always say to everybody the same thing.

We can hypothesise that these errors arose because subjects noticed the differ-ence in the order of the complements and simply reproduced a sentence with a“reversed” sequence of phonological phrases following the verb. Feedback andcorrection could then draw the learner’s attention to the absence of the prepositionwhen the order is reversed. This information, while it leads to a better output withverbs that do alternate, does not tell the learner which verbs these are. Recall thatthis was the purpose of the experiment — to lead the learners to classify theverbs correctly into subsets — those which alternate and those which do not.


3.1 The metalinguistic feedback

In the theory adopted here, this classification will involve developing preferencerules (default hierarchies). A verb will be more likely to alternate when it meetscertain conditions. The conditions were provided by the feedback in the case ofthe explicit metalinguistic form, and were apparently inferable under the otherexperimental conditions.

When experimental subjects in the metalinguistic feedback group madeerrors on verbs that violated the phonological constraints on the double objectalternation, they were told something like the following.

(9.9) Student saysThe students pronounce their teacher a new wordThe student is then told:You cannot sayThe students pronounce their teacher a new word. Pro-nouncedoes not alternate; this is because it is a long verb that is louder atthe end and such verbs don’t alternate.Pronounceis louder at the endthan at the beginning.

Now it is important to understand that this account of the stress shift is highlyinaccurate. First of all, while there is some correlation between the presence ofstress and articulatory force, perceived loudness is not what stress markingconsists of. Rather it consists of a variety of cues including pitch, vowel quality,and vowel duration (Clark and Yallop 1990: 287). So the information providedin the feedback is not strictly speaking true,pronounceis not necessarily (or notonly) louder at the end than at the beginning and neither are the other verbswhich do not alternate. Nevertheless, loudness is an aspect of sound stimuli (bothlinguistic and non-linguistic) which people have awareness of, and it doescorrespond phenomenologically with the degree of perceived loudness ofsyllables (Trager and Smith 1951). Our subjects were apparently readily able toput this labelling into correspondence with the actual stress properties of thestimuli. Secondly, the terms “end” meaning the right end of the word and“beginning” meaning the left end are extremely vague. Taken literally, it couldrefer to any feature or unit located before the cessation of phonation or just afterthe beginning of phonation. What is relevant for learning the constraint on thedouble object construction is not the “ends” of words, but rather the location ofstress on a given syllable. The feedback was successful in directing the learners’attention to a phonological property of the relevant verb pairs: stress on the firstsyllable vs. stress on the second.

In the theory elaborated here, I assume that this means that the learners arecapable of putting a conceptual representation in correspondence with phonological


properties of the verbs. We might propose therefore rules of the sort in (9.10) asa first model of what takes place.

(9.10) If a [STIMULUS VERB IS LOUD AT THE BEGINNING]→ the phono-logical representation corresponding to the [STIMULUS VERB] bearsstress.If the phonological representation bears stress→ the first syllable of abinary branching phonological foot must be strong.

The first rule is an interface rule and involves on the left a conceptual represen-tation of the actual feedback given. The concept [LOUD] is put into correspon-dence at the level of phonological representations with the phonological constructstress. The second rule is internal to the phonological representation; if the wordhas one syllable, that syllable will, of course, bear stress but if the word has twosyllables, then the first syllable will bear stress as a result of that syllable beingmarked strong. On the basis of these rules, a learner could hear the worddonate,which consists of two feet with primary stress on the final syllable, and decideby inference that it does not meet the criterion. Making this inference presup-poses that correspondences work “in the other direction”, i.e. from a phonologi-cal representation ofdonateto a conceptual representation. The theory in factpermits this.

The second aspect of the learning problem involved learning the semanticconstraint on the alternation. Verbs of motion which select a PP complementheaded byto alternate in the double object construction only when the object ofthe prepositionto expresses a recipient and not merely a goal. Recall that (9.11)is not possible.

(9.11) *John sent the package to the border.

The alternation also appears with verbs that select a PP complement headed byfor. The sentence in (9.12) is unacceptable.

(9.12) *Close me the windows.

The feedback the learners heard for these two distinct cases was combined andfollowed the model in (9.13).

(9.13) Student says *She sent that address the letters.Student hears:You cannot sayShe sent that address the lettersbecause with alternatingverbs there is always an exchange of possession. Here the letters go to theaddress but they do not belong to the address.


The critical information here isexchange of possession. This was how we choseto render the “possessor effect” illustrated above (Pinker 1989: 48). Once again,it must be stated that this is hardly an easy concept to grasp, since it involves ametaphorical extension of the motion of two items along a path (Jackendoff1983, 1990b). Nonetheless, it presented no difficulties for our learners. Ihypothesise that they constructed rules something like (9.14).

(9.14) If a [STIMULUS VERB IS TO ALTERNATE]→ then it must express[EXCHANGE OF POSSESSION]

In this case the relevant level of representation involves only the conceptualstructure. The learner can compare her representation of the meaning of thestimuli with rule (9.14) and base her categorisation judgement on that.

3.2 The other forms of negative evidence

The second form of feedback that we used in our experiments with the Spanishlearners of English is something we have calledexplicit utterance rejection. Thisrefers to any statement which says that the utterance the learner has produced iswrong. It could be instantiated in a variety of ways, by saying “That’s wrong”,or “You can’t say that”, or “That is not good English”, or by putting red crosseson an answer sheet, etc. Explicit utterance rejection is perhaps the most commonform of negative evidence. It tells the learner that some string is not a part of theL2. Since it provides no additional information, it cannot be used as the basis fora direct inference needed to restructure the learner’s linguistic knowledge. Atbest it can force the learner to re-pronounce (out loud or sub-vocally) his ownproduction looking for detectable errors. Discussion of the nature of the inferen-cing involved will be deferred until Chapter 10 where I will also talk aboutmodelling again and the fourth form of negative evidence (the query) we used inmore detail.

4. Summary

In this chapter, I have attempted to delineate a function for feedback andcorrection in terms of directing the learner’s attention to detectable errors. In theAutonomous Induction Theory, attending to some aspect of an utterance involvesdeveloping more detailed representations of its structure. This is obviously thefirst step in restructuring the psychogrammar. I noted, however, that the provi-sion of feedback does not alone resolve the blame assignment problem —


finding the place in the grammar where it fails to accurately represent thephenomenon in question. I have argued here that blame can only be assigned, onthe basis of feedback given, at points in the language faculty where the concept-ual representations make contact with the others. In this theory, that means at thelevel of phonological representations since I have adopted the Intermediate-LevelTheory of Awareness of Jackendoff (1987) and am assuming that the deploy-ment of feedback and correction presupposes awareness on the part of thelearner. I then tried to show, on the basis of an analysis of gender learning, thatevidence can be found that feedback does not effect basic features of representa-tions — in this instance the basic features of the noun category — which can bereadily explained by the model. Finally, I presented a detailed analysis of theprovision of feedback given in the double object experiment of Carroll andSwain (1993), an instance where feedback was shown to work.

In ending this chapter I would like to return to some of the ideas discussedat the beginning of the book. It should now be apparent that the evidence forlearning the phenomena discussed does not come via the processing of thestimuli alone, but rather through the elaboration of complex input representations.The critical input in some of the cases discussed comes from conceptualstructures. The interpretation of the feedback requires that the learner do twothings — analyse what is not possible and then attempt to figure out what is.Figuring out what is possible requires making use of the categories, rules andconstraints of the relevant autonomous representational system. In the firstinstance we are dealing with negative evidence and in the second, with positiveevidence. It could be argued that the information that the learners make use ofis “analysed knowledge” in the sense of Bialystok but obviously the constraintsin the system come precisely from the constraints on the interaction of the“analysed” and the “unanalysed” representations. Not all types of informationrepresented in one representational format can be “redescribed” in other represen-tational formats. There is clearly loss of information when representationalsystems interact. The notion of control has been important too since the theorymakes the claim that explicit feedback will only be effective if the learner canbe aware of some feature of language. Finally, I have assumed throughout thatthe behaviour of our subjects reflects reorganisation of their psychogrammars, butI have not actually demonstrated this. The basic data used reflects only a singlesort of performance. To make a convincing case it would be desirable to haveother types of performance data from the same subjects, all of it converging. Ihave also used group data, which, as is well known, can disguise importantdifferences among the subjects, some of whom may have acquired the relevantdistinctions while others did not. The demonstration must await an analysis of


the individual results, just one of many future studies which seem necessary tome as a consequence of elaborating this theory.

Notes

1. Although feedback and correction undoubtedly play a role in the reorganisation of conceptualrepresentations (see Marshall 1965, and Barringer and Gholson 1979, for literature reviews onthe subject of feedback and its effects on concept formation and concept identification; seeKulhavy 1977, and Lysakowski and Walberg 1982, for literature reviews on the subject offeedback and its effects on memory for concepts), in what follows I will limit myself to adiscussion of feedback and grammatical representations encoded in autonomous systems. In thenext chapter, I will address the issue of conceptual representations of grammatical concepts andhow they might be mapped onto autonomous representations.

2. Jackendoff (1989: 279) argues that there is a phenomenological consequence of the operationof the selection function, namely that we areawareof only one interpretation for an ambiguousinput. “One notices ambiguity only through the appearance of successive interpretations overtime.” He then goes on to reject the usual analysis of this consequence as being that there arelimitations on attention or that it is an executive organiser in the mind. See Jackendoff(1989: Sections 1.1, 2.2 and 4.4) for more discussion.

3. The relationship between attention and awareness is characterised in the following way.

The distinctions of form present in each modality of awareness are causedby/supported by/projected from a structure of intermediate level for that modalitythat is part of the matched set of short-term memory representations designated bythe selection function, and enriched by attentional processing. Specifically,linguistic awareness is caused by/supported by/projected from phonologicalstructure (Jackendoff 1989: 298).

4. Another way to phrase the matter is to require that our theory of second language acquisitionclearly differentiate cases where the L1 attrites from cases where it does not.

5. The situation is more complex in that constant exposure to stimuli of a certain kind, say aspouse with a foreign accent, might lead a native speaker to adjust in the direction of thephonetic categories of that accent. Presumably, this does not happen to native speakers exposedto the foreign accents of other L2 learners because the contact is too casual, too infrequent, andtoo unsustained. Note too that the example in the text is not meant to cover instances of dialectshift which occur when, e.g. Americans live for many years in London. Adjustments in thedirection of somewhere in the “mid Atlantic” can be covered by a theory of SLA quite nicely.

6. This is a weaker requirement than saying that the speaker’s speech production is identical tothe input.

7. This example is taken from a corpus of spontaneously provided instances of correction andfeedback that I have been collecting since 1992.

8. Sharwood Smith (1991) discusses this point in the context of the salience of input, the detectionof anomaly, and “enhancing the input” for SLA in the classroom.

9. I should perhaps add that I speak and write French fluently, am extremely comfortable using thelanguage in a wide variety of situations, am occasionally mistaken for a native-speaker, and


otherwise can demonstrate considerable knowledge of the language. My own view is that thesepersonal attributes are irrelevant to understanding the issue which is therelative difficulty oflearning gender attribution in the face of large amounts of stimuli and correction, i.e. whygender should be harder to learn than word order.

10. It has occasionally been claimed that gender features are determinable on the basis of propertiesof the nouns themselves, e.g. low-level perceptual properties (Sokolik and Smith 1992),phonological properties of nouns located at their “ends” (Tucker, et al. 1977), or semanticproperties (Grévisse 1980; Surridge 1985, 1986). However, none of these claims can besubstantiated for more than a small proportion of the nouns of the language. To the extent thatone can state generalisations, these are incomplete and have many exceptions. See Carroll(1989) and Morin (1982) for further discussion.

11. In Carroll (1989), I assumed that masculine was the unmarked specification for gender. Thearguments for this are that conjunctions of masculine and feminine words agree in themasculine, and nonce forms take the masculine. An argument against that analysis is the“feminisation” of ambiguous forms beginning with vowels in Canadian French (Barbeau,Ducharme and Valois 1981). Markedness can be rendered in terms of underspecification theoryfor morphosyntactic features (Lumsden 1992). By this approach, the specification for masculinegender would appear in lexical entries as [ ], the specification for feminine would be [+femi-nine], and the grammar would include a spell out rule as in (i).

(i) [ ] → [−feminine]

12. Under this analysis, French Canadian speakers would, in the face of ambiguous stimuli, beencoding vowel initial nouns for a gender feature, rather than supplying gender by default rule.Note that nothing in the explanation of learner behaviour turns on these differences in theexpression of the grammatical distinctions; one can be more modern or more traditional as onewishes. I would like to state, however, that one essential motivation for underspecificationtheory is the psycholinguistically dubious assumption that redundant specification of informa-tion is “bad” and a stripped down lexicon is “good”. I know of no independent (theory external)evidence for this assumption and the claim that learners would complexify their grammars inthe face of ambiguous input looks suspicious.

13. Expressed in these terms, it becomes clear that an alternative analysis is possible, namely thatthe gender specification of nouns can be affected but is never visible because correction andfeedback do not affect the processes which ensure that specifiers do not exhibit featuresclashing with those of the nouns they agree with. Thus, a [+fem] adjective could co-occur witha [ ] noun within the same NP. It isn’t obvious to me at the moment how to distinguishempirically between these two analyses. I can only point out that correction and feedbackdopermit learners to correct erroneous strings. On being toldLE tour de la ville, I can repeat thewhole string correctly, suggesting that feedback allows me to activate and select the correctphonological (agreeing) form of the specifier.

14. This cannot be attributed to problems that anglophones have in utilising distinct cues forgender. In Carroll (1999a), I showed that rank beginners can quickly learn not only to correctlyclassify stimuli according to gender class but also to extract relevant cues and generalise themto novel stimuli. In other words, when stimuli present consistent and valid cues, the patterns arereadily discernable.

15. One bit of anecdotal evidence I brought to bear on behalf of my analysis was that youngchildren (4–5 years old) beginning their immersion programs have been observed to sponta-neously correct adults attempting to prime them with the correct gender cues. Thus, Keren Rice(personal communication) has reported that her children, when told, e.g. that a table is /yntabl/,


would respond with remarks like “No [tejbl] is [tabl].” This kind of metalinguistic commentaryindicates that the children have grasped the determiner function of the formsun/une/desandthat they are not prepared to map the concept TABLE onto a phonological form including thedeterminer. Rather, they are mapping an N onto an N.

16. In fact, what I have been told is that particular individuals “never” make gender errors. If thisis an accurate observation, these individuals are simply irrelevant to a consideration of whetherfeedback can assist those large numbers of people who do. Gender marking is, however, soarbitrary that I suspect that individuals who have this impression about their own production are(i) simply not good observers of their own production, or (ii) are simply not using French ona daily basis or in a wide variety of communicative situations, or (iii) are truly exceptionallanguage learners. While systematic comparisons of exceptional and average learners should bedone, I do not feel obliged to construct a general model of second language learning around theabilities of the truly exceptional learner.

17. It is important to recognise, however, that particular aspects of the agreement system can showreal developmental stages. Fink (1985) has noted that agreement of predicative adjectives acrosscopular verbs, as inLa tour est grise‘The tower is grey’, is mastered only after several years.While the cues for this agreement pattern are reliable, common, and often occur in a positionwhere saliency is guaranteed (e.g., the end of the utterance), they constitute a tiny minority ofthe adjectives of French, the vast majority of which do not alternate phonologically in thisposition, e.g.Le plancher est sale/La porte est sale.

18. This result is consistent with studies of learning outside of the language domain. See Carroll etal. (1991) for discussion.

19. In earlier work I stated that association was not effective, and was rightly taken to task by DanSlobin, who insisted on the robustness of the research showing associations between soundforms and conceptual representations. I felt at the time that the objection, although correct, wasmissing the point that associations could take place between nouns and specifiers but typicallydon’t outside of instances we call idioms and treat as lexicalised strings. The problem isactually more mysterious when one considers that associations must occur between heads andtheir complements in order for subcategorisation to be learned. Why then don’t we all readilymemorisemon-livre,ma-voisine, or le-tour-de-la-villeas complex “compound” words which canbe inserted as is unproblematically into a string?

C 10

The interpretation of verbal feedback

1. Introduction

In this final chapter, I intend to elaborate further how feedback and correctioncan become forms of evidence for SLA. I will develop and extend ideas appear-ing in Carroll (1995), which was, to my knowledge, the first attempt to point outsome of the specific problems underlying the interpretation of direct (or explicit)and/or indirect (or implicit) verbal feedback of the sorts comprising negativeevidence in SLA. Although essential to any theory of language acquisition whichrelies on the provision of feedback and correction to solve either the representa-tional problem or the developmental problem of language acquisition, none of theliterature proposing that feedback and correction can “fix” things, or thatinteraction will guide the learner to the right grammatical generalisations hasattempted to show how learners interpret what they hear.1 I have adopted so farvarious assumptions to make the link between intake and meaning. The UniformParsers Hypothesis is essential to explaining various forms of transfer, and tomaking the claim that speech processing will be based on L1 parsing proceduresuntil new ones are created in the face of parse failures. That parse failures areessential to i-learning results from the Detectable Errors Hypothesis. It isessential to an account of why learning begins and why it ends. I have adoptedthe Representational Autonomy Hypothesis which states that speech will berepresented in autonomous representational systems during parsing and in LTM.The Representational Autonomy Hypothesis is essential to explaining grammati-cal universals. Induction may create new categories, themselves complexrepresentations, but it cannot create new representational primitives. They are notlearned. They are, rather, the basic symbols of the various “mental languages”used by both parsers and the LAD. These various assumptions have beenembedded within a theory of language with autonomous representational systems;this has meant the various representational systems are “modular.” In particular,I have claimed, on the basis of an Interface Hypothesis that i-learning processes


which deploy conceptual information, cannot operate directly on phoneticrepresentations but must operate on s-structures and phonological representations,or else on phonological representations of words stored in the mental lexicon. Ihave also adopted the Intermediate Level theory of Awareness which states thatthe aspects of language that we can be aware of are represented in phonologicalrepresentations. Since the deployment of feedback and correction is tied toawareness, this means that feedback and correction can only affect informationstored in phonological representations. These are perhaps not accessible inparsing except for lexical information — in the form of syllables, feet andprosodic words. This leaves us with one element of language processing to dealwith — How are conceptual structures actually put to use in inferencing? In whatfollows, I will adopt a version of Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986/1995). I will argue that correction is a type of speech act, and that the deploy-ment of correction and feedback depend crucially on the recognition of acorrective intention on the part of the interlocutor, who I will refer to as thecorrector. I will attempt to show that feedback and correction must be Irrelevantto the ongoing discourse in order for the corrective intention of the corrector tobe recognised.2 I will make the case that the ability to recognise the corrector’scorrective intention requires complex mental models of discourse interaction andcommunicative behaviour, not to mention abilities to parse the language whichgo well beyond the capabilities of beginning L2 learners. I will conclude that thevery complexity of the parsing and inferencing leading to an interpretation raisesserious difficulties for the proposal that the provision of feedback (either director indirect) could constitute acentral solution to SLA. Rather, feedback andcorrection will only play a role in SLA to the extent that they are embeddedwithin something like the Autonomous Induction Theory. I will also demonstratethat feedback and correction are Irrelevant to SLA to the extent that they lead thelearner to make inferences about information already encoded in his system. Inother words, feedback and correction matter for SLA only to the extent that theycause restructuring in the learner’s grammar. If the learner already knows whatthe corrector is pointing out, no internal changes will take place. This furtherreduces the role for feedback and correction in explaining acquisition. On the onehand, beginners do not know enough of the L2 to interpret feedback andcorrection offered in the L2, on the other hand, advanced learners are very likelyto know the information the corrector is attempting to transmit. This leaves uswith a period in-between where feedback and correction can, in principle, playa role in explaining grammatical restructuring.

THE INTERPRETATION OF VERBAL FEEDBACK 373

2. How could feedback and correction initiate restructuring in thelearner’s grammar?

2.1 Feedback and correction are types of speech acts

In Chapter 1 I elaborated a typology of input forms, distinguishing betweenpositive and negative evidence, and positive and negative feedback. In the courseof that discussion, I distinguished between utterances which model some aspectof the language, and utterances which inform the learner that something is or isnot allowed in the L2. Feedback and correction can contain models of the correctway of saying something, but this is not the essential part of their function. Thatfunction, the negative evidence function, relies crucially on the nature ofdiscourse in interaction, and on the learner’s ability to relate what is said to whatis intended. When the corrector provides a direct type of feedback, e.g.That’swrong, orWe don’t say it that way, she is expressing her attitudes about the formof something that has been said in a given context to express some specific idea.Feedback is therefore quintessentially metalinguistic in nature (Birdsong 1989);in order for the learner to understand the corrector to be correcting, he mustconstrue the corrector’s utterance to be a metalinguistic commentary, or construethe corrector’s behaviour as pointing to a metalinguistic commentary. That meansthat the learner must understand the corrector to be talking about the constituentsand structures of language and not about the extra-linguistic world.3 TheutteranceThat’s wrong, for example, is multiply ambiguous. The deictic pronouncould refer to an infinite number of objects in the world. To count as feedbackand correction of the sort pertaining to grammar learning, the learner musteliminate all of those references which are irrelevant to the form-meaning pairsof his own talk.That cannot refer to the truth value of the utterance (e.g. NOT[JOHN BUY A CAR]), or to the reference of one of the determiner phrases ofthe sentences (e.g. MARY vs. JOHN — it was Mary who bought a car and notJohn), or to one of the predications made (e.g., John bought a car and did notspend his money on a boathouse). It follows that there is nothing intrinsic tosuch utterances which make them forms of verbal feedback and correction. Theyacquire this function in particular discourse contexts which encourage the learnerto make a metalinguistic construal. It also follows that there is nothing intrinsicto the corrector’s utterances which make them relevant to language acquisition.This leads to theFirst Principle of Correction Interpretation.

(10.1) The First Principle of Correction InterpretationIn order to become a form of feedback and correction, the learner must construean utterance as indicating a corrective intention on the part of the corrector.


In other words, the learner will understand the corrector as attempting to dosomething with his utterance. This clearly makes feedback and correction a typeof speech act.

It is a basic assumption of the analysis of speech in discourse (Bach andHarnish 1982; Grice 1975; Searle 1969, 1979, 1983; Sperber and Wilson 1989/1995, among others) that discourse is conventional and arises from communicat-ive intentions on the part of the participants. In the unmarked case, interlocutorsagree to move a conversation towards some mutually-defined goal. Theycooperate and contribute by making each contribution relevant to the conversa-tion. If correction is actually to be informative, it must be true that the learnercan in fact make the right construal. The basic thesis of this chapter is that directand indirect forms of verbal feedback are largely Irrelevant to the ongoingcommunicative event in which they may occur. By the use of the capital letter“I” here, I mean that they violate Grice’s (1975) Relevance Principle:

(10.2) Relevance PrincipleThe speaker makes her contribution relevant to the purpose of the talk atthat point in the exchange.

It is because the exchange is Irrelevant to the ongoing talk that the hearer searchesfor another interpretation and a metalinguistic interpretation is one possibility.

Sperber and Wilson (1986/1995) have reworked Grice’s Relevance Principleand developed a theory of Relevance as a form of inferential communicationwhich is designed to explain how hearers recognise the interpretation of anutterance intended by the speaker. Their theory is explicitly cognitive in orienta-tion. They provide theCognitive Principle of Relevanceshown in (10.3)

(10.3) The Cognitive Principle of RelevanceHuman cognition tends to be geared to the maximisation of Relevance.(Sperber and Wilson 1995: 260–78)

When a hearer attempts to interpret an utterance which has been addressed to her,she is entitled to expect that this utterance will be relevant for her at that particularmoment. There is a secondCommunicative Principle of Relevancewhich statesthat every act of ostensive communication creates a presumption of Relevance.

(10.4) The Communicative Principle of RelevanceEvery act of overt communication communicates a presumption of its ownoptimal Relevance. (Sperber and Wilson 1995: 266–78)

Note that (10.4) is formulated in terms ofoptimality rather than in terms ofmaximal amounts of Relevance. This is because Relevance is constrained by the


cognitive effect of communication and the processing effort required to parse anutterance and interpret it. The processing effort made by the hearer has to below enough for her to want to make it (thus setting a lower limit on the expecteddegree of Relevance for the hearer), while the cognitive effect has to be greatenough for the communication to be worth the hearer’s attention. Sperber andWilson, therefore, argue for a relative notion of Relevance, which they callOptimal Relevance.

(10.5) Optimal RelevanceAn utterance, on a given interpretation, is optimally Relevant iff:a. it is Relevant enough for it to be worth the addressee’s effort to

process it;b. it is the most Relevant one compatible with the communicator’s abili-

ties and preferences. (Sperber and Wilson 1986/1995: 260–78)

Sperber and Wilson note that there are many circumstances where the speakermight be unwilling or unable to produce the most Relevant utterance for theongoing communicative purpose, or be able to formulate it in the most economi-cal way from the hearer’s perspective. In the case in hand, namely metalinguisticfeedback, the speaker can assume with some degree of probability that the hearerwill be interested in formulating her utterances correctly in accordance with therules of the language and the conventions of the sociolinguistic community inwhich speaker and hearer find themselves. In addition, the corrector is likely toassume that locating the error that a learner makes will be easier if the error isidentified shortly after it has been made (rather than, say, a half an hour later).But to identify the error forces the corrector to temporarily abandon the currentgoal of communication and shift to a metalinguistic intent. This leads us to acertain tension: Because it is Irrelevant to the ongoing purpose of the talk at thatpoint (which will normally be about the entity or event in the world), metalin-guistic feedback and correction represent a rupture in the discourse. This rupturecan only be resolved if the learner is capable of attributing some alternatepurpose to it. She will search for an alternate interpretation because of theCommunicative Principle of Relevance.

The resolution of the tension is itself a complex matter with no guaranteethat the correct inference will be drawn. This is because the interpretation of thefeedback often requires that the learner apply a first-order interpretation to thecorrector’s utterance — and then reject that interpretation. He must then assigna second-order interpretation to the corrector’s utterance, in so doing attributinga particular informative intention to the corrector (i.e. that he is correcting).


2.2 To count as feedback an utterance must be parsed and interpreted

Pinker (1989: 10–14) observes that for feedback and correction to play any rolein language learning at least three things must be true of them: they must beavailable in the learner’s environment; they must be usable; and they must beused. I will limit myself to some observations of what makes feedback andcorrection usable.

I take theusability of feedback and correction to mean that they must beinterpretable. In other words, the learner must be able to parse the stimulus (bothphonologically and syntactically) and assign it an interpretation. It is notnecessarily true that the learner must already know a lot of a given language tointerpret direct or indirect feedback. In other words, the learner’s parse of thefeedback-containing stimulus might be incomplete or inaccurate. It is true,however, that the more limited the learner’s knowledge of a given language, themore limited the information that can be conveyedto him in that language. Theless information that can be conveyed directly in the L2, the more feedback andcorrection must be interpreted through inductive inferencing based on a perceptu-ally-based interpretation of the environment, through recall of previously storedinformation, or (in the case of L2 learners) through communication in the L1.My point is that to the extent that the learner cannot decode and interpret thestimulus itself, then it becomes difficult to claim that it is the feedback which iscausally related to changes in the learner’s grammar. It follows that feedback andcorrection provided in a given L2 will play only a limited role during the earlieststages of acquisition when the learner’s ability to parse and interpret utterancesin that language will be the most limited. If the learner cannot parse andcomprehend simple L2 sentences, the corrector will not be able to conveyinformation about the L2 grammar expressed in complex L2 sentences. If thelearner has difficulty “hearing” nouns referring to objects present in the dis-course context, he will likely have extraordinary difficulty locating the referentsto elements of his own speech.4 This constraint — the Second Principle ofCorrection Interpretation — is expressed in (10.6).

(10.6) The Second Principle of Correction InterpretationTo convey metalinguistic information about the L2, the utterances expres-sing the corrector’s corrective intention must be parsable.

A corollary is given in (10.7).

(10.7) The Third Principle of Correction Interpretation


To convey metalinguistic information about the L2, the utterances ex-pressing the corrector’s corrective intention must be interpreted in such away that they represent information at the right level of analysis.

These two principles will exclude feedback and correction as acentralmechanism in certain learning situations: in the earliest stages of L1 acquisitionwhere there can be no recourse to a “shared” medium of communicationbetween corrector and learner (since the infant is simultaneously learning bothL1 forms and semantic/pragmatic systems expressed via the L1), and in L2acquisition contexts where recourse to the L1 is severely limited, e.g. pidgincontact situations. In other L2 acquisition contexts, we can assume that thecorrector and the learner will make extensive use of the learner’s L1 to conveyfeedback and correction. Speaking anecdotally, my own experiences as alanguage learner in both tutored and untutored contexts suggests that thishypothesis is on the right track.

2.3 Irrelevance of linguistic feedback

(10.8) Scenario 1: a German grocery store. An American (male) approaches aGerman (male) who is carrying several bottles of wine.a. American: Ah! Wo haben Sie das Wein gefunden?

where have you the- wine found‘Where have you found the wine?’

b. German: DEN!THE-

c. American: … Danke, danke.Thank you, thank you

End of interaction.5

What makes this feedback interpretable? Normally, when one person asksanother person a question, as in (10.8) above, the asker has good reason toassume (because of the Cooperative Principle) that the person addressed willindeed cooperate by providing an answer if he can. Clearly the American in(10.8), wanting some wine in the grocery store, could expect that his interlocutor,who is holding bottles of wine in his arms, would know where to find the winesection. If he knows this, by Grice’s (1975) Cooperative Principle, he ought toreply by giving the location. But he doesn’t do this. At the same time, he doesnot flagrantly violate the Cooperative Principle; he doesn’t look away, refuse tosay anything, or shout “Yankee, go home!” He gives a verbal response, whichthe learner acknowledges by thanking him. One would only thank an interlocutorfor information that one thought was helpful. But it is perfectly clear that the


Respondent’s response is not a response to the question asked.It is a meta-linguistic comment which is clearly Irrelevant to the objectives of the ongoingconversation. The construal of verbal feedback must therefore be based onsomething like (10.9):

(10.9) How to construe feedback from an utterancea. The corrector does not violate the Cooperative Principle, and is not

perceived by the learner to have violated it.b. The corrector’s contribution is Irrelevant to the on-going discourse.c. The learner assumes that the corrector has a corrective intention, i.e.

that he wants to say something about the form of the learner’s previ-ous utterance.

d. The attribution of a corrective intention to the speaker is the optimal-ly relevant interpretation of the utterance for the learner.

In interpreting the response to his question, the learner in (10.8) has two choices:he can assume that the interlocutor is not being cooperative and draw inferencesabout why that might be, or he can assume that the interlocutor is indeed beingcooperative. Since the German native speaker’s response is not literally aresponse to the question asked, this fact and the assumption of cooperation obligethe learner to search for an alternative interpretation. Given a set of assumptionsheld by the learner about his own lack of proficiency and/or competence in theL2 (coupled with other assumptions, e.g. whether or not he looks like a German),one alternative analysis is that the response is not a response to the content ofthe question but to its form. Given this inference, the learner can then drawothers about the source of the error, here, in the form of the determiner chosento refer to wine.

The invocation of Relevance Theory allows us to construct a plausibletheory of the interpretation of correction and feedback based on the perceivedIrrelevance of the corrector’s utterance to the discourse. I want to make astronger claim: not only is the corrector’s utterance Irrelevant to the ongoingdiscourse, itmust be Irrelevant in order to be construed as metalinguisticcommentary. Consider in this regard a second example where an interpretiveproblem arises precisely because the learner construes the corrector’s contributionto the discourse as Relevant. In each example, the learner is an adult, learningthe L2 largely in an untutored fashion, in surroundings where the L2 is themedium of common communication. Feedback comes from native speakers ofthe learner’s L2.


(10.10) Scenario 2: (A = Native Speaker, B = Learner)a. A: Ich überlege seit drei Stunde was ich anziehen werde.

I think-over for 3 hours what I put-on will‘I’ve been thinking for 3 hours about what I will put on’

b. B: … ich verstehe nicht‘I don’t understand’

c. A: Was verstehst du nicht?what understand you not?‘What don’t you understand?’

d. B: ummmmmmm ich… der Substantivum I… the noun

e. A: Es gibt kein Substantivthere is no noun

f. B: well then I don’t understand the verbg. A: réfléchis

thinkh. B: (… is thinking hard) ummmmmmm… ich… ich…

(unable to formulate a statement in German switches to French too)je ne comprends pas‘I don’t understand’

i. A: REFLECHIS!j. B: (thinking harder) I can’t guess, what is it?k. A: REFLECHIS!l. B: oh! ça veut dire “réfléchir” (bursts out laughing)

‘oh that means “to think” ’J’ai pensé que tu aies voulu que je devine le sens.‘I thought that you wanted me to guess the meaning’

Certain details are necessary to understand what is going on here in order tounderstand why the corrector corrects the way he does and why ultimately theintended inferences are drawn. First of all, it is important to note that SpeakersA and B use both French and English on a regular basis to communicate.Secondly, both switch in and out of these two languages, so there would benothing unusual about A’s switch from German to French although B hadpreviously been using English. Speaker B has said explicitly that he does notunderstand the verb in Speaker A’s original utterance. Speaker A chooses toprovide him with a translation equivalent, in other words his utterance could beconstrued as an abbreviated version of the proposition THE VERB MEANS“THINK ABOUT.” But Speaker A is even more helpful. He provides the trans-lation in the first person singular corresponding to his original utterance, in aform which just happens to be homophonous with the imperative second person


singular. This means that the form of his response is ambiguous between severalinterpretations. This discourse thus nicely illustrates the potential ambiguity offeedback, ambiguity which arises whenever the hearer can assign a literalinterpretation to the utterance.

Speaker B chooses to interpret the utteranceréfléchisas a command, i.e. asa non-metalinguistic instruction, even though this involves him making theassumption that Speaker A is being less than direct. I would like to suggest thatthe impetus to interpret stimuli in a non-metalinguistic way is so strong that itcould lead Speaker B to assume that Speaker A is “bending” the CooperativePrinciple and wants to play a little game.One thus moves to a metalinguisticconstrual only when none other is possible. Since a non-metalinguistic construalis available here the learner simply fails to understand the utterance as feedbackand correction.

Because of the ambiguity of feedback utterances, there is no guarantee thatthe speaker’s informative intention (the corrective intention) will be manifest tothe hearer/learner. The example in (10.10) illustrates nicely that the usefulness offeedback and correction depends first and foremost on the learner and hisinferencing capacities, rather than on the corrector and his communicativeintentions. A corrector may at any time attempt to provide feedback but only thelearner’s construal can make an utterance a successful provision of feedback.

On what basis would Speaker B finally come to reject his initial assumptionabout Speaker A’s informative intention in the above example? How does hecome to make the right assumptions? There are a number of additional assump-tions which he must make to get there. The first is Grice’s Cooperative Principle;the corrector must be seen as attempting to communicate something to thehearer. The Communicative Principle of Relevance leads the hearer to construeréfléchis in the most efficient way possible, namely as an instruction to guesswhat has been intended. Bur Speaker B cannot guess the meaning ofüberlegeand says so. Now the corrector repeats the same utteranceréfléchiswhich is notparticularly helpful. Speaker B might assume at this point that Speaker A cannotprovide more information, but since he is a native speaker of German and speaksfluent French, this interpretation is implausible. An alternative interpretation isthat Speaker A is being intentionally uncooperative, an interpretation which Balso rejects. So B searches for yet another intended meaning and ultimately landson the right one. Speaker B concludes that the utteranceréfléchis, on a non-metalinguistic interpretation, is Irrelevant to the on-going discourse but could beRelevant on a metalinguistic interpretation.

Consider another example which illustrates the same point.


(10.11) Scenario 3: Speaker A is reading from a German guidebook on Portugaland translating as he reads into English.a. A: … he had a daughter which was married to/b. B: /WHOc. A: Denisd. B: WHO! He had a daughter WHOe. A: DENIS!f. B: No! I’m correcting you. “He had a daughter WHO. Not WHICH!

It’s animate.

As in the example in (10.10), this example shows quite clearly that when thelearner can interpret the discourse as relevant, he does. In the example, this meansconstruingwho as a question, not as a correction. Shifting to a metalinguisticinterpretation can be quite difficult since it involves more processing effort.6

Next we need what we might call the Felicity Condition for the provisionof feedback and correction. Speaker B must assume that Speaker A possessesmetalinguistic commentary to pass on. Attempts to provide feedback and correc-tion will fail if the learner assumes that the corrector does not know what he istalking about, or is in no position to provide feedback, for example, if both are L2learners at the same stage of acquisition. It follows from this that the learner’smental models as to who is an “expert” in the language and who is not will playa role in determining whether the information inferred from a corrector’sutterance is utilised. This means too that certain environments will be moreconducive for the interpretation of feedback and correction because thoseenvironments lead to the creation of mental models where experts correct theinexpert. Obviously, the language classroom is one such environment. It hasoften been remarked on that classroom discourse is “unnatural” because studentsand teachers talk a good deal about the language. While one can legitimately askwhat the properties of such discourse are, and how they compare with discoursesin other environments, it should be kept in mind that the mental models that arerelevant to the tutored environment are propitious to the interpretation ofmetalinguistic talk.

(10.12) The Felicity Condition on the provision of feedbackThe learner must assume that the corrector indeed has metalinguisticinformation to communicate. If the corrector is not considered to be “ex-pert” enough, the learner will disregard the feedback and correction.

One final assumption relevant to the account of (10.10) and (10.11) is that thereis a shared code which can serve as an appropriate medium for the transmissionof information about the non-shared code. This assumption is implicit in the two


Principles of Correction Interpretation. Speaker B must assume that Speaker Aassumes that he (B) can work back from an interpretation of a French form to themeaning of the German verb. One possible construal of the above dialogue, giventhese assumptions, is thatréfléchisis a translation-equivalent ofüberlege. ThatSpeaker B actually makes this inference is revealed by his comment in (10.10).

It is worth noting that information which is relevant to the discourse will benew information, which when combined with old information gives rise tofurther new information (Sperber and Wilson 1986: 48). To correctly interpret thefeedback, therefore, the learner must select the appropriate new information toadd to current assumptions. Explicit feedback depends on the perceptions of thecorrector but she will often be in a difficult position to determine if her intendedcorrection constitutes new information for the learner. Note too that nothing inwhat the corrector says can guarantee that the correct new information will beidentified, as example (10.13) below shows. The inferencing is non-demonstra-tive (Sperber and Wilson 1986: 65); it’s an iffy sort of thing at best.

2.4 The Relevance of feedback depends on its informativeness

(10.13) Scenario 4: (A = the L2 learner, B = the native speaker)a. A: Willst du mir die Tasche bringen?

want you to-me the bag bring?‘Do you want to bring me my bag?’

b. B: Wirst du/will you

c. A: Wirst du/(a self-correction based on previous error and feedback interac-tions involving the use ofwerdenandwollen)

d. B: Du hast “willst du” gesagtyou have “willst du” said‘You said “willst du” ’

e. A: Wirst du mir… die Tasche bringen?will you to-me… the bag bring‘Will you bring me my bag?’

f. B: Bringst du meine Tasche?bring you my bag‘Will you bring me my bag?’

g. A: Okay! bringst du meine Tasche!h. B: Welche?

‘Which one?’


i. A: Die ist unten die… die… Wie sagt man “sink”?it is beneath the… the… How do you say “sink”?

j. B: Waschbeckenk. A: (hearsWaschbecke) Die ist unten die Waschbeckel. B: unter dem Waschbeckenm. A: (hearsunten dem Waschbecke) unten dem Waschbecken. B: (exasperated) UNTER DEM WASCHBECKEN!o. A: (equally exasperated) well if you’d stop eating the ends of your

words!

To initiate knowledge restructuring in the learner, feedback must beinformative.It is not sufficient that the learner assign an interpretation to the stimulus. Itmust tell the learner something that she does not already know. A stimulus whichdoes not add to her stock of knowledge is not informative, it is merely redun-dant. Redundant information is Irrelevant information from the perspective ofRelevance Theory. However, the information value of an utterance has to bedetermined on the basis of the role of the utterance in the discourse, i.e. whetherthe information is redundant to a literal interpretation or to some other intentionsuch as the corrective intention. At this point, it is appropriate to introduce amodification of Relevance Theory proposed by Blakemore (1987), namely thedistinction between aspects of discourse pertaining to the truth-conditionalmeanings of utterances and aspects of discourse pertaining to the non-truth-conditional meanings of utterances. This distinction is referred to in the Rel-evance Theory literature as theconceptualprocedural dichotomy.

According to Blakemore, many expressions in a discourse do not contribute“conceptual meaning” to the utterance, i.e. do not contribute to the truth value ofthe corresponding proposition.7 These expressions, rather, constrain the computa-tions determining utterance interpretation by signalling other, one might say,pragmaticaspects of meaning. For example, Blakemore uses the distinction toexplain the difference in interpretation of the two utterancesHe is poor and he ishonestandHe is poor but he is honest. In both utterances, the truth conditionalmeaning ofandandbut is the same, however, the presence ofbut signals to thehearer that she should infer a proposition logically inconsistent with a propositionderived from the interpretation of the first clause. The following exampleillustrates this.

(10.14) [A and B are discussing the economic situation and decide that theyshould a consult a specialist in economics.]A: John is not an economist. (→ We shouldn’t consult him.)B: But he is a businessman. (→ We should consult him.)(Yoshimura 1998: 107)


From A’s assertion that John is not an economist, one can make the inferencethat he is not a suitable candidate for a consultation on the topic of the currenteconomic situation (inference: If John is not an economist then we should notconsult John on economic matters). B’s assertion that John is a businessmanmight be construed as not optimally Relevant in this context, however, the useof the expressionbut provides a signal to the hearer that she should build a pro-position which contradicts that proposition derived from the interpretation ofJohn is not an economist. Since that proposition is NOT (WE SHOULD CON-SULT JOHN), the hearer knows that she should construct the affirmativeproposition (WE SHOULD CONSULT JOHN).

Yoshimura (1998) uses this distinction to provide an analysis ofmetalin-guistic negationin which negative markers are introduced into a discourse tosignal a shift to a metalinguistic interpretation. See Horn (1985) who providesexamples similar to ours above.

(10.15) A: Esker too ah coo-pay luh vee-and?B: Non, je n’ai pas ‘coo-pay luh vee-and’ — J’ai coupé la viande. (Horn

1985: 133, taken from Yoshimura 1998: 114)

The explanatory problem of (10.15) is to explain why it is thatnon is notconstrued as a propositional negation. Yoshimura states:

we would like to propose that metalinguistic negation warns the cognitiveprocessor that the pre-negation utterance is somehow problematic and instructsthe hearer to search for a means of appropriately modifying the cognitiveenvironment. Therefore metalinguistic negation can be formalised as in (44)

(44) Metalinguistic negation(0, {…})

The pre-negation utterance (i.e., the form the utterance would assume if it werenot negated) is problematic, so search for a means of appropriately modifyingthe cognitive environment. (Yoshimura 1998: 117)

Unfortunately, this is very vague, far too vague to be helpful as a solution to theproblem of how the learner is to use correction and feedback as a means foraltering her grammar, whatever its utility might be in dealing with the problemof metalinguistic negation. In addition, the analysis does not really reveal thebasis on which the hearer makes the shift to a metalinguistic interpretation, asYoshimura admits. In the absence of an explanation of how that shift occurs, itis not clear that metalinguistic interpretation can be reduced to the conceptual/procedural dichotomy of Blakemore. I conclude from this that my approach,namely that metalinguistic feedback is Irrelevant, is the correct one. A shift to a


metalinguistic interpretation is possible when the corrector produces an utterancewhich is Irrelevant to the propositional content (truth value) of the discourse.

It may still be the case that the corrector can have a corrective intention butthat a given correction will fail as correction because it is Irrelevant in thatfunction as well. The first correction by B dealing with the correct choice of verbto express futurity did not provide the learner with any new information aboutthe German verbal system since she had made this mistake before and beencorrected on it several times. She was able to self-correct in (10c). While thecorrector may intend the utterance as a feedback and correction, and the learnerwill discern the corrector’s information intention (because one doesn’t answer aquestion by repeating it), its information content asfeedbackis zero. Theutterance fails asfeedback.

It seems to me that the informativeness of feedback and correction for alearner is often overestimated in discussions of the development of a generallearning theory. In other words, it is assumed that all attempts at feedback by thecorrector contribute new information to the learner. But this is clearly false as(10.13) shows.Indeed, themore knowledgable the learner is themore likely it is tobe false. Once a learner has acquired a grammatical distinction and can reproduceit at least some of the time, feedback and correction about it will merely providethe learner with evidence that she has made a performance mistake. This is nottrivial if it leads the learner to stabilise production schemata, but it will not leadto restructuring of the mental grammar.

The second correction that B provides in (10.13f) focuses on the correctnessof choosing the future tense to make a request as opposed to the imperative.Speaker B wants Speaker A to understand that expressing requests in German viatransferred English-based structures with modals and infinitives is inappropriate.Speaker A (who had had enough correction for one communication event)acknowledges that she has made an error by repeating the proffered correctionin (10.13g).

The third bit of feedback and correction is the important one here. Duringthe earliest stages of learning, Speaker A had considerable difficulty representingaccurately the phonological shape of certain sounds, in particular the shape ofweak syllables. Because she has not heard the distinction between her pronunci-ation and that of B’s, she does not grasp that it is the focus of the correction.Rather she attends to and alters her formulation of the case-marked determiner,substituting one form (dem) for another (die). It is only because B presents thecorrection a second time with considerable insistence, that A directs her attentionto other aspects of her utterance.


2.5 The blame assignment problem

Example (10.13) illustrates well the blame assignment problem (Pinker 1989: 12)discussed in Chapter 8. As we noted there, the provision of feedback andcorrection indicates an error, but it doesn’t say what the error is. Even when thelearner clearly recognises the corrective intention of the corrector, he mustanalyse or guess where he has probably made a mistake in the sentence and whatlevel of planning or execution (speech act, lexical choice, morphosyntax, linearorder, articulation) is implicated. It is an open question as to whether the learnercan indeed locate the problem source. Let us consider the difficulties involved.We have assumed that working memory is severely constrained. Therefore, it isimplausible that the learner has representations of his utterance (at each of thedifferent levels of analysis) in working memory after the utterance has beenarticulated. The learner will undoubtedly have in LTM a conceptual structuresince this is critical to understanding the discourse, and the learner will have“permanent” representations of the phonological forms of words in lexicalentries. The mediating representations, however, will disappear as soon as theyhave done their work. In the theory presented here, the learner has access to theinformation stored in LTM in lexical entries. He does not access the informationencoded in the parsers, nor can he access the information about the grammarstored in the modules. What, then, does the learner do with the informationprovided by feedback and correction? One possibility is that the learner attemptsto reproduce his utterance. It is not an accident, I think, that learners so oftenrepeat correction and feedback. By repeating what they have heard, they are ineffect rehearsing strings. This means encoding the same conceptual structureanew and directing their attention to those levels of analysis which the systemmakes available. At what level of analysis? Clearly, the learner who hears(10.13l) and repeats it as (10.13m) is encoding phonetic properties. Is that all?For learners with metalinguistic awareness, this seems unlikely. Rather, it seemsthat the learner can access the information that the acoustic phonetic informationin (10.13l) is related to three distinct lexical items. The theory makes availableto the conceptual system the lexical form-meaning correspondences and phono-logical representations. It is therefore possible to explain how the learner canhear modelled forms, infer that the modelling means that his production was notgood, and “edit” the phonological representations stored in his mental lexicon.The theory will also accommodate feedback linking the form of the determiner(dem) to the form of the preposition.

Other instances of feedback appear to have little effect. Consider the systemunderlying the use of counterfactual statements. Two clauses are constructed, one


in the form of a condition, the other the consequent (apodosis). German gram-mars note that two versions are possible.

(10.16) a. Wenn ich das Geld hätte, führe ich nach Toronto.if I the money had+ travel+ I to Toronto‘If I had the money, I would go to Toronto.’

b. Wenn ich das Geld gehabt hätte, wäre ich nachif I the money had+ had+ would+ I toToronto gefahren.Toronto travelled‘If I had had the money, I would have gone to Toronto’

c. Wenn ich das Geld hätte, würde ich nach Toronto fahren.if I the money had+ would+ I to Toronto travel‘If I had the money, I would go to Toronto.’

d. Wenn ich das Geld gehabt hätte, würde ich nachif I the money had+ had+ would+ I toToronto gefahren sein.Toronto travelled be.‘If I had had the money, I would have gone to Toronto’

Although I studied German as a dead language many years ago in high school,I learned little and immediately forgot what I learned. My acquisition hastherefore been largely untutored, and based on discourse that I have with mybutcher Uwe, train conductors, waitresses, and the ladies who work in Ham-burg’s department stores. If anyone used forms such as those in (10.16a, c) in mypresence in the early years of my exposure to German, it is news to me. I haveno conscious awareness of ever having heard forms of this sort, and havecertainly never attempted to produce such sentences. On the other hand, I haveoccasionally heard constructions like those in (10.16b, d). I have only justdiscovered, however, in researching this problem, that the modals I heard musthave been in the subjunctive. I have always “heard” them aswurde/wurdest/wurdenwhich is the past tense of the modalwerden. In my own attempts toreproduce these sentences, I have also been corrected, by my secretary, bycolleagues and by students. If I have never noticed that the correction includedthe subjunctive forms, it is perhaps because my attention has usually been on theorder of the verbs and the form of the past tense and I simply could not attendto both the position of the verbs and their phonetic form at the same time.Certainly in my mental model of my own German, the location of tensed verb isoften erroneous. My mental model obviously also includes a representation of the“correct” position, namely sentence final. Let’s assume that I have a con-dition–action empirical rule for production purposes of the sort in (10.17).


(10.17) If a VERB is TENSED and appears in an EMBEDDED CLAUSE, then itappears on the RIGHT BOUNDARY of that CLAUSE.

This condition–action rule will necessitate various correspondences between theconcepts, , and and the corresponding elements which actually occur in thephonological structures. Tense will only be accessible by activating the lexicalrepresentation for a specific tensed verb. Clause boundaries will only be accessi-ble to the extent that they correspond to the edges of intonation phrases. Noticethat this means that the construct will not be accessible sincethis construct is eliminated in the transition from s-structures to phonologicalstructures. The learner will therefore have to resort to analyses which encodelinear notions like.8 Presumably focusing attention on these corre-spondences between the conceptual structures and phonological structures hasprevented my noticing the actual phonetic forms of the verbs involved.

2.6 Metalinguistic information, grammar teaching, and information which can-not be modelled

So far I have been discussing the interpretation of forms which the learner mighthave occasion to hear if the circumstances were right. In other words, we havebeen dealing exclusively with forms which actually occur in the language. Whatabout negative evidence? How does one interpret the information in (10.18)?

(10.18) You can’t say “He explained me the problem”.

I hypothesise that information of this sort must always be interpreted in thecontext of plausible alternatives. Negative evidence has an effect on the learner’soutput if it leads the learner to select (10.19) and to suppress (10.18).

(10.19) He explained the problem to me.

The direct and indirect forms of feedback that were discussed in Chapter 8 apparentlycan result in an inference comparable to (10.18). And they also appear to be ableto correctly influence the learner’s production behaviour in the desired way.

What do we say about metalinguistic information encoded in grammaticalrules of the sort one reads in grammar books? Can it not have a suitable effecton the learner’s psychogrammar? The uncontested failure of the grammar-translation teaching method would appear to provide ample evidence thatlearning “about” the language does not lead to mastery “of” the language. Butwe must try to understand these matters in psycholinguistic terms. If what wemean by mastery of the language is the ability to comprehend and produce


spoken language, then reading it will not lead to the requisite abilities sincereading will create visual not acoustic-phonetic representations of the language.This has nothing directly to do, however, with the question: Can you only learnthe grammar of a language by parsing stimuli bottom-up? We must also acknow-ledge that the grammar rules appearing in most pedagogical and descriptivegrammars are incomplete and inaccurate. Consequently, we must not measure theaccessability of the information in terms of the accuracy of the learner’s outputwhen compared to native speakers. In my view, the question really boils downto three others: (i) Can metalinguistic information in the form of taught grammarrules effect parsing procedures? (ii) Can such information effect speech produc-tion procedures? There is no empirically motivated answer to these questions atthe moment, despite the speculations reviewed in earlier chapters. I suspect thatthe answer to the first question will prove to be “No” and the answer to thesecond will prove to be “Yes”. The third question: (iii) Does this constitutehaving an effect on the learner’s grammar? depends entirely on one’s theory ofwhat a mental grammar is. In this book, we have regarded the mental grammaras the psychogrammar, that is all of the grammatical information relevant forparsing and producing speech. On the basis of that definition, grammar teachingeffects the learner’s grammar. Should there be some other notion of mentalgrammar relevant to SLA, we might be forced to reject this position. I leave itto others to motivate such a notion.

2.7 The corrective intention and indirect forms of feedback

The provision of direct feedback and correction lies in the hands (or mouth) ofthe corrector. In other words, she must perceive that there is a need to providefeedback and be willing to do so. Explicit feedback and correction of the sortillustrated here thus differs from implicit or indirect forms of feedback such asrecasts, repetitions of an erroneous utterance, clarification questions or indirectprompting since, outside of the classroom, the corrector usually has no intentionto correct.9 The corrector is instead using the repetition or clarification questionto say: “Do I understand correctly what you are trying to say?” But if thecorrector has no intention to correct, then there will normally be no correctiveintention to attribute to the corrector.If the learner cannot attribute a correctiveintention to the corrector, there is no reason to assume that in normal discourse, hewill construe repetitions or clarification requests as forms of linguistic feedback.The learner will normally construe such utterances as indicating a breakdown incommunication, but a breakdown in communication does not normally lead torestructuring of the speaker’s grammar. In other words, there is a critical step


missing in claims (Schachter 1986) that indirect forms of feedback can lead tolanguage learning. The critical step is that the learner must make the inferencethat his grammar is at fault, and not, e.g. the radio was on and the corrector wasinattentive. It follows that although indirect and tacit forms of negative evidencemay be more frequent in native speaker/non-native speaker discourses than overtforms, they are less likely to be construed as feedback. Therefore, they are lesslikely to play a role in restructuring the learner’s grammar.

3. Summary

In this chapter, I have focused attention on what makes linguistic feedbackusable. The interpretation of feedback and correction requires first of all ametalinguistic capacity since the correct construal of the corrective intentionrequires treating language itself as an object of thought. Feedback and correctionwould thus appear to be excluded in certain language learning situations becausethe learner has limited or no metalinguistic capacity (early L1 acquisition,possibly L2 acquisition in illiterates). Interpretation also requires an ability toparse and interpret the stimuli, which also precludes a central role for feedbackand correction in early L1 acquisition and in those cases of L2 acquisition wherethere is no recourse to a common code (pidgin contact situations).

I have shown, through an analysis of a corpus of spontaneously providedforms of feedback and correction to adult L2 learners, that the interpretation oflinguistic feedback requires interpreting an utterance as obeying the CooperativePrinciple but violating Relevance. Learners, however, will make this move onlywhen no other interpretation is possible — the move to a metalinguistic interpre-tation is therefore a move of “last” and not first resort. I have also shown thatassigning an utterance a feedback interpretation involves attributing a correctiveintention to the corrector. Since repetitions, failures to comprehend and othercommonly-cited forms of indirect feedback do not require making such anattribution, the correct interpretation for such utterance-types is less likely. Themore inferencing the learner must make on the basis of (non-verbal) perceivableevents or information in longterm memory, the less likely she is to identify thecorrective intention. Contrary to common assertions in the interaction literature,the “best” feedback and correction is probably the most explicit — which is theleast likely to occur. Finally, it was observed that a given utterance can bedoubly Irrelevant, namely when the corrector violates Relevance in order toprovide feedback but the information construed by the learner is not new. In thefirst instance, the utterance is Irrelevant to the literal (truth functional) analysis


of the meaning of the sentence. In the second instance, it is Irrelevant in itsmetalinguistic function. I conclude that for this reason the provision of feedbackand correction may be comparatively useless in the advanced stages of acquisi-tion when the corrector is less able to discern errors from “slips of the tongue”made by the learner, and when feedback and correction are more likely to beredundant. In short, considerations of an interpretive nature suggest that even iffeedback and correction is “in the air”, its utility will be severely restricted inboth the early and most advanced stages of language acquisition, making itimplausible that it could play a central role in the development of a generaltheory of language acquisition.

We must therefore conclude that feedback and correction could not be asubstitute for universals of linguistic cognition in explaining the representationalproblem of language acquisition. It should be apparent that their function inexplaining the developmental problem of language acquisition will also beseverely constrained — to particular phases of the learner’s development and toparticular types of acquisition problems. Fans of Universal Grammar can takeheart from this message, and may be forgiven if they tell us “Well, we told youso”. On the other hand, those of us who are interested in learning, in variableknowledge, and in the far broader types of knowledge needed to use a languagethan typically get discussed in the generative literature, can say exactly the samething. The debates will continue — this book will have resolved perhaps none ofthem — but it does point to one pressing issue: we need to make much furtherheadway on the question of the uniformity and variability of language acquisi-tion. Second language learners are not always driven to unique “solutions” totheir learning problems, nor are their systems always variable in every respect.When we know which solutions are uniquely given and which not, then we willbe better able to apportion the explanatory work between a theory of linguisticuniversals and a theory of induction.

Notes

1. This applies, for example, to the empirical studies by Long (1980, 1981, 1983), Ellis (1985),Kasper (1985), Gass and Varonis (1985a, b, 1989, 1994), Varonis and Gass (1985a, b), Brocket al. (1986), Pica (1987, 1988a, b), Pica, Doughty, and Young (1986), Pica, et al. (1987) whichshow that native speakers (NS) modify their utterances, restate, repeat and elaborate them in theface of communication difficulties with non-native speakers (NNS). While these studies provideinvaluable data illustrating the complexity of verbal interactions in NS–NNS discourse, in theabsence of sophisticated models of parsing, inferencing, and language learning, they cannot butfail to show that there is a causal relationship between comprehension, parsing and SLA.


2. I will refer to violations of the Relevance Principle asIrrelevant, using lower case spelling forthe ordinary language use of irrelevant.

3. This makes feedback and correction fundamentally different from behaviour referred to asrepairswhich has been investigated in the context of studies of conversational structure andturn-taking (Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks 1977; Jefferson 1981) in which issues of accuratereference, predication and truth values are primary.

4. Consider in this regard the critique of Pica et al. (1989: 66) of their own earlier studies ofnegotiated interaction between NS and NNS. They observed little NNS modification of unclearlanguage. NSs were modelling target versions of the L2. They attribute both types of behaviourto the low proficiency level of the NNS. They also observe that the NS were ESL teachers“familiar with interlanguage productions and with classroom feedback conventions [who]provided a biassed sample of NSs uniquely adept at supplying learners with target models”. Itis also possible that the NS couldn’t interpret and use the NNS modifications.

5. I owe this example to the late Fernando Tarallo.

6. Abbot and Costello fans will have got the point immediately.

7. Within the Conceptual Semantics approach to meaning, it is redundant (if not incoherent) tospeak of “conceptual meanings”. Meanings are encoded in conceptual structures and experi-enced as an understanding of the world around us.

8. Notice that the theory elaborated here actually provides an explanation for the claims of Clahsenand Muysken (1986 1989) and Meisel (1996) that adult learners are using linear performancestrategies. I would dispute Meisel’s (1996) claim that these strategies are not structural — theyare indeed structural, but only at the level of the phonology. My analysis is actually quiteconsistent with Meisel’s point thatmorphosyntacticstructure is not available. I also mustemphasise that unconscious induction is not restricted to operating over phonological structures.Feedback and correction are only restricted in this way because they presuppose awareness.

9. Repetitions which reformulate an erroneous utterance are different in that they provide primarylinguistic data which the learner can then compare to a just-uttered error. Such repetitions fallunder the category of models.

Epilogue

In this book, I have attempted to explore the logical and empirical relationshipbetween the stimuli that learners of a second language hear and the input tolearning mechanisms which appear to be required by the grammars that theyultimately learn. I have argued that these two issues — what is in the signal andwhat is in the representations which feed the learning mechanisms — cannot bethe same and must be investigated separately. Input to speech processing comesfrom the speech signal, but the input to learning mechanisms can come fromwhatever sources the learning mechansism can access. I have argued here, andprovided evidence for the claim, that those sources include the conceptualrepresentations. L2 learning is not, therefore, a matter solely of analysing thesignal in a bottom-up manner.

In addition, I have argued that a theory of second language acquisition mustbe built around some notion of Universal Grammar which provides us with atheory of the constraints defining natural language systems. However, the theoryof Universal Grammar which I have been working with, and explicitly arguingfor, is not that conception which emerges from the Principles and ParametersTheory. UG is not a “box” in the mind which the learner accesses whenever shestarts to learn a new language, rather it is a characterisation of the constraintswhich clearly hold of linguistic systems as a consequence of normal learningprocesses. These processes are not to be seen as part of a module unlike anyother component of mind, nor are they part of some great undifferentiatedgeneral theory of learning. There are modular processes of speech processing andautonomous levels of representation, but there are also metaprocesses of cat-egory-formation which exhibit similarities across domains of knowledge (namely,the prototypicality of categories). An explanatory theory of SLA must accountfor all of these things, and the Autonomous Induction Theory certainly attemptsto do so. It does so by adopting a specific architecture of language in which theconstruct of level of language plays a critical role. The traditional levels havebeen reinterpreted as autonomous levels of representation which are linked toeach other via correspondences, basically that a category C of level A corre-sponds to a category C′ at level B. Learning, in this framework, then consists of

394 EPILOGUE

acquiring the categories of a given level, learning the correspondences acrosslevels, and the constructions which within-level operations build. The theoryincludes a variety of constraints on each of these metaprocesses, thus attemptingto deal with the principal critique of general theories of learning.

Finally, I have introduced a theory of feedback and correction which focuseson the interpretation of feedback, as a kind of metalinguistic commentary on thelearner’s production, and what that entails in terms of feedback as input tolearning problems which involve encodings in autonomous representationalsystems. It turns out that feedback and correction in the L2 can, in principle, playonly a limited role in second language acquisition because the utterance in whichthe feedback is expressed must be parsable and parsed. Moreover, the learnermust attribute to his interlocutor a corrective intent, which, as we have seen, isnot always straightforward, given that certain forms of correction can first begiven a truth-functionally Relevant interpretation. The clearest cases are thosewhere the feedback is Irrelevant to that purpose, but to be a factor in grammati-cal restructuring, the correction or feedback must still be Relevant to the learneras a piece of metalinguistic commentary. Should it be the case that the learnerhas already represented the information, despite what she produces spontaneous-ly, then she will dismiss the feedback as Irrelevant a second time. Finally, thecontent of the feedback must be put into correspondence with representations ofthe grammar which can connect to the conceptual representations. Lexical entriesare themselves correspondences and so they can be prime targets for feedbackand correction as agents of grammatical restructuring. Prosodic representations,in particular, aspects of constituent order, will also be susceptible to input fromfeedback and correction since these are the representations which are projectedinto awareness, and awareness, we have said, is more detailed processing at thatlevel. This leaves huge areas of grammatical competence potentially imperviousto feedback and correction — aspects of meaning, morphosyntax, internalmorphological structure of words, sub-segmental aspects of phonology and all ofphonetic knowledge. The empirical research which has been presented here iscompatible with these predictions, but it should be obvious that the theoryfollowed the empirical studies rather than preceding them. This book, in the end,offers a research framework for the investigation of feedback and correction,rather than the last word on the topic. I hope, nonetheless, that it will inspiremore, and better, work than that I have presented here.

Appendix 1

Acceptability judgement task

01. She offered some milk to the cat.02. Antonio went to sleep early; he had a good sleep.03. His brother is resembled by Peter.04. The teacher explained the class the problem.05. All the piloters go through hard training.06. My friend is taking driving lessons; she will be a good driver.07. Usually, they ride on the TTC; it is a short riding from their home to work.08. A book was given to me yesterday.09. After we finished cooking all the food, we sat down and ate the delicious cook.10. Our TV doesn’t work, so we had to call a repairer.11. The policeman asked a question to Teresa.12. The boy cut a piece of cake for his sister.13. In our classroom, some are better understanders than others.14. Both French and Spanish are spoken in Morocco.15. The repairman charged Ling twenty dollars.16. I love listening to her, she is such a talented singer.17. He got Susan to admit her mistake.18. My cousin always speeds on the highway; he doesn’t respect the legal speed.19. Please start Consuelo the car.20. We climbed all the way to the top of the mountain; it was a difficult climbing.21. Elephants can be seen at the Toronto Zoo.22. He made her to stay until the dishes were done.23. The grandmother knits a sweater for her granddaughter.24. In the evening, the insects began to bite; soon, the tourists were full of mosquito bites.25. This house cost a fortune to Mike.26. When I promise something, I always keep my promise.27. My closet is a mess; I am going to get a closet organiser.28. Mary envied her wardrobe to Ines.29. The car I have now is more better than the car I had before.30. Run, Kim, Run. Show them what a good runner you are.31. Manuel wanted to learn how to skate, but he didn’t have skates.

396 APPENDIX 1

32. This book reads well; it is an exciting reader.33. The money was stolen by the robbers.34. Ellen can learn a poem in ten minutes; she is the best canner I know.35. He fixed his wife the sewing machine.36. The door opened.37. I made the letter written by Ho.38. The boys got together to prepare the party; everybody was enthusiastic about the prepare.39. John got his little brother to wash his car.40. We get all our bread from my brother; he is a baker.41. The boss made Pablo his foreman.42. Margarita is not as taller as her sister.43. Then there is a lot of work to be done, each member of the family becomes a helper.44. Emilio born in Mexico.45. The children learned how to paint with brushes, then they each started to work on

a paint to take home.46. She wished her daughter a good night.47. My dog comes when I call him; he is a quick comer.48. Jane speaks faster than Anna.49. Smell the flowers. They have such a nice smeller.50. The woman started to laugh; she had a soft melodious laugh.

Appendix 2

Experimental session

First Set of Feedback Items

01. John is going tofly to New York tomorrow.He used to be afraid of flying.

02. They took a long time to decide how tonamethe baby.Finally, they came up with a name that everybody liked.

03. Every year at Harbourfront, writersread their books to the Public.They have successful readings.

04. Tom is learning how todrive.An instructor supervises his driving.

05. Maria likes tobrushher daughter’s hair.She uses a soft brush.

06. Pleasewaterall the vegetables in the garden.Give them a lot of water, it is quite hot today.

07. The judgeschoosethe winner of the Miss Grey Cup contest.The choosing of the winner is always difficult.

08. You have to be careful when youcut with a sharp knife.It is very easy to get a cut.

09. My daughtersphonetheir friends all the time.We had to install a phone in their room.

10. Alice decided topaint her house.The painting took a month.

11. How does this bookend?If you want to find out, read the end of the book.

12. I alwaysgivemy friends presents on their birthdays.The giving of presents is part of Canadian culture.

First Set of Guessing Items

01. Some peopledreamevery night.Not everyone can remember their dream in the morning.

398 APPENDIX 2

02. The dentist is going tofill the cavity in the patient’s tooth.The filling doesn’t hurt, but it scares people anyway.

03. Anna likes tocook for her family.They all enjoy her tasty cooking.

04. Which way do you want towalk?I would prefer a walk near the river.

05. A tailor mustfit the suit for the customer.The fitting takes a lot of time.

06. Judy is going toleaveher job on Friday.She is going on maternity leave.

07. We went toswim in the lake.We had a good swim.

08. The bank manager decided tooffer Micaela a job in his bank.Micaela accepted his offer.

09. My parents want tomovethis Sunday.We are going to help them with the moving.

10. My catspurr when they are happy.Their purring can go on for a long time.

11. There are people whowork from morning till late at night.Their work is their life.

12. Salespeoplesellmerchandise.They must be very good at selling merchandise to be promoted.

Second Set of Feedback Items

01. The teacher likes totesther students regularly.She gives them a test every week.

02. The boy asked the girl: “Can Ikissyou?”“Ok” said the girl, “but only a little kiss.”

03. I watermy plants every week.The watering takes place on weekends.

04. So many peopledivorce these days.My friend just got a divorce from her husband.

05. Some writers prefer towrite in complete silence.They do most of their writing during the night.

06. Every election, political partiesmail information to voters.These mailings are quite expensive.

07. Deer oftencrossthe highways in Northern Ontario.You can easily hit one with your car during a herd’s crossing.

08. In the evening, it started tosnowheavily.The snow was soft and deep.

09. The children ask grandmother totell them stories.These favourite stories get longer a each telling.

APPENDIX 2 399

10. It is all right toquestioneverything.By asking a question, one can learn new things.

11. Children go to school tolearn.Schools are places of learning.

12. What did the actorsplay last week at Stratford?It was a play by Shakespeare.

Second Set of Guessing Items

01. The Japanese continue tokill whales.This killing of endangered animals has to be stopped.

02. Learners try tounderstandthe rules of English grammar.Their understanding of these rules is important.

03. Catscatchmice.Often, they bring their catch into the house.

04. Miguel doesn’t like toshavehimself.He goes to the barber for a shave.

05. The teacher shows the students how tospell some new words.She corrects their spelling of these words when they are at the blackboard.

06. Juan likes torest in the afternoon.He takes a rest a 3:00 o’clock every day.

07. Robert Campeau wants toopennew stores in the U.S.The opening of each store gets lots of publicity.

08. Raul started toteachmath last year.His teaching is improving all the time.

09. Peter decided todrive to Montreal.It is a six-hour drive.

10. Antoniohopesto get a bicycle for birthday.His sister knows about his secret hope.

11. The visiting professor was invited totalk at the University.Many students attended his talk.

12. George Bellplays in left field.His wonderful playing may get him a raise.

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Subject index

θ-marking 104θ-theory 72

Aability 2, 24, 26–28, 30, 33, 35, 37, 40,

60, 64, 69, 78, 83, 104, 111, 133,134, 135, 136, 139, 149, 183, 205,208, 209, 216, 217, 219–221, 226,232, 245, 253, 267, 281, 296, 304,311, 340, 344, 350, 352, 358, 360,362, 370, 372, 373, 375, 376,388–390

ablaut 325, 326accent 35, 53, 70, 111, 169, 178, 196,

204, 234, 353, 368acceptability judgement task 26, 27, 60,

163, 186, 205, 297–299, 310, 321,322

acceptability judgements 60, 64, 88, 89,158, 313

access/accessing 30, 38, 52–54, 58, 68,76, 79, 81, 93, 101, 107, 108,113–115, 123, 139, 155, 157, 163,196, 197, 199, 210, 241, 242, 245,248, 250, 264, 270, 279, 283, 386,393

ACCOMPLISHMENT 326, 344, 345account of memory 64, 404acoustic 8, 10, 12, 16, 28, 35, 49, 63,

73, 77, 82, 121, 123, 129, 171,180, 181, 182, 187, 200–202, 206,209, 223, 225, 256, 279, 280, 283,287, 292, 349, 359, 362, 386, 389

ACTION 81, 139, 171, 228, 324–326,344, 345

ACTIVITY 326, 344ACTOR 81Adj 136, 223adjacency 60, 62, 297, 299, 342Adjacency Condition on Case assign-

ment 297adjective 73, 77, 102, 135, 152, 180,

200, 230, 313, 323, 345, 362, 369,370

adjective phrase 73, 102AdjP 73adjunct 85, 86, 102, 104, 115, 155, 299,

317, 342adverb 102, 135, 158, 159, 177, 276,

277, 286, 296–299, 306, 342AGENT 62, 166, 236, 237, 342agentivity 62Agr 116, 159, 276, 278agreement 44, 47, 62, 73, 87, 104, 152,

153, 158–163, 254, 269, 271, 313,341, 360–362, 370

analogy 61, 91, 135analysed knowledge 26, 367analytic implication 176anaphora 104, 106, 116, 155analysis and control 164, 254, 357argument 73, 85, 87, 114, 200, 299, 342argument structure 17, 72, 85, 129, 236,

284, 344articulatory 73, 127, 356, 364articulatory feature 341

450 SUBJECT INDEX

artificial language 182, 183, 289,310–312, 320, 340

aspect 162, 177, 284, 294, 359association 12, 33, 60, 68, 75, 80, 135,

153, 162, 197, 198, 201, 361, 362,370

association lines 62attention 23, 25, 27, 35, 56, 106, 127,

136, 146, 149, 180, 181, 193–195,204, 206, 219–221, 226, 237, 244,250, 291, 292, 301, 306, 307, 310,316, 317, 319, 340, 347–350, 356,357, 361, 363, 364, 366, 368, 375,385–388

ATTRIBUTE 139attrition 47, 353automaticity 254, 303autonomous processing 149autonomous representations 27, 141,

187, 268, 273, 368Autonomy Hypotheses 187, 189, 190,

194, 198, 203, 271autonomy 43, 189, 195, 197, 198, 271,

274, 285autosegmental 62auxiliary 9, 75, 98, 157, 158, 276, 277,

282, 297, 301, 309. 359awareness 27, 57, 101, 127, 129, 136,

175, 195, 196, 250, 254, 256, 262,342, 349, 356, 357, 361, 364, 367,368, 372, 386, 387, 392, 394

awareness constraint on negativeevidence 128

BBasic Level of Categorisation Constraint

219, 221bilingual lexicon 4binding 72, 97, 128, 254, 262, 263, 269,

271, 285, 341binding domain 97blame assignment problem xi, xii,

354–356, 366, 386

bootstrapping 75–79, 81, 84, 136, 179,181, 208, 228, 247, 272

borrowing 47, 131bottom-up processors 123branching direction 102, 104, 116Bucket Brigade Algorithm 173, 203

Cc-command 12, 40, 49, 55, 57, 60, 62,

102–104, 107, 116, 188, 190, 258,269, 344

c-selection 129canalisation 108–111, 119, 130, 210,

272canonical word order 56, 58case assignment 115, 130, 297case relations 236case theory 72, 285Case Adjacency Parameter 297case-marking 62, 304, 311catapult problem 46categorial features 73, 128, 184categorical rules 311categorisation 108, 131, 136, 139, 144,

147, 164, 166, 168, 172, 175, 179,184–186, 217, 219, 221, 341, 357,366

Categorisation Constraint 219, 221categorisation judgement 139, 140–142,

164, 366category formation 79, 80, 82, 141, 175,

393category learning 79, 80causality 218, 354CAUSATION 76, 359central processor 124, 197, 250,

255–258, 260, 263–265, 279, 287central tendency 82, 149, 352checks 291clarification requests 291, 389classifiers 167, 174clefts 233, 281, 282co-variation 80, 198, 201

SUBJECT INDEX 451

code switching 47Coding Constraint 197–200, 202, 203cognate 82, 177, 179, 200Cognitive Linguistics 205Cognitive Principle of Relevance 374Cohort Model 267Common Movement Principle 216Communicative Principle of Relevance

374, 375, 380Comp 18, 47, 73, 156competence 35, 69, 100, 177, 199, 209,

240, 245, 256, 259, 260, 274, 280,284, 286, 343, 352, 378, 394

competence and performance 24competition 52, 136, 144, 147, 151,

152, 172, 174Competition Model 33, 38, 40, 45,

48–50, 59, 60, 62, 63, 68, 80, 99,151, 169, 173, 177, 186, 187, 205,304

componentiality 251compound 370compounding 22comprehended speech 9, 33comprehended input 13comprehended intake 14Comprehensible Input Hypothesis 9,

12–15comprehension 14, 15, 27, 116, 121,

150, 163, 193, 242, 289, 291–293,297, 306, 308, 311, 342–344, 350,391

comprehension checks 291concept learning 3, 9, 174conceptual categories 5, 17, 76, 79,

152, 199, 229, 244conceptual features 144Conceptual Semantics 6, 138, 139, 168,

392conceptual structures 17, 21, 35, 73, 76,

113, 120, 121, 123, 124, 126–128,139, 140, 142, 143, 147, 150, 164,165, 172, 174, 179, 202, 203, 249,

263, 265, 272, 278, 279, 283, 342,343, 366, 367, 372, 388, 386, 392

condition-action rules 141–145, 149,166, 172–174, 387, 388

Connected Surface Principle 216connectionism 38, 60, 91conscious awareness 9, 27, 57, 195,

254, 256, 349, 356, 387consciousness 112, 127, 196, 244, 250consonant 9. 10, 22, 24, 73, 80, 143,

147, 196, 303constraints on induction 192, 193, 195,

1998, 199, 204constraints on null subjects 341constraints on rule formation 144, 176constraints problem 51, 52, 120, 188,

249conversion 321, 322, 324–329, 333,

339, 340, 344, 346Cooperative Principle 34, 377, 378,

380, 390Correction Interpretation 373, 376, 382corrective intention 231, 232, 238, 348,

372, 373, 376–378, 380, 383, 385,386, 389, 390

correspondence processors 124, 125correspondence rules 76, 121–124, 126,

143, 154, 184, 190, 203, 286, 351critical period 63, 95cross-linguistic speech perception 33cue 18, 29, 33, 39, 45, 46, 62, 63, 66,

75–80, 82–84, 96, 98–112, 114,136, 143, 144, 146, 147, 152, 15,155, 157, 158, 160, 161, 163, 164,176, 177, 180–183, 185–187,191–193, 205, 216, 218, 234, 236,243, 264, 285, 296, 305, 306, 308,309, 312, 322, 323, 326, 347, 351,358, 359, 360, 364, 369, 370

cue-based learning 79, 80, 84, 146

Dd-structure 72, 114, 277

452 SUBJECT INDEX

declarative knowledge 26, 35deduction 150, 171, 176, 245deductive reasoning 149, 150deductive rule 149, 150default hierarchies 172, 203, 364deism 51, 56Det 136, 154, 223, 358, 360detectable cues 79detectable error 351–353Detectable Error Hypothesis 351–353determiner 152, 355, 356, 358, 360,

361, 370, 373, 378, 385, 386DetP 104, 154, 358developmental orders 46, 160, 161, 294developmental paths 46, 105, 342developmental problem 69, 75, 89, 104,

106, 111, 190, 236, 243, 244, 371,391

distributional analysis 78, 179, 183,184, 187, 191, 310

do-support 276, 277, 297double object construction 52, 179, 303,

319, 321, 339, 363–365

EECP 258, 286, 287Elsewhere Condition 145, 151, 174empirical problem of language

acquisition 207, 211, 213, 239empirical rules 142, 145, 166empty category 87, 258, 277, 287Empty Category Principle 258encapsulation 123, 255, 262, 265–267,

269, 274, 280epenthesis 81equivalence classes 108equivalence classification 82, 143, 144,

147, 360, 362error 23, 27, 32, 69, 89, 128, 169, 174,

175, 188, 192, 197, 203, 206,231–233, 254, 291, 296, 298–300,302, 303, 305, 314–319, 329, 342,

347–358, 361, 364, 366, 370, 371,375, 378, 382, 385, 386, 391, 392

EVENT 137, 139, 171, 229, 272, 325,326, 344, 345

event structures 54, 284EXPERIENCER 81, 236expletive subjects 47, 88explicit grammatical correction 230Extended Projection Principle 87

Ffaculty 24, 30, 31, 58, 65, 71, 84, 89,

106, 109, 115, 116, 120–123, 126,134, 184, 193, 207, 249–251, 253,254, 259–261, 268, 281, 283, 290,348, 356, 367

Featural Deficit Hypothesis 253features 28, 35, 41, 42, 63, 72–74, 76,

77, 81, 83–87, 99, 109–111, 114,117, 128, 129, 139, — 142, 144,146, 147, 149, 152–157, 161, 164,166, 171, 175–177, 184, 185, 189,196, 199, 201, 202, 204, 205, 209,220, 226, 230, 237, 238, 246, 247,252, 253, 254, 255, 265, 271,280–282, 316, 323, 324, 341, 350,356, 358, 360, 361, 364, 367, 369

feedback and correction 1, 2, 5, 6, 13,17, 31, 32, 34, 39, 40, 50, 61, 123,127–130, 138, 164, 193, 204, 222,230, 257, 289, 290, 295, 300, 303,305, 313, 316, 318, 321, 340, 341,347, 349, 350, 355, 362, 363,366–368, 371–377, 380, 381, 385,386, 389, 390–392, 394

Feedback Constraint 202feet 55, 73, 79, 181, 218, 365, 372Felicity Condition for the provision of

feedback and correction 381FIGURE 236finiteness 87, 97, 98, 104, 105,

160–162, 176, 177, 341

SUBJECT INDEX 453

First Principle of CorrectionInterpretation 373

focused attention 27, 348, 357, 390focused sampling 206foot 77, 318, 350, 365form extraction 179, 187form-focused instruction 294, 301, 309form-meaning 20, 23, 33, 293, 316,

343, 347, 373, 386formation rules 122fossilisation 169, 246Full Access Hypothesis 79, 81, 113Full Transfer 79, 81, 113functional architecture 11, 33, 48, 58,

64, 65, 89, 112, 126, 151, 192,197, 204, 215, 222, 249, 252, 283,343

functional category 47, 48, 73, 77, 104,113, 114, 160, 163, 176, 180, 183,187, 229, 276, 301

Fundamental Difference Hypothesis 51,54

fundamental frequency 78, 180–182,204, 205, 235, 237

GGarden Path condition 314, 316gender 66, 84, 111, 152–155, 179, 199,

311, 355–362, 367, 370gender feature 83, 152, 154, 358, 360,

361, 369general nativism 64, 214general theory of learning 39, 43, 50,

215, 393generalisation 91, 119, 145, 148, 149,

155, 164–167, 174, 290, 314, 316,317, 319, 320, 333, 337, 345

Generalised Phrase Structure Grammar71

Germanic foot 77gestalt principles 216, 217GOAL 159government 115, 254, 271

Government and Binding 254grammatical instruction 257, 289, 294,

299, 306, 313, 340, 342grammatical restructuring 5, 6, 14Greediness Constraint 113GROUND 236

Hhead 47, 63, 73, 85–86, 96, 102, 111,

115, 134, 160, 177, 205, 206, 246,297, 301, 359, 370

Head Constraint 84, 85head direction 86, 95, 96, 102, 104,

114–116, 155, 157–159Head Driven Phrase Structure Grammar

71Hypothesis of Cognitive Immaturity

221, 222Hypothesis of Cognitive Innocence 213,

221Hypothesis of Levels 121, 348Hypothesis of Linguistic Innocence 213,

214hypothesis-formation 71, 120, 191hypothesis-testing 71, 120

II-language 24, 25, 28, 32, 65, 92i-learning 130, 135, 136, 141, 142, 144,

152, 154, 164, 168, 169, 170–174,179, 184, 185, 191–195, 197–199,201, 204, 207, 208–211, 213, 214,218, 220, 226, 233–235, 239, 245,249, 250, 254, 257, 259, 261, 262,278, 285, 341, 342, 347, 351, 357,371

implication 145, 176, 274implicature 281, 282indirect feedback 232, 292, 328, 376,

390indirect negative evidence 116, 290,

291, 350indirect prompting 337, 389

454 SUBJECT INDEX

INDIVIDUAL 228–230, 237, 326induction 16, 31, 37, 39, 40, 48–51, 59,

61, 67, 75, 82, 94, 101, 106, 109,114, 116, 119, 120, 126, 127, 130,131, 132–136, 138, 141, 142, 144,145, 148, 150, 15l, 155, 164,166–171, 173, 174, 177–179, 185,187–193, 195–200, 202–205, 207,208, 212, 214, 215, 225–227, 230,235, 241, 244, 257, 261, 262, 284,285, 287, 289, 304, 305, 308, 316,324, 341–343, 347, 366, 371, 372,391–393

inductive reasoning 120, 131, 136, 174,179, 208

inference 20, 22, 23, 32, 113, 119, 133,136, 138, 139, 140, 142, 149, 150,165, 170, 175, 176, 185, 216, 217,219, 221, 222, 225, 227, 232, 238,239, 241, 260, 263, 265, 279, 281,287, 308, 350, 365, 366, 372, 375,378, 379, 382, 384, 388, 390

inferencing 6, 12, 14, 15, 17, 20, 21,23, 32, 116, 121, 130, 134, 137,138, 147, 149, 150, 171, 176, 197,214, 221, 222, 229, 232, 241, 244,245, 250, 251, 254, 260, 262, 265,271, 279, 281, 290, 337, 346, 357,366, 372, 376, 380, 382, 390, 391

inferential rules 139, 142, 144infinitive 98, 159, 234, 385INFL 19, 158, 176, 297, 301, 431Infl Phrase 19inflection 116, 161, 162, 325inflectional features 161-ing xi, 345initial state 2, 45, 53, 54, 71, 92, 93,

115, 131, 132, 179, 198, 199, 210,213, 245

innateness 67, 109, 111, 213, 215, 229,273

intake 8–14, 18, 31, 34, 65, 192, 224,292, 304, 343, 371

integration procedures 351interaction 15, 32, 51, 71, 93, 100, 108,

109, 121, 181, 186, 187, 199, 203,204, 206. 221, 222, 237, 238, 250,252, 266–268, 278, 289–292, 294,301, 307, 312, 325, 326, 331, 347,349, 354, 367, 371–373, 377,390–392

Interaction Hypothesis 15, 291, 292interface 96, 121, 134, 266, 365, 371Interface Hypothesis 371intonation 129, 180, 264, 265, 302, 349,

388, 410, 412, 435intonational phrases 57, 205intransitive 75, 85, 114, 233, 317introduction rules 150island effects 55

Jjuncture 129, 223

Kk-acquisition 255–262, 286k-learning 255–258, 260–262

LLAD 71, 92, 113, 208, 257–259, 261,

278, 286, 371language attrition 47Language Acquisition Device 71, 81,

208, 256language faculty 30, 58, 65, 71, 84, 89,

115, 116, 120, 121, 123, 126, 134,184, 207, 249, 253, 254, 260, 261,268, 281, 283, 348, 356, 367

Law of Large Numbers Heuristic 145,147

Leamed Linguistic Knowledge 256,262, 343

learner style 244learning strategy 77, 78

SUBJECT INDEX 455

learning theory 1, 38, 41, 64, 113, 145,184, 187, 206, 226, 316, 323, 340,354, 385

lengthening 78, 182, 205level of processing 8, 28level of representation 10Level-Ordering Hypothesis 34lexical category 73, 76, 78, 84, 178,

180, 182, 187, 323, 360, 363lexical constraints on syntactic

operations 344Lexical Functional Grammar 71lexical interference 47lexical representation 388lexicon 4, 48, 54, 72, 76, 82, 85, 86,

104, 123, 124, 126, 154, 177, 185,193, 194, 201, 236, 244, 251, 255,257, 267, 268, 270, 271, 279, 283,284, 293, 344, 345, 360, 361, 363,369, 372, 386

LF 72, 268, 278, 280licensing conditions 72, 85linear order 55, 64, 72, 102, 128, 304,

312, 347, 386linguistic competence x, 1, 24, 38, 42,

43, 45, 60, 64, 88, 100, 209, 245,256, 259, 260, 274, 284, 343

locality 258, 355logical form 72, 250, 262, 266, 280Logical Implication Constraint 145logical problem of language acquisition

51, 207, 210, 213, 214, 225, 227,233, 236, 238, 240, 241, 243, 245

logical subject 19longterm memory 12, 68, 91, 124, 125,

139, 141, 166, 174, 180, 193, 197,244, 249, 251, 255, 283, 293, 314,360, 390

MMANNER OF MOTION 77, 343MANNER OF ACTION 343markedness 61, 300, 369

maturation 33, 67, 93, 94, 119, 242,246

meanings 2–4, 6, 21, 50, 124, 137, 138,178, 219, 228, 229, 235, 241, 247,283, 293, 355, 383, 392

memory 4, 12, 25, 26, 29, 30, 35, 38,48, 60, 64, 68, 91, 106, 124, 125,127, 138, 139, 141, 142, 150,166–168, 170, 174, 180, 193, 194,195, 197, 198, 222, 244, 249–251,255, 265, 283, 286, 293, 314, 348,358, 360, 363, 368, 386, 390

mental models 17, 136–138, 143, 170,172, 174, 175, 192, 194, 203, 204,208, 217, 219, 221, 244, 278, 280,356, 372, 381

metalinguistic feedback 202, 222, 232,329, 331–336, 338, 339, 364, 375,384

metalinguistic information 3, 13, 24metaprocesses 174, 179, 184, 191, 393,

394microvariation 46mind/body problem 136, 196Minimalism 59, 61, 71, 72Minimalist 34, 44, 114, 275minimodules 268Misattributed Markers Hypothesis 285MMs 136–139, 141, 146, 147, 149, 150,

164, 169, 192, 194, 204modals 75, 98, 111, 147, 157, 275–277,

297, 385, 387modularity 12, 15, 27, 35, 50, 120, 121,

123, 127, 130, 175, 214, 215, 222,223, 249–252, 258, 260–263, 265,266, 268–273, 284–286, 341, 347

Modularity of Mind 250, 251, 262, 269Modularity of Mind Hypothesis 13, 15,

250, 251, 262module 393modules 72, 121, 123, 127, 217,

250–252, 254, 255, 257, 261–263,

456 SUBJECT INDEX

265, 266, 268, 269, 271–274,283–286, 386, 393

monitoring 64, 202, 265, 307morae 73morpheme 49, 91, 116, 253, 325Morphological Richness 46Morphological Uniformity 46morphology 3, 53, 105, 162, 163, 177,

242, 247, 268, 270, 306, 309, 311,312, 322, 323, 325, 344, 356, 357

morphosyntactic categories 47, 75, 79,84, 111, 182, 209, 229, 255, 287,360

morphosyntactic feature 9, 17, 73, 76,81, 142, 144, 153, 254, 271, 280,323, 341, 369

MOTION 76, 77motor-articulatory schemas 27, 35motor-articulatory processes 350

NN 19, 43, 73, 76, 81, 136, 143, 154,

166, 175, 201, 255, 322–324, 328,330, 331, 334, 360, 370, 383, 384

naive reflexification 248Native Language Magnet 82negation 60, 97–99, 102, 138, 156, 157,

159–161, 166, 228, 275, 276, 278,284, 384

negative evidence 17–21, 23, 32, 49,50, 61, 69, 116, 127, 128, 158,212, 241, 256, 257, 289–291, 295,299, 300, 303, 310, 316, 320, 340,348, 350, 357, 359, 360, 366, 367,371, 373, 388, 390

negative feedback 17, 22, 23, 31, 32,317, 328, 329, 373

negotiation 291–294, 342neural nets 12, 49No Crossing Lines 190No Crossing Lines Constraint 49, 62No Negative Evidence 50, 256No Negative Evidence Hypothesis 256

non-native pronunciation 22nonce form 90, 91not-movement 274noun 63, 66, 72, 73, 76, 77, 80, 81, 83,

85, 91, 113, 135, 140,152–154,172, 180, 184, 206, 209,219, 221, 223, 224, 228–231, 233,237, 246, 253, 254, 285, 308, 311,313, 316–318, 322–328, 339, 344,345, 355, 356, 358, 361–363, 367,369, 370, 376, 379

NP 9, 18, 19, 63, 73, 74, 76, 102, 154,165, 167, 172, 224, 282, 297, 300,307, 309, 315, 318, 320, 342, 369

nuclei 80, 350null subject 46, 70, 87, 88, 95, 100,

161, 163, 164, 296, 341number 17, 30, 73, 216, 220, 311

Oobservational 93, 94, 119on-line language processing 13opacity 158operating principles 56, 58, 142, 176,

181, 224, 247operator 140, 164, 165, 167operators 131, 133, 135, 173, 262Optimal Relevance 374, 375Optimality Theory 44, 59, 61, 71, 72,

80, 151, 374Optionality 61, 296output autonomy 265, 266outputs 202, 250, 255, 273, 278, 286overgeneralisation 131, 145, 310

PP&P 40, 41, 43, 48, 51, 59, 62, 63,

69–72, 74, 75, 80, 85–88, 92, 93,95, 96, 99–101, 105, 107, 111–113,115, 116, 120, 155, 156, 159, 177,185, 186, 190, 199, 257, 259, 268,269, 273, 275, 276, 278, 285

paradigm learning 47

SUBJECT INDEX 457

paradigms 43, 316, 355paratactic organisation 60, 66parse fail 68parsers 10, 14, 16–20, 26, 31, 39, 61,

63, 68, 76, 82, 92, 136, 141, 144,152, 169, 177, 190–194, 199, 203,208, 255, 266, 268, 273, 285, 290,305, 351, 360, 363, 371, 386

parsing 4, 9, 16, 18–21, 24–27, 32–35,39, 41, 45, 54, 55, 63, 65, 67, 68,69, 76, 79, 82, 83, 91, 99, 106,120, 129, 135, 136, 143, 152, 153,169, 170, 177, 183, 190, 192–196,201, 203, 205, 206, 208–210, 241,243, 267–269, 271–273, 278, 280,282, 283, 285, 292, 293, 304–306,308, 312, 343, 349–353, 358, 360,361, 371, 372, 389, 391

parsing procedure 20, 25, 32–34, 39,54, 68, 79, 99, 135, 136, 190, 192,193, 205, 208, 241, 243, 272, 350,351, 371, 389

particle 73, 75, 77, 97–99, 234passive construction 3PATIENT 62, 237, 342pendulum effect 101performance constraints 106peripheral 10, 61, 80, 113, 121, 123,

125, 185peripheral auditory system 10periphery 40, 275PF 72, 280phoneme 49, 114, 176phoneme restoration effects 13phonemic mode 28phone 39, 111, 114, 174, 200, 201phonetic category 82, 108, 143, 199,

341, 352, 353, 368phonetic feature 27, 28, 35, 73, 74, 111,

117, 144, 147, 199, 350phonetic form 72, 166, 387phonological form 165, 167, 270, 280,

358, 359, 370

phonological words 74, 200, 270phrase structure 63, 71, 85, 86, 101,

158, 263phrases 55, 57, 60, 63, 73, 84–86, 113,

144, 152, 161, 205, 229, 231, 233,275, 293, 324, 326, 342, 343, 363,373, 388

pitch 204, 279, 364plural 22, 34, 90–92, 159, 253, 254,

285, 311, 325, 342positive evidence 17–21, 23, 31, 67,

145, 295, 303, 310, 340, 342, 367positive feedback 22, 23, 32postlexical 269, 325Poverty of the Stimulus Hypothesis 207,

212, 222, 250pre-compiled 26, 171precedence 12, 258predicate 19, 114, 139, 152, 171, 200,

209, 235, 237, 246, 276, 284, 316,345

predicate adverbs 286predication 39, 60, 269, 270, 284, 315,

392preference 147, 160, 163, 172, 178,

184, 185, 205, 219, 234, 297–299,341, 343, 364

primary linguistic data 17, 392principle-based parsing 4, 69principles and parameters 37, 40, 52,

63, 71, 92–94, 107, 163, 242, 248,263, 277, 278, 284, 393

Principles and Parameters Theory 4, 37,40, 71, 163, 263, 393

privative feature 153Pro-Drop Parameter 46, 70problem-solving 3, 12, 55, 58, 59, 64,

68, 116, 120, 131–135, 137, 138,164, 174, 195, 196, 209, 245, 251,254, 263, 270, 271, 286

procedural knowledge 25, 35, 64PROCESS 230, 324Processability Theory 4, 64

458 SUBJECT INDEX

processing procedures 76, 147processors 10–13, 32, 39, 73, 123–125,

131, 142, 147, 190, 197, 202, 203,250–252, 261, 263, 270, 272, 273,283, 285, 348

production 25, 27, 53, 54, 57, 60,63–65, 67, 69, 73, 76, 81–83, 91,106, 111, 113, 114, 120, 126, 127,136, 152, 157, 160, 162, 163, 169,172, 176, 178, 180, 187, 191, 193,194, 196, 209, 242, 243, 258, 272,290–293, 295, 297, 305–311, 313,316, 349, 351–353, 356, 358,360–362, 366, 368, 370, 385–389,394

production systems 25, 27, 32, 209prominence patterns 60, 77pronoun 47, 64, 84, 87, 102–104, 205,

235, 237, 304–308, 373pronunciation 21–23, 35, 91, 223, 355,

357, 385property 59, 61, 64–67, 110, 120, 127,

132, 144–149, 166, 170, 177, 190,197, 202, 205, 206, 219, 220, 224,225, 231, 255, 279, 290, 363, 364

proposition 19, 20, 150, 164, 165, 176,279, 286, 379, 383, 384

propositions 139, 141, 150, 164, 165,171, 209, 257, 345

prosodic 39, 57, 62, 73, 81, 84, 123,126, 128, 129, 143, 171, 179–184,187, 196, 205, 237, 279, 280, 284,287, 343, 349–351, 357, 372, 394

prosodic bootstrapping 77–79, 179Prosodic Bootstrapping Hypothesis 75,

78, 181prosodic category 78, 79, 84, 171, 351Prosodic Utterance 60prototype 80, 82, 137, 144, 201, 311,

323psychogrammar 24, 32, 35, 41, 47, 58,

65, 70, 89, 90, 92, 106, 108, 112,113, 190, 201, 210, 211, 213–215,

222, 225, 226, 236–239, 243, 244,274, 278, 284, 292, 340, 347, 360,366, 367, 388, 389

psychological reality 49, 89, 90

Qq-morphism 168quantifier 102, 139, 150, 155, 159, 228,

262question 71, 138, 158, 159, 177, 178,

188, 189, 224–225, 231, 237, 238,246, 291, 298, 301, 302, 306, 316,377, 378, 381, 385

Rraising 41, 70, 97–99, 104, 158, 159,

161, 163, 177, 201, 277, 295, 297,341

re-representation 39, 350recast 23, 24, 110, 138, 165, 231, 291,

389recategorisation 110recognition 82, 107, 111, 139, 164, 179,

220, 242, 266, 270, 362, 372recognition templates 171redundancy 91, 92, 113referential categories 73, 84, 87, 113,

209, 229reflexives 3, 262, 341Regulation Schema 176relative-motion cues 216Relevance Principle 232, 374, 392Relevance Theory 6, 372, 378, 383Representational Autonomy 120, 169,

184, 371representational features 84Representational Modularity 27, 50,

120, 121, 123, 261, 347representational problem of language

acquisition 65, 69, 238, 391representational realism 89–93, 101,

115, 245, 252representational redescription 26, 27, 68

SUBJECT INDEX 459

restructuring 5, 6, 14, 20, 31, 38, 39,48, 50, 64, 68–70, 83, 99, 112,148, 156–158, 160, 168, 177, 191,193, 202, 229, 260, 273, 289,292–294, 299, 300, 304, 306, 307,328, 340, 347, 350, 352, 353, 356,366, 372, 373, 383, 385, 389, 390,394

rhymes 349rhythm 62, 279rightward movement rules 56robustness problem 226rogue grammars 55, 120, 133, 174, 187,

189, 195root 56, 97, 247, 322, 325, 326, 339rule learning 71, 75, 91, 164, 278

Ss-selection 129s-structure 72, 278, 357s-structures 123, 124, 126, 129, 349,

357, 372, 388saliency 146, 151, 174, 370sampling problern 225, 233, 235, 241scope 72, 73, 97, 99, 102, 262, 272,

276, 286, 343short-term 127, 368signal 2, 4, 9, 10, 12, 16, 18, 20, 39,

46, 56, 59, 66, 82, 96, 120, 160,193, 224, 267, 279, 283, 292, 316,360, 384, 393

Similarity Principle 216Simplified Input Hypothesis 233–237Single Value Constraint 113sisterhood 12, 190, 269skill 1, 24, 26–28, 30, 32, 178, 196,

251, 253, 286sociolinguistic 41, 184, 240, 342, 375speaker-oriented adverbs 286Spec-Head agreement 73Specialisation Constraint 144, 145Specific Language Impairment 253,

254, 271, 285

specifier 19, 73, 85, 86, 102, 104, 115,177, 313, 358, , 361, 362, 369, 370

speech perception 2speech processing 1speech production 1, 2, 28, 32, 60, 65,

73, 76, 83, 91, 114, 120, 176, 187,191, 258, 272, 292, 313, 351–353,368, 389

speech stream 77, 79, 112, 179,186–188, 205, 207–209, 223, 228,230, 237, 247, 254, 255, 264, 343,363

STATE 139, 140, 230stem 276, 317, 318, 322–327, 344, 345stems 97, 303, 322stress 3, 62, 68, 77, 81, 120, 129, 143,

181, 182, 187, 204, 205, 264, 270,279, 280, 318, 325, 326, 349, 350,364, 365

structural constraints 3, 188, 191, 220,270

subcategorisation 129, 236, 316, 318,339, 370

subjacency 55, 60, 61, 92, 229, 235,238

subject 9, 19, 20, 26, 46, 58, 87, 88, 98,100, 156, 158, 159–163, 166, 177,224, 237, 258, 282, 286, 296–298,300, 304, 307, 308, 320, 345

subject-oriented adverbs 286SUBJECT NOUN PHRASE 152subject-verb agreement 87Subset Condition 61, 295, 297, 298Subset Principle 45, 61, 113, 247, 295,

297Success Measure 239, 243successful acquisition 52, 53successful learning 207, 239surface structure 27, 56, 325, 342, 343syllable 2, 3, 9, 10, 24, 39, 54, 55, 62,

68, 73, 74, 77, 78, 81, 82, 114,128, 143, 171, 172, 174, 180–182,188, 196, 200, 205, 231, 235, 264,

460 SUBJECT INDEX

270, 303, 318, 326, 349, 350, 364,365, 372, 385

syntactic bootstrapping 75, 77syntactic frame 76, 77, 167, 248syntactic operations 224, 344synthetic implication 176system operating principles 142

Ttaxonomic categories 219Taxonomic Constraint 175, 219, 221taxonomic relations 219teacher talk 23tempo 279tense 19, 47, 72, 73, 87, 98, 105, 113,

155, 156, 160–162, 176, 177, 225,235, 253, 254, 276, 292, 301, 306,307, 309, 312, 323, 326, 341, 359,385, 387, 388

tensed verb 18, 20, 25, 54, 97, 98, 158,258, 276, 387, 388

theism 51, 56thematic relations 218, 219THEMEs 342THING 73, 76, 139, 140, 147, 171,

175, 216, 272, 325, 326Third Principle of Correction

Interpretation 376tiers 62tone 78, 180, 204, 237, 260, 279, 349top-down processors 124topic shifts 291TPs 237transducers 8, 10, 73, 81transfer 7, 29, 30, 43, 47, 54, 55, 79,

81–84, 88, 100, 113, 137, 155, 165,173, 184, 189, 194, 200, 202, 205,206, 227, 241, 257, 297, 304, 309,315, 340, 342, 360, 371

transformational 101, 245, 280transition theories 33, 64, 65, 69, 70,

89, 100, 101, 110, 132, 388

transitive 73, 75, 85, 114, 233, 317translation processor 123translation-equivalent 241, 382transparency of agreement 158trigger 10, 45, 46, 62, 70, 89, 96–101,

105, 111, 112, 116, 130, 131, 157,170, 192, 206, 246, 257, 273, 352

Triggering Learning Algorithm 113, 205trisyllabic laxing 325, 326typicality conditions on categories 147,

172

UUG 1, 7, 40–43, 45, 50–55, 57–59, 61,

63, 67, 68, 70–74, 79–81, 85, 89,92, 93, 98, 99, 101, 105–108, 110,111, 113, 115–117, 119, 120, 122,134, 155, 157, 163, 170, 178, 184,188, 189, 191, 198, 199, 205–210,213–215, 222, 228, 229, 233,236–240, 244, 245, 247, 249,257–260, 269, 272, 277, 286, 297,323, 324, 342–344, 393

ultimate attainment issue 52, 110, 117unanalysed knowledge 26, 35underspecification 114, 369Uniform Parsers Hypothesis 190, 192,

194, 371uniformity problem 225Unitary Base Hypothesis 323Universal Grammar 1, 3, 7, 40, 45, 50,

56, 67, 71, 73, 74, 84, 108, 183,207, 213, 221, 236, 257, 259, 391,393

universal principles 44, 71, 159, 275universals 7, 39, 45, 50, 51, 59–61,

71–74, 84, 88, 106, 178, 195, 208,226, 274, 279, 323, 371, 391

unmarked rules 42Unusualness Constraint 144, 146, 226

SUBJECT INDEX 461

VV 19, 25, 74, 76, 81, 154, 161, 166,

172, 210, 234, 265, 277, 286, 299,303, 307, 322, 324, 328, 343, 360

variability 28, 42, 46, 61, 147–149, 163,172, 178, 226, 235, 316, 391

variation 40–43, 46, 61, 64, 65, 72, 79,80, 86, 88, 96, 101, 105, 110, 115,149, 178, 198, 201, 205, 210, 240,278, 329, 353, 360

verb 18–20, 25, 26, 35, 41, 54, 57, 58,62, 70, 72, 73, 77, 80, 85, 87, 97,98, 99, 104, 105, 114, 115, 143,147, 156–162, 165–167, 174,176–178, 180, 223, 224, 228–230,233, 234, 253, 254, 275, 276–278,282, 284, 294–299, 303, 304,306–309, 313, 317, 318, 322–327,339, 341, 342, 344, 363–366, 379,382, 385, 387, 388

verb inversion 159verb object order 58verb raising 70, 98, 99, 158, 161Voice Onset Time 196

VOT 82VP 63, 76, 156, 158, 160, 161, 166,

275–277, 282, 297, 299, 343Vulnerable Markers Hypothesis 285

Wwave 4Whole Object Constraint 175, 219, 221word boundaries 32word class 76, 130, 143word formation 284, 325word order 19, 20, 21, 58word recognition 13, 28, 147, 181, 201,

202, 267, 268, 283, 349

XX-bar 34, 63, 85

YY-model 280[+Focus] feature 280

ZZISA 162

In the series LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND LANGUAGE DISORDERS (LALD) thefollowing titles have been published thus far or are scheduled for publication:

1. WHITE, Lydia: Universal Grammar and Second Language Acquisition. 1989.2. HUEBNER, Thom and Charles A. FERGUSON (eds): Cross Currents in Second

Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theory. 1991.3. EUBANK, Lynn (ed.): Point Counterpoint. Universal Grammar in the second lan-

guage. 1991.4. ECKMAN, Fred R. (ed.): Confluence. Linguistics, L2 acquisition and speech pathol-

ogy. 1993.5. GASS, Susan and Larry SELINKER (eds): Language Transfer in Language Learning.

Revised edition. 1992.6. THOMAS, Margaret: Knowledge of Reflexives in a Second Language. 1993.7. MEISEL, Jürgen M. (ed.): Bilingual First Language Acquisition. French and German

grammatical development. 1994.8. HOEKSTRA, Teun and Bonnie SCHWARTZ (eds): Language Acquisition Studies in

Generative Grammar. 1994.9. ADONE, Dany: The Acquisition of Mauritian Creole. 1994.10. LAKSHMANAN, Usha: Universal Grammar in Child Second Language Acquisition.

Null subjects and morphological uniformity. 1994.11. YIP, Virginia: Interlanguage and Learnability. From Chinese to English. 1995.12. JUFFS, Alan: Learnability and the Lexicon. Theories and second language acquisition

research. 1996.13. ALLEN, Shanley: Aspects of Argument Structure Acquisition in Inuktitut. 1996.14. CLAHSEN, Harald (ed.): Generative Perspectives on Language Acquisition. Empirical

findings, theoretical considerations and crosslinguistic comparisons. 1996.15. BRINKMANN, Ursula: The Locative Alternation in German. Its structure and acquisi-

tion. 1997.16. HANNAHS, S.J. and Martha YOUNG-SCHOLTEN (eds): Focus on Phonological

Acquisition. 1997.17. ARCHIBALD, John: Second Language Phonology. 1998.18. KLEIN, Elaine C. and Gita MARTOHARDJONO (eds): The Development of Second

Language Grammars. A generative approach. 1999.19. BECK, Maria-Luise (ed.): Morphology and its Interfaces in Second Language Knowl-

edge. 1998.20. KANNO, Kazue (ed.): The Acquisition of Japanese as a Second Language. 1999.21. HERSCHENSOHN, Julia: The Second Time Around – Minimalism and L2 Acquisition.

2000.22. SCHAEFFER, Jeanette C.: The Acquisition of Direct Object Scrambling and Clitic

Placement. Syntax and pragmatics. 2000.23. WEISSENBORN, Jürgen and Barbara HÖHLE (eds.): Approaches to Bootstrapping.

Phonological, lexical, syntactic and neurophysiological aspects of early languageacquisition. Volume 1. 2001.

24. WEISSENBORN, Jürgen and Barbara HÖHLE (eds.): Approaches to Bootstrapping.Phonological, lexical, syntactic and neurophysiological aspects of early languageacquisition. Volume 2. 2001.

25. CARROLL, Susanne E.: Input and Evidence. The raw material of second languageacquisition. 2001.

26. SLABAKOVA, Roumyana: Telicity in the Second Language. 2001.

susanne carroll - input and evidence (the raw material of second language acquisition)

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