William E. Rutherford

The Child Language Data Exchange System in research on second language acquisition

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Grammatical theory and L2 acquisition: a brief overview

This paper reviews studies reported in the literature over the last few years having to do with grammatical acquisition and particular theoretical approaches aimed at explaining this aspect of second language research. Various attempts to involve the parameter-setting model of Universal Grammar are contrasted with other approaches invoking the Greenbergian tradition of research on universals. The issues discussed include, amongst other things, the need to explain fossilization and the nature of the relationship between second and first language acquisition.

Book reviews: Pankhurst, J., Sharwood Smith, M., and Van Buren, P. (editors) 1988: Learnability and second languages: a book of readings. Dordrecht: Foris Publications

Until relatively recently, psycholinguistic approaches to second language acquisition (SLA) theory have had largely to do with the description and documentation of emerging L2 grammatical competence. It is only within the past couple of years that SLA researchers have shifted attention to the equally important matter of how such L2 grammars more properly, interlanguage (IL) grammars are learned (cf. White, 1989a, b; Clahsen, 1990; Rutherford, 1989; Finer and Broselow, 1986; Van Buren, 1988; Yip 1990). Understandably, it may not at first appear to everyone, however, that studying the development of L2 grammars and studying the learning of L2 grammars can be quite different endeavors. The documentation of an emerging grammar, even within the framework of a formal theory of grammar, is essentially a claim of descriptive adequacy, whereas to render an account of language learning such that what can be learned is shown to fall within the class of natural languages is essentially a claim of explanatory adequacy. A rather precise statement of what the learnability question entails can be seen in the following quote from