the influence of linguistic theories on language acquisition research: description and explanation

The Influence of Linguistic Theories on Language Acquisition Research: Description and Explanation. *

Patsy M. Lightbown Concordia University

Lydia White McGill University

There have been many changes in the way in which twentieth-century researchers have perceived the relationship between theories of language and theories of language acquisition. In this review, we examine some of these changes in light of differences in expectations for the role of linguistic theories in describing what language learners acquire and explaining how they acquire it. We conclude that a theory of grammar will be a necessary component in our explanation of the L1 acquisition of formal properties of grammar, such as syntax, morphology and phonology, and may also be required to explain these aspects of L2 acquisition. Linguis- tic theories will play no role in other aspects of acquisition, equally important to our understanding of the overall acquisition process, and these must be accounted for in other ways.

The influence of linguistic theories on research on first (Ll) and second (L2) language acquisition has been felt both on theories of language acquisition and on research methodology, particularly on methods of data-gathering and analysis. The relationship between linguistics and acquisition research has at times been very close and at other times practically nonexistent. This can be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that different linguistic theories may have very different aims, and these aims do not necessarily coincide with the aims and interests of acquisition researchers. In some cases, also, there has been misunderstanding of the potential role of a linguistic theory within a theory of language acquisition. We feel that linguistic theory has an essential but not exclu- sive role to play and that we may come to a better understanding of the

*We thank Vivian Cook, Sue Foster, Kevin Ciregg, Eric Kellerman, BiU Rutherford, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions, and acknowledge our debt to the important review articles by Bloom (1975) and Rutherford (1984).

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nature of this role by tracing the history of previous attempts to use linguistic theories to account for certain aspects of acquisition.

Most linguistic theories have as a major aim the description and classi- fication of languages and, for many theories, such description is considered to be an end in itself. However, some theories make two further assumptions which are particularly relevant in the context of acquisition research. The first of these is that linguistic rules are internalized, in the form of a mental grammar, so that when linguists propose a rule this represents a claim about the unconscious linguistic knowledge of native speakers (technically referred to as competence). The second assumption is that a linguistic theory must also provide an explanation of how it is possible for children to acquire language. Together, these assumptions address the question of what people unconsciously know and how they come to know it. The two assumptions are logically distinct, and, as we shall see, acquisition researchers often treat the two separately.

Transformational generative grammar' is the most recent and best- known linguistic theory to include both assumptions as essential aspects of the theory (Chomsky 1965, 1981a,b). According to Chomsky, linguistic theory and language acquisition are necessarily linked. Chomsky argues that adults possess a very complex linguistic system which goes far beyond the input presented to children in the course of acquisition. Hence, he proposes that universal principles (or Universal Grammar) are innately present, giving the child a priori knowledge of much of this complexity.

In acquisition research, one also finds the two aims of description and explanation. A great deal of research has concentrated on the former: people have tried to describe the properties of the language of L1 and L2 learners, often adopting the descriptive mechanisms devised by linguists. As a result, much useful knowledge has been gained of what learners do in the course of language development. As far as explanation is concerned, theories of acquisition have to cover a much wider range of phenomena than linguistic theories, in that all sorts of non-linguistic variables, such as psychological, cognitive, and social factors, are also involved. Such phenomena are well beyond the scope of linguistic theories. Indeed, ultimately, a successful overall theory of language acquisition may have to be modular, incorporating sub-theories in various domains, of which one will be a theory of grammar.

The divergence between linguistic theories and acquisition research is often traceable to misunderstandings about the potential relationship

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between the two. There have been cases where the contribution of linguistics has been overestimated, leading to disappointment and rejection when acquisition data did not support hypotheses drawn from linguistic theories. Such rejection has sometimes gone too far: while it is surely the case that there are areas in which linguistic theories cannot give insights into acquisition, there are nevertheless other areas in which the relationship is crucial. At the level of description, linguistic theories help us to better understand what it is that language learners, L1 and L2, acquire. At the level of explanation, a linguistic theory would appear to be essential for explaining the acquisition of formal properties of grammar, at least in L1 acquisition. Whether it plays such a role in L2 acquisition as well is currently the subject of considerable investigation.

We will review the role of linguistic theories in acquisition research from early in the 20th century to the present day. We will first examine their role in L1 acquisition research and then their influence on research in L2 acquisition, tracing parallels between the two. Our main emphasis will be on the acquisition of syntax and on the contribution of transformational generative grammar (Chomsky 1965, 1981a,b). In trying to characterize the research of various periods we will necessarily have to generalize, and our aim will be to provide an overview, rather than a critical commentary.

FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Research in child language carried out during the period between 1900 and 1940 generally reflects structuralist approaches to language. Struc- turalists emphasized the need to consider every language in its own right, distinct and different from other languages, to analyze and describe language structure by meticulous data-gathering and data-analysis. The theory was empiricist, assuming that what was most important in the study of language was an accurate record of linguistic data, and that one should proceed from the data to generalizations about the data. Theory, in other words, would be data-driven. Analysis was concentrated on the phonological and morphological aspects of language, and complex syntax was largely ignored.

As far as acquisition research was concerned, linguists were involved in a kind of field work, carefully observing and documenting the development of language in their own children (Grkgoire 1937; Leopold 1939-1949; Ronjat 1913). Particular attention was paid to phonological


and vocabulary development, reflecting the interests of structuralism, and syntax was, on the whole, neglected. Data consisted of children’s speech recorded in handwritten diaries, and it is hardly surprising that most of these studies ended when the child began to produce sentences more than two or three words long.

Although structuralism did not directly influence theories of acquisition, it was closely associated with the psychological learning theory known as behaviorism, which did have considerable influence. Language acquisition, according to behaviorism, was largely a matter of building up a verbal habit system, on the basis of trial and error, by means of imitation and reinforcement. It was not considered to involve any special difficulty beyond that associated with other types of skill learning. The language habits to be learned were described in terms of structuralist analyses.

Between 1940 and 1360, most research in child language was carried out by psychologists and educators whose principal concern was the establishment of age-appropriate norms for language development. As in the previous decades, the emphasis was on taxonomies. The difference was that the research of the preceding period had focused on language in individual children whereas that of the 1940s and 1950s focused on groups. Huge cross-sectional studies were carried out in order to deter- mine the developmental milestones of language development, often link- ing the rapidity of language development (especially vocabulary) with intellectual development (see McCarthy 1954 for review).

Linguistic theory emerged as an important influence on language acquisition research in the 1960s. Interestingly, it was psychologists who carried out much of the research in this period, but their research was partly driven by the exciting new linguistic theory of the moment, Chomsky’s transformational grammar (Chomsky 1957, 1965). Chomsky’s theory differed from previous ones in its emphases; it introduced the idea that language should be seen as the output of a productive system of rules, a grammar internalized by native speakers, which would allow for creative and novel utterances.

In addition, Chomsky argued convincingly that behaviorist theories of learning were not adequate to explain how children come to a knowledge of the complex syntax of their native language. Chomsky’s point was that it is the child’s ultimate achievement, the attainment of the adult grammar, that requires explanation. He claimed that the data that the child is exposed to are “degenerate,” in that they provide not only a poor model

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for language learning (in the sense that much of the language actually produced in the environment would be incomplete due to inattention, interruptions, etc.) but also an insufficient model (in the sense that the children eventually can produce and comprehend sentences they have never heard, and they know, without being told, that certain sentence types are ungrammatical). We shall see that some acquisition theorists have denied that there is a problem of degenerate data, thinking that because the first claim (the poor model) may not be true, the second one (the insufficient model) can be ignored.

As an example of attained knowledge which goes beyond the input, consider the sentences below:

1. a. John saw something b.

2. a. b.

3. a. b.

4. a.

What did John see -?

Mary believes that John saw a ghost What does Mary believe that John saw -?

Jane said that Mary believes that John saw a ghost What did Jane say that Mary believes that John saw -?

John likes the people in this office b. *Which office does John like the people in -?

5 . a. Your interest in baseball surprised me b. *What did your interest in - surprise me?

6. a. b. *What did Mary believe the rumor that John had won -?

7. a. b. *What did John wonder whether Mary had seen -?

Mary believed the rumor that John had won the race

John wondered whether Mary had seen a ghost

Although wh-movement is fairly free in English, it cannot take place in sentences like (4b), (5b), (6b) or (7b). The explanatory problem concerns the issue of how the child could discover these restrictions. If, on the basis of examples like (Ib), the child works out a rule of wh-movement, how is he or she to discover that this rule can apply in much longer and more complex cases, like (2b) and (3b), and yet cannot apply in others? Children are not known to make mistakes like (4b), (5b), (6b), or (7b), so that one cannot assume that they learn through correction that these are impossible. Nor is the nonoccurrence of such forms sufficient to rule


them out, since (3b) is just as unlikely to have been heard and yet is grammatical. The problem does not relate to the length of the sentences either: the problematic ones are often shorter than the non-problematic ones.*

Chomsky argued that the acquisition of grammar must be seen as a problem to be explained, in the sense that children achieve an extraordi- nary feat with apparently little effort or explicit assistance. His solution to the problem was to propose an innate linguistic component, the Lan- guage Acquisition Device (LAD), consisting of universal principles, which do not have to be learned. The LAD was seen as a sort of template limiting the number of wild guesses children might make in trying to make sense of the input language they are exposed to, a template which gives them advance knowledge of certain properties of language. In the case of the wh-movement examples above, a number of universal constraints on wh-movement were proposed (Ross 1967), which would be part of the innate linguistic component, and hence would not have to be learned.3

Despite the fact that Chomsky had raised the issue of explanation, most research within transformational grammar at this period concentrated on working out many different transformational rules for individual languages (especially English). Explanation took a secondary role, in that there were relatively few concrete proposals for universal principles. Early transformational rules were powerful, unconstrained, and compli- cated, adding to the problem of language acquisition rather than solving it. Factors like these contributed to the eventual rejection of transformational grammar by many acquisition researchers.

Much of the research carried out by psychologists during the 1960s, while inspired by Chomsky’s theory that language acquisition had to be based largely on innate internal structures, was carried out using the familiar methodology of the descriptive linguist doing field work. The research methodology differed from that of the linguists’ recordings of their children’s speech in the 1920s and 1930s in that an important tech- nological advance (portable tape recorders) permitted three improve- ments: (1) the possibility of checking the accuracy of one’s record by going over the recorded tapes again and again, (2) the potential for following children when their language became too complex for hand recording, and (3) the opportunity to obtain reasonably large samples of speech from several children. Nevertheless, as in field linguistics, the essential data were actual utterances of the speakers of the language


under investigation. Furthermore, the analyses continued to be largely distributional, that is, oriented towards inferring word classes and privi- leges of occurence of words in those classes, and the emphasis was on very early stages of syntax.

The child’s utterances were grouped into categories of similarity whose basis was formal: the analyses sought to separate form from meaning in order to arrive at some sort of descriptive generalization which might characterize the child’s underlying knowledge of the language. What was borrowed from Chomsky’s theory was the idea of describing these data in terms of generative rules, rules which the child could be assumed to have internalized and which would change during the course of acquisition. Using such methods, three groups of researchers (Braine 1963; Brown and Fraser 1964; Miller and Ervin 1964) carried out studies of the language development of children who had reached the stage at which they were just beginning to combine words to form rudimentary sentences. The three research teams arrived independently at the conclusion that even the child’s early two-word sentences were formed on the basis of some underlying rules: children were consistent with regard to the types of sentences they produced; different children behaved similarly; and they produced sentences which were clearly creative, that is, sentences which they could not have heard in the environment. The research was felt to support Chomsky’s view of innate structures underlying language acquisition. The findings were important confirmation of the hypothesis that children do much more than imitate what they hear, and that they do not gradually approximate the adult model through a process of trial and error and rewards for success, as behaviorism had suggested.

A major effect of Chomsky’s claims on the field of developmental psycholinguistics was to introduce a more sophisticated level of description of child language. This description now incorporated the notion of the child as a rule-user. Hence, it was able to explain the creative and novel use of language by children, as well as the kinds of errors that children make, such as overgeneralizations like fustly, hardly, for fast and hard, which indicate that the child has internalized a rule of adverb- formation but has not yet learned the exceptions to the rule. Although researchers started to look at acquisition data and ask what rules they could impute to the child to account for them (e.g. Bellugi 1967 on the acquisition of negation), the overall question of how the child might acquire these rules was largely neglected.


Although Chomsky was sceptical about the relevance of descriptions of child speech, this did not immediately discourage child language researchers from seeking to test hypotheses drawn from his theory. Accounting for the course of language development over time is of crucial concern for most theories of acquisition. In a number of cases, it seemed that transformational grammar might be able to explain areas of acquisition difficulty, and hence contribute to an understanding or even prediction of sequences of acquisition, in other words, to explain the development as well as the final state of knowledge. For example, according to the derivational theory of complexity, sentences involving more transformations in their derivation were assumed to be harder, and acquired later, than sentences involving fewer transformations (Miller, McKean and Slobin 1962). It seemed a reasonable hypothesis that simple active affirmative sentences would be acquired earliest because they involved fewest transformations and represented the syntactic structure considered closest to the underlying structure. Other sentence types would be learned later, and the greater the number of transformations required to transform the deep structure to the surface form, the later the acquisition of the form would be. Thus, an interrogative or negative sentence would be more complex than an affirmative declarative one (Brown and Hanlon 1970). Some researchers even predicted that children’s earliest sentences would represent a sort of printout of underlying structure, i.e. showing evidence of no transformations at all (McNeill 1 966).

The observational research of this period failed to support such hypotheses: many supposedly derivationally complex structures were not acquired late at all. It was assumed, in consequence, that linguistic theory was of no relevance or lacking in psychological reality (Fodor, Bever and Garrett 1974; Maratsos 1978), rather than considering the possibility that the relationship between acquisition complexity and formal complexity might not be so transparent or that aspects of the theory itself might be wrong. Indeed, linguists often reached the latter conclusion independently of the psycholinguistic evidence, so that, by the time the language acquisition research results were published, the linguistic theory had changed dramatically, leaving the researchers with their observations and detailed records of developmental sequences, but no theoretical framework within which to place them. Theoretical linguistics had, in a sense, pulled the rug out from under them. In consequence, many researchers turned their backs on linguistic theory and sought instead to


start again from the data, examining in detail the development of the child’s language, using procedures adapted from field linguistics and sociolinguistics and seeking regularities within the observed data. They tended to look for more global theories of language acquisition, which would include language use, adopting the perspective of Hymes (1972) that linguistic competence involves more than knowledge of rule systems.

In addition, certain linguists and child language researchers were no longer content to look at language form alone but felt that analysis of form should be carried out in conjunction with analysis of meaning (Bloom 1970). Some researchers sought to analyze their findings in terms of Fillmore’s case grammar (Bowerman 1973) or Halliday’s functional grammar (Halliday 1975). This line of research led to even stronger claims, namely that early child language was best analyzed in terms of meaning alone and that the young child had no knowledge of linguistic structure. A number of researchers argued that young children produc- ing three-or four-word sentences have no knowledge of syntax, but oper- ate on strictly semantic categories. Sentences were not composed of subjects and verbs but of agents and actions (Schlesinger 1971). Others went further toward a pragmatic analysis of children’s sentences in terms of topic - comment constructions (Gruber 1967). Some researchers claimed that sequences of acquisition were best explained in cognitive terms: the child encodes first what he understands first and it is the child’s cognitive development which shapes and determines the form of the sentences he produces. Research carried out by Piaget’s associates shows this influence (Sinclair-de-Zwart 1969). On such accounts, general cognitive development is considered to offer a sufficient explanation for language acquisition.

Other research in the late 1960s and the 1970s tried to explain child language development in terms of language use and interaction (Ervin- Tripp 1970) and the special, apparently simplified, language which adults address to children (see papers in Snow and Ferguson 1977). Some researchers claimed that the discovery of simplified input (caretaker speech or rnotherese) and the concrete communicative use of language showed that children learned their language directly through this interaction and that there was thus no need for any hypothetical innate mental structure for language acquisition.

In part, this position stems from a misunderstanding of Chomsky’s claims. Even if the discovery of special characteristics of motherese indi- cates that the language that children are exposed to is not ill-formed, and

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hence that this aspect of Chomsky’s claim about degenerate input was wrong, the existence of motherese, or of particular types of social interaction, simply fails to address the issue of how it is that children arrive at properties of the adult grammar. As pointed out by Wexler and Culi- cover (1980), the acquisition problem remains and, if anything, gets worse if it depends solely on “simplified” input, because such input, in effect, deprives children of data essential for more complex aspects of grammar. There are many properties of complex sentences which are not simply the sum of properties of simple sentences, so that establishing that the child does get clear, nondegenerate, evidence of simple sentences4 does not explain how he or she gets beyond these sentences. One difficulty with Chomsky’s theory is that its clearest predictions involve claims about aspects of syntax that might be acquired quite late; it is possible to think of many plausible accounts for early stages of syntax acquisition and, if one concentrates only on these, to forget that there is a problem.

However, certain researchers involved in developmental psycholinguistics either returned to or never lost sight of the fact that language acquisition research would be blocked at a certain point if it was not linked to linguistic theory. As the 1970s became the 1980s, Slobin (1979) and Bloom (198 1) published papers titled respectively “The role of language in language acquisition” and “The importance of language for language development: linguistic determinism in the 80s.” Ervin-Tripp, a researcher who was a pioneer in functionalist approaches to the study of child language, in a 1977 keynote address on research on semantics, pragmatics, discourse structure, and sociolinguistics in language acquisition research admitted, “We never did solve the problem of how grammar is acquired” (quoted by Bates & MacWhinney 1981).

A small group of researchers had continued to work on acquisition from within a Chomskyan perspective and had been looking at patterns of complex syntactic knowledge in older children (pre-school and early school children). This research was driven by questions derived from linguistic theory: do children indeed obey the universals that linguists propose and what methods can one devise to test such issues? They used procedures of a more experimental than observational nature and asked children to show, by means of act-out tasks, their interpretations of certain sentences, or to judge sentences as grammatical or not -usually using expressions like silly or the wrong way round- thus attempting to get some understanding of the child’s knowledge of those aspects of


language whose acquisition is particularly hard to explain (C. Chomsky 1969; Lust 1977; papers in Tavakolian 1981).

An apparently different approach to acquisition is represented by so- called functionalism which covers a very wide range of theoretical orientations - some drawn from psychology, some from linguistics. In an important paper describing functionalist approaches, Bates and MacWhinney (198 1) provide valuable discussion of the essential issues in the debate between the functionalists who view language development as based largely on “communicative functions and processing constraints” and the formalists who “stress the relative autonomy or independence of form and function.’’ Bates and MacWhinney argue that functional approaches can provide explanations for certain aspects of language acquisition. They point out, however, that functionalist approaches need not reject the notion of innate predispositions on the part of the child. Rather, they argue for innate predispositions which are not limited to language acquisition but relate to other aspects of human development, especially cognitive development, as well. Psychological theories of human learning are not what they were forty years ago and modern cognitive psychology also attributes much human knowledge to the acti- vation of certain species specific functions, a kind of growth in the human organism, which psychologists see as based in part on predispositions of the human mind developed through millenia of evolution. The difference between these cognitive psychologists and linguists influenced by the Chomskyan tradition is that the latter assume that language is not only a species specific cognitive function but that it is a unique function which cannot be reduced to other cognitive functions, that language is not simply an analogue of functions which also show up in other domains.

The functionalist and linguistic approaches to acquisition have recently converged on an interest in the parsing of natural languages, that is the question of how linguistic knowledge relates to the processing of data. One of the problems facing language learners is precisely the need to process input - without this there can be no grammar construction. Some of Slobin’s (1973, 1985) operating principles are designed to address the issue of how the child processes the linguistic input, and cross-linguistic evidence is invoked to suggest that operating principles are universal. These principles are distinct from innate principles of grammar of the kind proposed by Chomsky and the positions of Slobin and Chomsky are often seen as incompatible. However, one can conceive


of a reasonable acquisition theory in which the two kinds of principles interact: universal parsing principles might be involved in initial segmen- tation and organization of the input, after which innate linguistic principles can be tapped, which further constrain the kinds of systems con- structed by the child. A formal relationship between acquisition and parsing, and the kinds of principles that might be involved, are explored in the work of Berwick and Weinberg (1984) and Berwick (1985).

Interest in parsing overlaps with theories based on the learnability of languages. Using mathematical or computer modelling rather than observation or experimentation with human subjects, and starting from assumed properties of the adult language, researchers have explored the kinds of innate linguistic structures and external conditions which would be required to make language learnable by human infants (Pinker 1979, 1984; Wexler and Culicover 1980). One factor which has received considerable attention is the lack of reliable negative evidence to children (Brown and Hanlon 1970). That is, children do not get information about which sentences are not grammatical in the language they are learning; they do not get corrected when they make syntactic errors. This means that acquisition must proceed on the basis of positive evidence only: language that the child actually hears. In addition, where there is more than one grammar compatible with the input data, it is argued that children initially assume that the most restrictive grammar is the relevant one (the so-called subset principle, Berwick 1985). This is because an overly restrictive grammar can be disconfirmed on the basis of positive evidence, whereas an overly general grammar can only be disconfirmed with negative evidence.

This research, like that of the early developmental psycholinguists, has not been immune to the problem of the rapid evolution of linguistic theory. Here, too, researchers have sometimes published their results after the theory on which their research is based has been dramatically altered by its original proponents, not on the basis of observational or experimental research, but on the basis of theory construction from within linguistics, the development of the logical structure of the theory itself. However, while details may change, researchers guided by consid- erations of learnability have shown less inclination to abandon linguistic theory altogether, in contrast to what happened in the 1970s. Learnabil- ity theories are driven by the need to explain the acquisition of complex properties of grammar, and linguistics and acquisition are once again considered to be inextricably linked.


In the late 1970s and early 1980s, generative grammar shifted from an emphasis on language specific transformational rules to a search for universal principles underlying all languages. Although the expression Language Acquisition Device has been abandoned, linguists focus more specifically on the question of what kind of innate knowledge would help to explain the acquisition of grammar, and try to discover the precise properties of Universal Grammar (UG).

Recent developments account for the interaction between UG and the language the child is actually exposed to by incorporating the concept of parametric variation (Chomsky 1981a, b). This theory states that there are certain limited options (parameters), in addition to invariant principles, associated with UG. A particular parameter is responsible for a number of properties within a language. If the language has that parameter set in a particular way, a certain range of consequences results. Another language might have the parameter set differently, with different consequences. A much-quoted example is the pro-drop parameter (Chomsky 1981b). Pro-drop languages, such as Italian and Spanish, exhibit a clustering of syntactic properties which are not exhibited by non-pro-drop languages, of which the most obvious is the fact that subject pronouns can be omitted in the former but not in the latter.

In acquisition, data from the language being learned are assumed to trigger the appropriate parameter-setting for that language, with the full range of consequences which that parameter entails. However, certain parameters may have an unmarked setting, and it has been argued that first language acquirers may start off by adopting this setting even if it is inappropriate for the language being learned. For example, Hyams (1986) argues that all children initially adopt the + pro-drop value of the parameter and that this explains why young children learning English often omit subjects. As we shall see, the implications of the concept of parametric variation have in some respects been more fully developed for second language acquisition than for first.

In addition to the research of linguists, current research in L1 acquisition is being carried out by developmental and cognitive psychologists, pediatric neurologists and child psychiatrists, educators and speech ther- apists. Some of the questions being asked in this research are unrelated to linguistic theories. Nevertheless, most researchers in all these areas would acknowledge that the complexities of human language knowledge and behavior are such that they cannot be fully explained on the basis of environmental factors alone. Linguistic theories provide an essential


framework for researchers - showing just how much remains to be explained.

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Research in second language acquisition has mirrored research in first language acquisition in a number of ways, showing the same kind of ambivalent attitude towards the potential relevance of linguistic theories. There have also been developments in the field which, while clearly of considerable importance for our understanding of L2 acquisition processes, do not draw their inspiration directly or indirectly from linguistic theories, and hence are beyond the scope of this paper, e.g. work on communication strategies (Faerch and Kasper 1983) and psychological approaches (Kellerman 1983; McLaughlin 1980).

Prior to the late 1960s, the linguistic and psychological theories of structuralism and behaviorism had a strong influence. This was particularly obvious in the case of a number of language teaching methods, such as the audio-lingual method, and also in the case of the contrastive analysis hypothesis (CAH). According to the CAH, learners would find easy those L2 structures which were similar to their L1 and would have difficulties where the two languages differed (Lado 1957). Second language learning was assumed to involve the building up of verbal habits and, since there was already a language known to the learner, the habits of the L1 would have an effect, positive or negative, depending on points of similarity and difference between the L1 and L2. The negative effect could be seen in the form of interference errors, forms attributable to the L1 being used in the L2. Research of this period thus focussed on contrastive studies - not of learners’ language performance but of languages themselves - in order to predict areas of potential acquisition ease and difficulty (Banathy, Trager and Waddle 1966).

The idea of looking at L2 learners’ language did not really begin to emerge until the late 1960s, following the publication of Corder’s provoc- ative 1967 article, The Significance of Learners’ Errors. He urged language scientists and applied linguists to consider the hypothesis that the language of the L2 learner reflects a true transitional competence. When examined, this would reveal underlying patterns of consistency and rule- based performance, not unlike the knowledge which L1 learners exhibit, indicating an orderly if incomplete acquisition of the target language. The learner’s errors would provide a window on the status of his or her


acquisition, permitting teacher and researcher to see how far the learner had progressed and how the learner’s transitional competence differed from the competence of the native speaker.

The idea of interim competence which was subject to rapid change and development was further explored in the interlanguage hypothesis (Selinker 1972) and the notion of approximative systems (Nemser 1971). AdjCmian (1976) explicitly applied the insights of transformational grammar towards explaining the L2 learner’s interim competence. Like those working on L1 development, L2 acquisition researchers attempted to formulate generative rules to describe learner language and investi- gated whether the L2 learner’s developmental sequence might mirror a derivational sequence for some structure (e.g. Ravem 1974). Rules were used for their descriptive rather than their explanatory power.

This general idea of interim competence still stimulates a great deal of research in the L2 field (see Rutherford [1984] for review), far more so than in L1 acquisition. Indeed, in some respects, the field of L2 acquisition research has found it much easier to accept the psychological reality of grammars as a productive notion than the L1 field did at the same point in development.

On the face of things, however, L2 researchers went further than those working on L1 acquisition in accepting the idea of universals as being relevant, so that it appeared that they might be addressing the explanatory problem as well as the descriptive one. Dulay and Burt (1974) suggested that L2 acquisition was very similar to L1 acquisition and involved a process of creative construction which included the assumption of universal acquisition processes. Universal learning strategies were also proposed (Selinker 1972, 1984). In fact, universal processes and strategies, although not always clearly defined, are by no means the same kind of thing as principles of UG. They are independent both of UG and of linguistic theories in general, being more oriented towards psychological aspects of language learning and the question of how languages are processed by learners, and they appear to be similar to Slobin’s operating principles. Indeed, in many cases, the pursuit of universals in the second language acquisition field covers a range of phenomena quite different from linguistic universals. As noted by Rutherford (personal communication), many researchers have been looking for “universals of second language acquisition,” rather than considering the role of linguistic universals in second language acquisition.

Where a concept like UG was accepted for L2 acquisition, this was


rarely precisely specified or defined, so that specific claims as to its role could not be made. Krashen (1981) argues for a distinction between acquisition and learning, with the former apparently involving LAD/ UG, but he never specifies any content to LAD so that while lip-service is paid to Chomsky’s linguistic theory, it is not used as a potential source of detailed insight into L2 acquisition.

The morpheme acquisition studies of the 1970s (Bailey, Madden and Krashen 1974; Dulay and Burt 1974) were often used to suggest that linguistic universals and thus, indirectly, linguistic explanation, were relevant to the L2 field. In post hoc data analysis, the finding that second language learners, like children, develop language in ways not predicted by an analysis of the input, and in ways which are similar across learners from different first language backgrounds, was considered evidence for a natural order. The theory here, however, tends to involve a stipulation: L2 learners follow a similar order regardless of their mother tongue because there is a natural order. This natural order explains their behavior. There is little attempt to provide a theoretical basis from which such an order might follow (but see Meisel, Clahsen and Pienemann 1981; Pienemann and Johnston 1986, for some exceptions). Certainly, no linguistic theory so far has been able to explain such an order. In the area of morpheme studies, then, the emphasis has in fact been on description rather than on explanation, even when an explanation seems to be offered. Although superficially embracing the idea of linguistic universals, at no time in the late 1960s and 1970s did L2 researchers face the issue which had led to the original proposal for such universals and, with a few exceptions (Ritchie 1978; Schmidt 1980), no attempt was made to test detailed proposals derived from generative grammar.

One unfortunate consequence of this emphasis on rather vaguely defined universals in L2 acquisition was a feeling that L1 influence and language universals were somehow incompatible. As a result, many L2 researchers ignored the presence of language transfer, either claiming that it does not exist or accepting that it exists but not considering it to play an important role in second language acquisition (Dulay, Burt and Krashen 1982, Ch.95

The rejection of CA led to a blossoming of error analysis andperform- ance analysis. Although some of this research was, as mentioned above, indirectly influenced by transformational grammar, much of it was atheoretical. Error analysis and performance analysis are both based on studies of learners’ observable linguistic behavior. In error analysis the


emphasis is on those elements which deviate from target-like use (George 1972). In performance analysis the learner’s overall performance is examined. Other performance analyses go further to look at patterns of use and to discover whether learner meanings differ from native speaker meanings (Andersen 1979; Huebner 1983). Much of this research has been descriptive, based on case studies of individuals or groups of second language learners. (See Lightbowen 1984, 1987 for discussion of the relationship between research methods and language acquisition theories.)

Just as researchers in L1 acquisition turned their attention to the study of the linguistic input to children, L2 researchers have also turned to discourse analysis, focusing particularly on learners’ interactions with native speakers. Researchers working within this approach have analyzed conversational exchanges, seeking evidence as to the ways in which learners might discover the structure of the target language with the help of the modified speech of native speakers (so-called foreigner talk) or through having their imperfect attempts to convey ideas picked up and reshaped by their interlocutors, giving learners opportunities to make form-meaning matches. This approach emphasizes the learner’s pragmatic competence and communicative use of language and the frequency with which certain forms are heard (Larsen-Freeman 1976, Hatch 1978).

As is the case with Ll acquisition research in this area, there has been a tendency to assume that the discovery of special properties in the input to learners, or the interactions they engage in, will solve all acquisition issues. As pointed out by Foster (1985), syntactic and pragmatic development may involve two quite different and independent areas, with the former involving innate, language-specific mechanisms, while the latter makes use of more general cognitive mechanisms. If that is the case, then linguistic theories will have little or nothing to say about the development of pragmatic or communicative competence, but, equally, theories that are designed to address the latter will not be relevant to the acquisition of syntax. Overall theories of acquisition, L1 or L2, will require an interre- lated model which draws on various distinct domains.

Generative grammar was ignored in much work in the L2 field in the late 1970s, as it had been in developmental psycholinguistics. However, other approaches to linguistics stimulated considerable L2 research and had an influence which does not seem to be paralleled in the L1 field. A number of L2 researchers became interested in a different view of linguistic universals, inspired by the work of Greenberg (1966). Greenberg’s


approach to universals is typological. Based on investigation of many different languages, he proposed a number of universals, some of which are absolute (true of all languages) and some of which are tendencies (true but subject to exceptions), which seek to characterize the properties of various types of languages (particularly properties to do with word order).6 This view of universals does not assume psychological reality for the universals; they reflect observed properties of human languages but not necessarily properties of the human mind. Nevertheless, a number of people have assumed a relevance of this approach for L2 learning. For example, Gass (1979) considers the question of whether L2 learners observe a typological universal proposed by Keenan and Comrie (1977) in the way they treat relative clauses in the L2, and the extent to which the operation of this universal is affected by the learner’s L1.

The typological view of universals has a concommitant view of markedness, which has been used by L2 acquisition researchers to generate hypotheses about how the acquisition process is affected, depending on the markedness status of structures in the L1 and L2. Greenberg formu- lated many of his findings as implicational universals of the form: if a language has property X, then it will also have property Y (but not vice versa). In an implicational relationship, the unmarked member of a pair is the one whose presence does not imply the other. Thus, in the above example, Y will be unmarked and X marked. By adding to this implicational definition the assumption that markedness in some way involves acquisition difficulties and that marked structures will be avoided by L2 learners, this view of markedness has been used in a number of ways: (1) to predict and explain potential L2 acquisition sequences (the claim being that unmarked will emerge before marked), (2) to predict sources of difficulty for the L2 learner (marked supposedly being harder to learn), and (3) to show that markedness might interact with language transfer’ (with unmarked forms more liable to transfer, and with potential direc- tional differences, depending on the markedness situations in the L1 and L2) (Eckman 1977, 1984; Hyltenstam 1984; Rutherford 1982; Zobl 1984).

What is often not made clear in these approaches is how these exter- nally assessed properties of the world’s languages can affect L2 learners. We cannot assume that learners arrive at such knowledge in the same way as linguists, by investigating and comparing many different languages. Knowledge of universals and markedness might follow from properties of the human mind (this being the Chomskyan view, which assumes that


they are built into UG) or might derive from factors which could plausi- bly affect L2 acquisition, such as ease of processing. In order to make use of insights from the typological approach, some such assumption must be made explicit.

Another framework developed during the 1970s took sociolinguistic theory as a source of insight, with Labov’s (1972) variationist theories playing a central role (Klein and Dittmar 1979). The influence of sociolinguistic approaches is also seen in research which suggests that L2 acquisition involves processes of pidginization and creolization (Ander- sen 1983; Schumann 1978). It is increasingly evident that learners, like native speakers, have a certain degree of variability in their speech registers - sometimes controlling linguistic elements intentionally, but on other occasions, shifting quite unintentionally (Beebe 1980; Tarone 1985). Sociolinguistic theory has generally been used to elucidate questions of language use rather than language acquisition, but in some L2 studies the distinction is unfortunately blurred, and acquisition is seen to be explainable principally or only in terms of sociolinguistic theory. Some researchers have kept the distinction between acquisition and use clear, acknowledging the role of sociolinguistic factors in some aspects of L2 learners’ behavior but emphasizing that other aspects appear to be determined by internal processes rather than external relationships with, or attitudes towards, the target language (Meisel, Clahsen and Pieneman 1981).

Until very recently, little attempt was made to relate research on learner language to specific hypotheses within a linguistic theory. In the 1980s there has been a considerable revival of interest in Chomskyan linguistic theory as a source of hypotheses about second language acquisition (Cook 1985; Felix 1985; Flynn 1987; Liceras 1986; Mazurkewich 1984; Van Buren and Sharwood Smith 1985; White 1985a). As we have already seen, the focus of generative grammar is on the explanatory problem, and recent interest in learnability has led people to consider which internal and external conditions are necessary for syntax acquisition. A number of L2 acquisition researchers have begun to consider L2 acquisition in this way (Bley-Vroman 1986; White 1985b; Zobl 1983). One must explain how learners of a second language come to know things that they have not been taught and to which they have not been systematically exposed and one possibility is that UG might still be in operation, so that linguistic theory could offer insights into L2 acquisition as well as L1.


In some respects, the internal and external conditions are different in L2 acquisition from what they are in L1, so that at issue is whether acquisition is essentially the same or different, and, if different, to what extent.8 As far as internal conditions are concerned, L2 learners differ from L1 learners in having the knowledge of another language available to them, though how much this affects them is much debated. In the case of adult learners, they also differ in that they may be past the so-called “critical period” for language acquisition. As far as external conditions are concerned, many L2 learners, unlike L1 learners, are exposed to corrective data, sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle (Schachter 1984), and, again, this may or may not affect the L2 acquisition process, depending on whether or not learners make use of it. Krashen’s (1985) input hypothesis, for example, rests on the assumption that in L2 acquisition as in L1, negative data play a minimal role and acquisition can proceed on the basis of positive evidence only.

Familiar L2 issues are now being addressed from the perspective of current generative grammar. For example, it has been argued that adult difficulties in learning an L2 can be explained on the assumption that UG is no longer available (Clahsen and Muysken 1986; Bley-Vroman, in press) or is in competition with other cognitive systems (Felix 1985). The concept of a parameterized UG has been used to explain mother tongue influence (Adjtmian and Liceras 1984; Flynn 1987; Van Buren and Shar- wood Smith 1985; White 198%). In contrast to earlier views of universals in L2 acquisition which assumed that transfer was incompatible with UG, it is currently hypothesized that L2 learners may have to ‘reset’ certain parameters if the L1 and L2 differ, and that a range of consequences follows from a failure to reset and a different set of consequences from successful resetting.

Some researchers have adopted definitions of markedness from generative grammar (for example, the idea that certain parameter settings have an initial, unmarked value) and learnability theory (according to the subset principle, the unmarked grammar is the most restrictive one compatible with the data). They consider whether or not L2 learners are able to reactivate the unmarked settings of parameters of UG so that it inter- acts directly with the L2 data (Finer and Broselow 1986; Liceras 1986; White 1986). Some argue that L2 acquisition sequences can be predicted on the basis of markedness, and that unmarked properties of the L2 should emerge before marked (Mazurkewich 1984).

In addition, this perspective has stimulated new questions. The claim


that clusterings of linguistic phenomena may fall out from principles and parameters of UG has led researchers to consider the extent to which certain properties of the interlanguage grammar might cluster together or be related (Hilles 1986; White 1985~).

Another way in which this revival of interest in generative grammar differs from previous approaches is that researchers are using current linguistic theory to provide content for very specific claims. Rather than just stating that there are universal principles or processes involved, the idea is to take particular principles and see whether or not L2 learners show evidence of observing them, and to see what their effects are on the interim grammars of learners. Similarly, hypotheses derived from learnability theory have led to specific proposals as to what might happen in the L2 acquisition of certain properties of grammar (Finer and Broselow 1986; White 1986). As pointed out by Rutherford (1986), very precise claims are also being derived for L2 acquisition from within the typological approach to universals discussed above. These claims are often different from (and sometimes the complete opposite of) claims made on the basis of generative grammar. For example, Hyltenstam (1984), arguing from the typological perspective, claims that marked forms will not be liable to transfer, whereas White (1986), arguing from a learnability perspective, suggests that they will. Such claims share the advantage of being precise and specific, and therefore testable.

Even if it turns out that adult L2 acquisition does not involve UG at all, as claimed by Clahsen and Muysken (1986) and Bley-Vroman (in press), this concentration on rather complex aspects of grammar will have helped to draw attention to the fact that what L2 learners achieve is no mean feat and that it does require explanation.

Another related issue involves the question of parsing or processing L2 syntax. L2 researchers have recently begun to look at how L2 learners parse their L2, whether they have to acquire a separate parsing mecha- nism for an L2, in addition to a grammar, and how parsing problems interact with competence problems (Sharwood Smith 1986; Zobl 1986; and recent work by M. Pienemann & M. Johnston as summarized in Pienemann 1987). Again, this is parallel to recent developments in L1 acquisition research, and opens up the possibility of further links between linguistic theories and L2 acquisition theories.

The revival of interest in linguistic theory has also had effects on research methodology. Interest is directed at stages of L2 acquisition where knowledge of complex and subtle properties of the L2 might show


up. In L1 research which concentrated on the acquisition of complex syntax, experimental methods, such as act-out tasks, were devised to tap the child’s competence. Similarly, L2 research in this area requires a methodology that allows the researcher to gain insight into the L2 learner’s knowledge of what is and is not possible in the L2. Error analysis, that is taking the output of the learner and trying to analyse it, is not sufficient, especially as the claim is, in many cases, that there will not be errors of a certain type.9 In consequence, there has been considerable use of grammaticality judgment tasks to try to tap the L2 learner’s competence, and attempts to develop other methods suitable for testing these issues.

CONCLUSION

Although the relationship between linguistics and acquisition research has varied from close to non-existent in the past, a relationship is not only desirable but necessary if we are to attain adequate theories of L1 and L2 acquisition. One should be wary of expecting either too little or too much of linguistic theories. A theory of grammar will have a limited but specific contribution to make to an overall theory. In particular, a theory of grammar will be a necessary component in our explanation of the L1 acquisition of formal properties of grammar, such as syntax, morphology and phonology, and may also be required to explain these aspects of L2 acquisition. Linguistic theories will play no role in other aspects of acquisition, equally important to our understanding of the overall acquisition process, and these must be accounted for in other ways. An acquisition theory will have to be modular, with a theory of grammar as one of many component modules. Recent developments suggest that this may be true for second language acquisition theories as well as first.

NOTES

*When Chomsky first introduced his theory, it was known as transformational grammar. Subsequently, reflecting changes in the theory, it became known as generative grammar. We shall use both expressions in this paper.

ZFor other examples and detailed arguments, see Lightfoot (1982) and papers in Baker and McCarthy (1981), Hornstein and Lightfoot (1981).

3On subsequent analyses, it is assumed that only one universal principle, namely subja- cency, is involved (Chomsky 1981a).


4This assumes that motherese is universally used by all primary caretakers, a point which

5A welcome break with this anti-transfer view is represented in the papers in Gass and

6See Comrie (1982) for a useful review of this framework. ’Working from a completely different framework, Kellerman (1983) also argues that

*This is not, of course, in itself a new issue in the L2 acquisition field. glndeed, regardless of this issue, error analysis alone is insufficient to get at learners’

interim competence, since learners have been shown to avoid the use of certain forms, SO

that their output is often a misleading representation of their competence (Schachter 1974; Kleinmann 1977).

is not at all clear (Heath 1983; Schieffelin 1979).

Selinker (1983).

markedness plays a role in determining when transfer will and will not take place.

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