'facts' that SLA models need to explain

• an adult amnesiac who could not learn new information was perfectly able to learn a second language, French, including vocabulary

• English primary school children who are taught Italian for one hour a week learn to read better in English

• people who speak a second language are more creative and flexible at problem-solving than monolinguals, e.g. Einstein, Nabakov …

• ten days after a road accident, a bilingual Moroccan could speak French but not Arabic; the next day Arabic but not French; the next day she went back to fluent French and poor Arabic; three months later she could speak both

• the Voice Onset Time (VOT) of French people who speak English is different in French from those who don't

• L2 learners rapidly learn the appropriate pronunciations for their own gender, for instance that men tend to pronounce the “-ing” ending of the English continuous form going as “-in’ ” but women tend to use “-ing”.

• after seeing an American flag, Chinese/English bilinguals are more likely to say interpret behaviour of fish as driven by internal forces; after a Chinese dragon as driven by external forces

Starter

When you have to express an idea in your L2 do you:
     a) think of the word first in your L1 and then turn it into the L2?
     b) think of the word first in your L2?
     c) neither?

Early concepts in Second Language Acquisition research
1950s

 
     interference: Weinreich
     compound/coordinate bilingualism: Weinreich
     Contrastive Analysis, transfer: Lado
     habit-formation: Lado, Bloomfield etc
      phrase structure grammar: Bloomfield etc
1960s  
     independent grammars assumption: school of Chomsky
     Language Acquisition Device: Chomsky 1964
     hypothesis-testing: Corder
1970s 
     interlanguage: Nemser, Selinker
     Error Analysis: Corder, 1971

Weinreich: Languages in Contact

interference:

'those instances of deviation from the norms of either language which occur in the speech of bilinguals as a result of their familiarity with more than one language' (Weinreich, 1953,1)

types of bilingualism:
'book'  'kniga'     'book'='kniga'         'book'
   |          |                    |                       |
/buk/  /kniga/      /buk/   /kniga/        /buk/
                                                            |
                                                         /kniga/
coordinative    compound         subordinative
bilingualism    bilingualism       bilingualism

Lado: Contrastive Analysis
transfer;

'individuals tend to transfer the forms and meanings, and the distribution of forms and meanings of their native language and culture to the foreign language and culture' (Lado, 1957, p.2)
learning; 'a system of habits' (Lado, 1957, p.57) based on 'laws of language learning' such as 'exercise', 'familiarity of response', etc (Lado, 1964, p.45).

First language acquisition ideas of the 1960s

- the independent grammars assumption
- The LAD (Language Acquisition Device) model

    primary          ---> LAD --->     generative grammar
linguistic data                             (linguistic competence)

- hypothesis-testing:

'To acquire language, a child must devise a hypothesis compatible with presented data - he must select from the store of potential grammars a specific one that is appropriate to the data available to him' (Chomsky, 1965a, p.36)

Approximative systems, interlanguage and multi-competence

Nemser (1971) 'approximative system': 'Learner speech at a given time is the patterned product of a linguistic system, La [approximative language], distinct from Ls [source language] and Lt [target language] and internally structured'.

Selinker (1972) interlanguage: language transfer, overgeneralisation of L2 rules, transfer of training, strategies of L2 learning, communication strategies,

Corder (1971) Error Analysis: (i) recognition of idiosyncracy, (ii) accounting for the learner's idiosyncratic dialect, (iii) explanation.

Cook (1991) multi-competence 'the compound state of a mind with two grammars'

References

Much of this is covered in Chapter 1 of Cook (1993).

Chomsky, N. (1965), 'Formal discussion: the development of grammar in child language', in Bellugi, U., and Brown, R. (eds.), The Acquisition of Language, Indiana, Purdue University

Cook, V.J. (1969), 'The analogy between first and second language learning', IRAL, 7, 3, 207-216

Cook, V.J. (1991), 'The poverty-of-the-stimulus argument and multi-competence', Second Language Research, 7, 2, 103-117,

Corder, S.P. (1971), 'Idiosyncratic errors and Error Analysis', IRAL, 9, 2, 147-159. Reprinted in Richards (1974)

Corder, S.P. (1981), Error Analysis and Interlanguage, O.U.P.

Lado, R. (1957), Linguistics Across Cultures, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor

Lado, R. (1964), Language Teaching: A Scientific Approach, McGraw-Hill

Nemser, W. (1971), 'Approximative systems of foreign language learners', International Review of Applied Linguistics, 9, 115-123. Reprinted in Richards (1974).

Selinker, L. (1972), 'Interlanguage', IRAL, 10/3. Reprinted in Richards (1974)

Weinreich, U. (1953), Languages in Contact, The Hague, Mouton

By Vivin Cook

来源：http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/SLA/SLABackground.htm