In this article I make the point that there has been a continuous focus on second language development in second language acquisition research for over 40 years and that there is clear empirical evidence for generalizable developmental patterns. I will both summarize some of the core assumptions of Processability Theory (PT) as an approach to…

This chapter introduces three applications of Bayesian inference to common and novel issues in second language research. After a review of the critiques of conventional hypothesis testing, our focus centers on ways Bayesian inference can be used for dealing with missing data, for testing theory-driven substantive hypotheses without a default null…

In this article, I describe studies conducted over 25 years with secondary and post-secondary L2 learners in the United States. The evidence from these studies shows that there are important connections between students' early L1 skills and their L2 aptitude and L2 proficiency and that individual differences in students' L1 skills in elementary…

Answers to theoretical questions about the place of input in a formal second language acquisition model are dependent on a distinction between two kinds of learner hypotheses. Type-N hypotheses require "negative evidence" for testing, while Type-P hypotheses are tested on the basis of "positive data" alone. (Author/CB)

Expands on the authors' (1995) investigation of the parsing performance on "wh"-movement sentences by Chinese-speaking learners of English. The article compares the difficulty second-language learners have in parsing subject "wh"-traces in embedded finite and nonfinite clauses with the problems they have in parsing Garden Path…