This response argues against the proposal that novel utterances are formed by analogy with stored exemplars that are close in meaning. Strings of words that are similar in meaning or even identical can behave very differently once inserted into different syntactic environments. Furthermore, phrases with similar meanings but different underlying…

In her keynote article advocating the Linguistic Proximity Model for third language (L3) acquisition, Westergaard (2021) presents several arguments against 'copying and restructuring' in nonnative language acquisition, mechanisms central to Schwartz and Sprouse's (1996) Full Transfer/Full Access model of second language (L2) acquisition. In this…

This commentary discusses the recent keynote article in "Second Language Research" by Westergaard (2021), which extends the Micro-cue Model to second language (L2) and third language (L3) acquisition. The commentary comments on such questions as: What makes a given property easy or hard to acquire? How do learners determine similarity?…

In this commentary, I suggest that it may be helpful to think about the formidable problem space that Westergaard's (2021) Linguistic Proximity Model seeks to address at the three levels of analysis that Marr (1982) famously proposed are needed to understand any complex cognitive system. I argue that at the computational level of analysis, where…

In this article, I argue that first language (L1), second language (L2) and third language (L3) acquisition are fundamentally the same process, based on learning by parsing. Both child and adult learners are sensitive to fine linguistic distinctions, and language development takes place in small steps. While the bulk of the article focuses on…

Muysken argues for four general "strategies" that characterize language contact phenomena across several levels of description. These strategies are (A) maximize structural coherence of the first language (L1); (B) maximize structural coherence of the second language (L2); (C) match between L1 and L2 patterns where possible; and (D) use…

Transfer has been discussed from different points of view since the advent of Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis [13], [8]. Mishina-Mori [19] has defied transfer as merging grammatical properties from one language to another. The effect of transfer from a first language (L1) to a second language (L2) or a third language (L3) has been viewed…

A proposed model for an interim grammar between a first and second language, an autonomous rule-governed system based on the Extended Standard Theory, is presented and discussed, focusing on the motivations for choosing a generative model and the determination of structure for an interlanguage system, and using a comparison of the auxiliary system…

With its focus on simplification universals, developmental orders, teachability, and functional-grammatical bases for acquisition, the well-known research on German (L2) language acquisition has contributed much to SLA research in general. At the same time, sociolinguistic investigations focus squarely on the difficult social conditions that…