Negation is a cornerstone of human language and one of the few universals found in all languages. Without negation, neither categorization nor efficient communication would be possible. Languages, however, differ remarkably in how they express negation. It is yet widely unknown how the way negation is marked influences the acquisition process of…

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?…

This paper presents an analysis and comparison of the projection of Chinese "shen" and English "deep" from the spatial domain to other domains of time, sense, emotion, behavior, and society from a cognitive perspective by using the comparative and contrastive method, explaining the universality and differences of SHEN and DEEP…

Grammar competition has been proposed as a model for second language (L2) acquisition. Variational Learning provides a framework within which to investigate the idea of grammar competition as the model requires a marriage of quantitative properties of the input with Universal Grammar. A diachronic variational model of grammar competition is…

The "state of the art" in the three fields of contrastive analysis, error analysis and interlanguage is critically examined from the point of view of evolving an explanatory theory of a second language learner's performance. Each field is discussed with respect to its outreach, theoretical assumptions, methodology, claims and empirical…

Studies were conducted to help determine criteria for describing the stages through which second language learners pass as they acquire a new language. The ability of 24 beginning adult students of English as a second language to supply ten morphemes in obligatory contexts was predicted on the basis of contrastive analysis between English and each…

Classic studies in second language (L2) learning offer little evidence for the validity of the notion of universals in L2 learning. The present study investigates this notion in data collected from 15 observational studies of 40 L2 learners who acquired the L2 naturally, that is, they were not taught the language in any formal ways. Interpretation…

Examines the loss in popularity of contrastive linguistics as a method for explaining second language learning systems, and calls for a turn to pragmatics in language teaching. (AM)

Certain proposed theories on second language acquisition, their justifications, and their predictions about English are examined in this paper. The first section discusses the process of second language acquisition; the stages and strategies learners use and progress through on their way to mastery are described. The second section discusses the…