This special issue revisits a classic topic in linguistic theory, A-bar movement, applied to developing and bilingual grammars. We claim that A-bar movement, or filler-gap dependencies, is still the quintessential linguistic phenomenon to illustrate the interaction between the biological endowment, the experience with language (past and present),…

In the history of psycholinguistics, there are traditional accounts that have been told about language learning and processing. These accounts revolve around the constraints imposed by the age of language learning and by universal principles that are assumed to be natively given. The contribution of Brian MacWhinney and his collaborators has been…

Westergaard's microcue account raises the question of the exact nature of language transfer in the acquisition of languages as well of how L1/Ln input interacts with the principles of universal grammar (UG) during processing. In order to consider in more detail the actual representation building, processing mechanisms that would be involved, her…

Research on second language (L2) acquisition in the generative tradition (GenSLA) addresses the nature of interlanguage competence, examining the roles of Universal Grammar, the mother tongue and the input in shaping the acquisition, representation and use of second languages. This field is sometimes dismissed by applied linguists as irrelevant…

This provocative article raises many important issues that need to be addressed and in so doing will advance the fields of second language (L2) and third language (L3) acquisition in several important ways. Fundamental questions concerning multilingual development persist especially with respect to the role of Universal Grammar in this language…

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?…

We investigate whether second language (L2) learners of English rely on first language (L1) transfer and atomicity in the acquisition of the count/mass distinction by examining L1-French and L1-Chinese learners of English. Atomicity encodes whether a noun contains 'atoms' or minimal elements that retain the property of the noun. As a semantic…

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…

English ditransitive verbs show a complex alternation between the double object construction (DOC, (1)) and prepositional object datives (POD, (2)). This dissertation examines the acquisition, representation, and learnability of the dative alternation among L2 English learners, presenting experimental data from participants with L1 backgrounds of…

This study investigated Thai EFL learners' acquisition of English dative constructions, i.e., Prepositional Dative (PD) and Double Object (DO) constructions employing Radford's (2004) Minimalist accounts as a framework and Acceptability Judgment as a task. Two hypotheses were formulated. Firstly, the English PD would be accepted more readily than…

This paper sets out to peruse the role of various theories or more precisely, hypotheses invoked in second language acquisition (SLA) research by surveying three empirical studies pertaining to the critical period hypothesis in the SLA of phonetics and phonology. In particular, the three studies reviewed are titled in chronological order as (1)…

Second language acquisition has been observed to be variable in its outcome such that, unlike native speakers, all second language learners do not achieve total success. Second language acquisition is made of macro and micro processes. External and internal (e.g., age, individual differences) factors are assumed to affect language processing in…

"Second Language Acquisition -- Learning Theories and Recent Approaches" will aim to present the process of learning an additional language apart from one's native language. The process of understanding, writing, and speaking another language with fluency involves complex intellectual and emotional responses as well as continuous…

Interlanguage has been the main development of field research on second language acquisition (SLA). According to Richard et al (1996) Interlanguage is one of the kinds of language that can be produced by second language learners in the process of acquiring or learning a new language. The influence of the universal grammar of the first language in…