Academic literature on the topic 'Theory of interlanguage'

Since its introduction in 1996, Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (CIA) has become a highly popular method in Learner Corpus Research. Its comparative design has made it possible to uncover a wide range of features distinctive of learner language and assess their degree of generalizability across learner populations. At the same time, however, the method has drawn criticism on several fronts. The purpose of this article is threefold: to provide a brief overview of CIA research, to discuss the main criticisms the method has faced in recent years and to present a revised model, CIA², which makes the central role played by variation in interlanguage studies more explicit and is generally more in line with the current state of foreign language theory and practice.

One of the most intractable issues in the field of second-language acquisition (SLA) research has been the attempt to identify the role of social context in influencing (or not) the process of acquisition of a second language. The central question has been whether a theory of SLA must account only for the psycholinguistic processes involved in acquiring an interlanguage (IL), or, alternatively, whether social and sociolinguistic factors influence those psycho-linguistic processes to such an extent that they too must be included in such a theory. It seems very clear that SLA is a psycholinguistic process. But to what extent are those psycholinguistic processes affected by social context? In 1985, Selinker and Douglas proposed a construct of ‘discourse domains’ to show how social and psycholinguistic processes might be included in a theory of inter-language; Young (1999) reviews that proposal and a recent attempt to test it, concluding that the results are still uncertain. After 15 years, this is still a lively issue in the field of SLA. Indeed, it is becoming a source of increasing conflict both within the field of SLA and within such areas of applied linguistics as second/foreign language teaching and second/foreign language teacher training. In this article, I will briefly summarize the problem, and review and summarize the current evidence being brought to bear upon this issue in the SLA research literature.

This thematic issue explores various aspects of interlanguage phonetics and phonology and their relationship to general linguistic theory. Research in interlanguage syntax and recently in discourse and pragmatics has been quite prolific; however, research in interlanguage phonetics and phonology has produced far fewer studies. Of the nearly 200 articles published in Studies in Second Language Acquisition (SSLA) during the last 10 years, only about a dozen focus on phonetics and phonology. This thematic issue is intended to fill some of this gap.

AbstractValency theory has been applied to investigate various languages, such as German, Chinese and English. However, most studies in this field were based on the linguistic materials produced by native speakers. The current research aimed to examine the valency structures in the interlanguage. Based on the English writing produced by L2 Chinese learners, we adopted the quantitative approach, trying to find out whether the distributional features of verb valency in the interlanguage also had regular probability distributions as those in the native languages, and whether there was a relationship between these valency distributional characteristics and L2 learners’ language competence. It was found that (1) verb valency in the interlanguage followed distributional regularities which had been identified in the native languages; (2) the valency features showed differences in the diversity of valency patterns, the use of valences and the complexity of forms of complements between the interlanguage and the target language; (3) the distribution functions and parameters related to verb valency could manifest the development of students’ language competence. The current research has extended valency theory to the study of interlanguage and the valency perspective has profound methodological and pedagogical implications for L2 learning. Its item-specific property and the integration of grammatical and lexical factors are conducive to analyzing the way various words combine with each other.