English 418
Second Language Acquisition
Session Fourteen, Part One Notes
Goals/Objectives:
1) To gain an understanding of the concept of Interlanguage
2) To begin to distinguish the differences between Input and Intake
3) To examine the characteristics of interlanguage systems
Questions/Main Ideas (Please Notes:
write these down as you think
 Interlanguage
of them)
 Also known as learner systems
 1967: S. Pit Corder, head of the Department of Applied Linguistics at Edinburgh University
in Scotland, publishes the field’s first article
 “The Significance of Learner’s Errors”
 Interlanguage
 In this paper, Corder argues that L2 research should follow the example of L1 research
 Should view the learner’s development as a product of underlying linguistic competence
(as Chomsky had argued)
 Interlanguage
 That is to say, the learner should be seen as a creator of rules
 These rules are the outcome of a process of hypothesizing
 What this means: both systematic ‘errors’, as well as completely native-like phenomena,
may be taken as evidence of a learner’s current transitional competence
 Interlanguage
 Corder himself used the term “transitional dialect”
 This was Corder’s term for the learner’s current mental rule-system or individual
‘grammar’
 IOW, it is a reflection of the learner’s attempts to make sense of the input in their own
particular way
 Interlanguage
 That is, they are trying to internally organize the information provided by the language to
which they have been exposed
 Corder argued that the L2 learner may well have a ‘built-in syllabus’, that is “an internally
programmed sequence for learning various aspects of the target grammar”
 Interlanguage
 This sequence may or may not coincide with the external syllabus imposed on him or her
by the teacher
 Hence, learners will follow a sequence of development (the built-in syllabus) because of, or
in spite of, the sequence imposed upon them from the outside
 Interlanguage
 The teacher, not understanding this built-in syllabus, may introduce a rule at a particular
time
 But, according to this view, that learner may not actually be able to learn this rule properly
unless he or she is ‘ready’ for it (that is, being at the appropriate point in the built-in
learning program)
 Interlanguage
 Early teaching of a late-learnable form, then, would be a waste of time
 Which may make the learner appear stupid or stubborn
 This, in turn, leads to a distinction between input and intake
 Input is simply anything that the learner is presented with
 Interlanguage
 Intake is what the learner is actually ready to process, that is, what they actually are able to
internalize
 Intake is determined by the supposed internal program
 Hence, at any given time, the learner, like it or not, is ignoring certain aspects of the input
 Interlanguage
 This input should, in principle, inform him or her about the target grammar, but the learner
is not yet prepared to be informed
 This, in turn, has another interesting prediction:
 Correct, native-like behavior cannot necessarily be interpreted as genuine attainment of
the native-speaker norm
 Interlanguage
 For example, learners in a formal classroom environment may be induced to produce
superficially correct behavior via some teaching technique, like repetition
 Learners may even, at a later time, be able to reproduce the form verbatim
 But may not yet have actually internalized the form
 Interlanguage
 Thus, in Corder’s view, not only should (systematic) errors be regarded as something other
than unwelcome deviations, what looks like “correct” performance should be regarded as
potentially non-native-like
 IOW, the surface may not reflect what is going on underneath
 Interlanguage
 After Corder, two other researchers published similar proposals concerning learner systems
 William Nemser (1971) proposed that second language development should be seen as a
succession of evolving systems
 Interlanguage
 These systems take the learner nearer and nearer to the target language
 And farther and farther from the ‘source’ language
 The idea here is that learners are not exposed to the complete target system in ‘one blinding
flash’
 Interlanguage
 Rather, they process the input that they receive in smaller digestible doses
 On the basis of this limited input, they can be said to create their own systems to account
for what has been processed to date
 Nemser calls these systems ‘approximative systems’
 Interlanguage
 Larry Selinker (1972) proposed a very similar approach to Nemser
 Uses the term ‘interlanguage’, which has since become the adopted term
 The significance here is that at approximately the same time, three independent researchers
proposed essentially the same thing
 Interlanguage
 That second language errors should be perceived in quite a different way from the negative
manner in which teachers (and indeed most learners) traditionally have perceived them
 All three proposals have three propositions in common
 They all assume:
 Interlanguage
 a) the existence of a complex, creative learning device (LAD);
 b) internal coherence in the learner’s language system; and
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c) the independent character of the learner’s system
[as contradictory as b and c might seem]
Interlanguage
Another way to look at it: all three views are essentially anti-behaviorist
Learners are seen not simply as being at the mercy of mechanical mother-tongue ‘habits’
All three accounts involve the idea of complex mental processing whereby the linguistic
input is organized by the learner into interlanguage systems
Interlanguage
The learner could be viewed as a creative selector and organizer of input
This fit in well with the Chomskyan view of language
Helped explain why L2 learners also produced forms that they could not possibly have
heard from a native speaker
Interlanguage
Language input, then, is not seen as being absorbed in total
Rather, some is taken in and used as a basis for forming further hypotheses about the L2
structure
Therefore, by definition, an IL must be seen as an unstable and not completely consistent
entity
Interlanguage
Nevertheless, it is an autonomous learner system
This forces us away from the teacher perspective which saw the learner’s system as flawed
or incomplete
In this view, then, an interlanguage is neither an L1 nor an L2
It is something in between
Interlanguage
Ellis claims that the concept of interlanguage involves the following premises about SLA:
1) The learner constructs a system of abstract linguistic rules which underlies
comprehension and production of L2
This system of rules is viewed as a “mental grammar”
Interlanguage
2) The learner’s grammar is permeable
That is, the grammar is open to influence from the outside, for example through input
It is also influenced from the inside, for example through omission, overgeneralization, and
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transfer errors
Interlanguage
3) The learner’s grammar is transitional
Learners change their grammar from time to time by adding rules, deleting rules, and
restructuring the whole system which results in an interlanguage continuum
That is, learners construct a series of mental grammars as they gradually increase the
complexity of their L2 knowledge
Interlanguage
For example, initially learners may begin with a very simple grammar where only one form
of the verb is represented
But over time, they add other forms, gradually sorting out the functions that these verbs can
be used to perform
Interlanguage
4) Some researchers have claimed that the systems that learners construct contain variable
rules
That is, they argue that learners are likely to have competing rules at any one stage of
development
Interlanguage
5) Learners employ various learning strategies to develop their interlanguages
The different kinds of errors learners produce reflect different learning strategies
Interlanguage
6) The learner’s grammar is likely to fossilize
That is, learners stop learning while their internalized rule system contains rules different
from those of the TL
Selinker estimates only five percent of learners go on to develop mental grammars
equivalent to native speakers
Interlanguage
The prevalence of backsliding (the production of errors representing an earlier stage of
development) is typical of fossilized learners
Fossilization does not occur in L1 acquisition and is thus unique to L2 grammars
Interlanguage
In this view of language learning, learners are to be seen as actively involved in shaping the
‘grammars’ they are learning
 IOW, learners create their own rules
Summary/Minute Paper: