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:e: Lib.. irie Marcel Didi« 3 5141 004565143
Larry Selinker Hew :tt 0
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'article demontre qUI: nous les fa~teun pcrtinents Ju prOl.:CliSUli J.~ 1'.lppn:ntisSolt;e
tl"OUvons

( Briaio. Canada. Auuralia. la deuxiemc langue grace aun exalllen (:omp.ue J~ troIS SYSlCIUCS Iinguilitiques
Zealand. Greece, Spain. Gibraltar, ucc-ifs, lesquds liont (I) la langUl: materndle de 1'~leve. (l) I... cQmpetcno: de I'dev.:
a, CypNS 'nl la deuxieme langue, sa langue inlcrmeJiaire (lrllt:djJnguoIgeJ, et (.)) Ie s)'stelllC: de
leA: langue cible. Finalemem les processus som dinits qui sonl responsablcs de I. diHereur.;.(
It. Ethiopia. Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, · tre la langue intermediaire de 1'~lhe et sa compett:n~e vuulue dans la 1.U1l:\ue ..:Iule_
.I, Mala wi, Nigeria, Rhodesia, from
hia, Siern. Leone, Somalia, South Oxford Univcnity PreIS.
·a, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda .. ~lCr Artikcl steJlt Idilr, dall wir Jie fur dell Pru ...d! Jl:S
i':wciuprol.:h~rwcllJli n:lc\Oolutcn
~rcu Kuad Neasden London N,W. 1011......
\R and MIDDLE EAS'I': !'. ten Jureh dic verglei.:helldc UlHenu,hun~ vuu drl·i pruJuktivcn Spr""hliptclIll"n edl""l.
I, Iran. Jordan, Kuwail, or from its Ovcrsea Office. In: n. Diesc sinJ (I) dil" Muttl"rliprill:hc Jes LemClhll"ll, (1) Jie tremdsprol..:hlidu: l\ulHpctCll1.
non, Saudi·Arabia. Syria, Turkey, Toronto, Melboume, Wellington, 8ombIy, . I Lernendcn, seine Zwisehensprache (ITlterla"gu"'8f J, (3) dols System der t-'n:nuls~lr...,he.
.cn Cillcutta, Madras, Karachi. Lahore, .._
· Ab.chliel~end werden die Pru:tessc beschrieben. die: fur die Oiftc:rellz zwis..:he:n dc:r Zwi •
\: Dacca, Capc Town. Job.nnc.bur,. SaliJoi-
lani.tan, Burma. Ceylon, bury. Ibadan. Apapa, Nairobi. Lusaka, , .J
nsprache des Lerne:nde:n uuJ Jel J.IlKestre:Ute:n '-:n:mdsprache:nkompctenz verillltwonlich
g Kool> lodia. Indonesia, Addis Ababa, Kuala Lumpur. Tokyo.
n, Malayda, Paki.lan. Hong Kong. New York
i ppiDei. Sin:rporc. South
ea, Tbailan •
~:;Jntroductioll
'f:'-
:', '. paper t discusses some theoretical preliminaries for res~an.:hers concerned
··.·th the linguistic aspects Qf the psychology of second-language learning,
theoretical preliminaries arc important because without them it is vir-
· ally impossible to decide what data are relevant to a psycholinguistic theory
Itbcr countries: from ""second-language learning,
Julius Groos Verlag
P. O. Box 629
'.. It is also important to distinguish between a teaching p~rsp~ctive and a
6900 Heidelberg/Germany ing one. As regards the 'teaching' perspective, one miglH very wdl write
. thodology paper which would relate desired outpot to known inputs in
~rincipled way, prescribing what has to be clune by the teacher in order to
'LCiption pcr vol.; OM ",-
:Ie copia: DM 15,- ",p the learner achieve learning. As regard,.. the 'learning' perspective. one
. ht very well write a paper describing the process of attempted learning of
'~ nd language, successful or not: teaching, textbooks. and other 'external
19I>l 1).61)00 HeiddberglGennany, HenutnSe 6" \ . ' • would constitute one, but only onc) important set of relevant variables.
P. O. Box 629. .-.}.
[ius Groos Verlag Cable Address: Groos Heidelberg .,'
.'
>

Banking Accounn: ~. "", is paper was begun during rhe 1968-69 aColdCl1l1l: yeilr while I was a visitor at the
No. 02/HH8 Deuuche Bank Hciddbeq:'-fi ]),pt. of Applied Linguistil:li. University of EJinuurKh. MallY studelm ilnJ te.l.Lher~ at
No. 19H936 Commenbank Heiddbcr, .;!dinburgh and at Washington, through their persistent L:alls for darity, have helped me
on;
.. «:rystallizc the ideas prt:senteJ in (his paper to whatcve:r Ie:vcl of dari(y is oltlaillcli here:-
f. Dr. BertH Malmberg,
venity of Lund/Sweden )1l.• Wilih to thank them und I especially wish to thank Ruth Clark, hed LukuH, frede-
f. Dr. Gerha.rd Nickel. Publis~cd "uart~~.ly .
rick Newmeyer, and Paul Van Buren. An earlier version of this paper was l"e:olJ al the
I/euirit StuugartlGcCln,.ny Erschclnt vle:ndJahrltch ~~·Stoond Inrc-mational Congress of Applied Linguistics, CambridKe University Sept., I 'jbli.
J
210 IRAJ., VOl.. XI}, AUGUST 1972
INTERLANGUAGE 211

In distinguishing between the two perspectives,' claims about the internal of second-language behavioral events, what criteria and constructs should be
structures .and processes of the le~rning organism take on a very secondary used to establish the class of those events which are to count as relevant in
character In the teaching perspective; such claims may not even be desirable. theory construction? One set of these behavioral events which has elicited
here. But s~ch claims do provide the raison dJetre for viewing second~lan~ considerable interest is the regular reappearance in second-language perfonn-
gua~ learnmg from the learning perspective. This paper is written from the ance of linguistic phenomena which were thought to be eradicated in the
learn~ng perspective, regardless of one's failure or success in the attempted , performance of the learner. A correct understanding of this phenomenon
Jeamll1g of a second language. 0.:' leads to the postulation of certain theoretical constructs, many of which have
In the learning perspective, what would constitute the psychologically_':: been set up to deal with other problems in the field. But they also help clarify
relevant data of second-language learning?-' My own position is that such:~ the phenomenon under discussion. These constructs, in turn, give us a frame-
data would be. those behavioral events which would lead to an understanding' t work within which we can begin to isolate the psychologically-relevant data
?f the psychohngu.~tlc structures and processes underlying 'attempted mean-'; of second-language learning. The new perspective which an examination of
~gful,pe~fo~mance 111 a second languagf. The term 'meaningful performance " this phenomenon gives us is thus very helpful both in an identification of
Situation Will b~ used he~e to refer to the situation where an 'adult'"' attempts . relevant data and in the formulation of a psycholinguistic theory of second-
~o express meal1lngs, whIch he may already have, in a language which he is 'language learning. The main motivation for this paper is the belief that it
111 the pro~ess of lear~i.ng. Since performance of drills in a second-language is particularly in this area that progress can be made at this time.
class",?m IS, by defm.t.on, not meaningful performance, it follows that from
a learning perspective, such performance is, in the long run, of minor interest.
Also, behavior which lH..'.curs in experiments using nonsense syllables fits into 2. '/nterlanguage' and latent structures
the same ca~egory. and. for the same reason. Thus, data resulting from these j'
Relevant behavioral events in a psychology of second-language learning
latter ~ha~.oral SItuations are of doubtful relevancy to meaningful perform- should be made identifiable with the aid of theoretical constructs which
an~ SltuattOns, and thus to a theory of second-language learning. assume the major features of the psychological structure of an adult when-
It has long seemed to me that one of our greatest difficulties in establishing 'ever he attempts to understand second-language sentences or to produce them.
a psychology of second-language learning which is relevant to the way'people ,. If, in a psychology of second-language learning, our goal is explanation of
actually learn ,"cond languages, has been our inability to identify unambi. some important aspects of this psychological structure, then it seems to me
guously the phenomena we wish to study. Out of the great conglomeration that we are concerned in large part with how bilinguals make what Wein-
reich (1953, p. 7) has called 'interli!,gual identifications'. In his book Lan-
2 I.t is ~o~ unfair to say thai almost all of the vast literature attempting to rdate psycho- guages in Contact, Weinreich discusses - though briefly - the practical need
!mguntlcs t,o srcond-Iang~agr learning, whether produced by linguists or psychologisb'; for assuming in studies of bilingualism that such identifications as that of a
IS characterized by confUSion between 'Iurning' a second language and 'teaching' a second phoneme in two languages, or that of a grammatical relationship in two lan-
language. (SeC' ,also ~ackC'y in Jakohovits, 1970, p, IX.). This confusion applies as welt guages, or that of a semantic feature in two languages, have been made by
:0 ,Imost all dl~cusslons on the topic onC' hC'ars. For example, one might hear the term
the individual in question in a language contact situation. Although Wein-
psychology l?f sC'conJ.langua~e teachill~' and not know whether the speaker is referring to'
what ~hC' teacher should do, what the learner should do. or both. This terminological . reich takes up many linguistic and some psychological questions, he leaves
confUSIOn makrs one rrogularly uncrrtain as to what is being claimed. I completely open questions regarding the psychological structure within which
3 TIlt answer to this qurstion is nul nhvivus since it is well known that theoretical consid. " we assume 'interlingual identifications' existi we assume that there is such a
:rations help point the ~ay to relC'van~ data. See, for example, Fodor (1968, p, 48): psychological structure and that it is latent in the brain. activated when one
... how we count ~havlOrs and what IS :available as a description depend, in part on
,what conceptual equipment our theorirs provide ..." . :~ .. attempts to learn a second language.
4~Adult' is dtfined as bC'ing ovtr t1~e age of 12. This notion is derived from Lennebrr"::i;.' The closest thing in the literature to the concept latent psychological struc-
(1967, e.g. pp. 156, 176) who claims that after the onset of puberty. it is difficult to' "':,.~ ture is the concept of latent language structure (Lenneberg, 1967, especially
ma~ter thr pronunciation of a second language since a "critica'" period in brain matu- I:;; . pp. 374-379) which, according to Lenneberg, (a) is an already formulated
..... ~·ratlOn has been passed, and ". .. language devel~pment tends to 'freeze'" (ibid, 156). f:-
arrangement in the brain, (b) is the biological counterpart to universal gram-
212 IRAL, VOL. XI). AUGUST 1972 1NTERLANGUAGE 213

':~- mlar, and (c) is transfonned by the infant into the realiud strHctHrt of a par. sibly have been taught this competence, since linguists are daily - in almost
ticoiar grammar in accordance with certain maturational stages. For the pu.... every generative study - discovering new and fundamental facts about par-
Poses Of this paper, I will assume the existence of the latent language structure ticular languages. Successful learners, in order to achieve this native-speaker
described by Lenneberg; I shall further assume that there exi.ts in the brain competence, must have acquired these facts (and most probably important
an already formulated arrangement which for most people is different from principles of language organization) without having explicitly been taught
and exists in addition to Lenneberg's latent language structure. It is important them.'
.... to Ilal< that with the latent structure described in this paper as compared to Regarding the ideal second-language learner who will not 'succeed' (in
. Lenneberg's, the~ is no genetic time table;' there is no direct counterpart t6 the absolute sense described above) and who is thus representative of the "ast
~ &111 grammatical concept such as 'universal grammar'; there is no guarantee majority of second-language learners, we can idealize that from the beginning
that thil latent structure will be activated at all; there is no guarantee that of his study of a second language, he has his attention focused upon one norm
... the lal<nt structure will be 'realized' into the actual structure of any natural of the language whose sentences he is attempting to produce. With this state-
.' . language (i.e. there is no guarant.. that attempted learning will prove suc- ment, we have idealized the picture we wish to sketch in the following ways:•
-., oessful), and there is every possibility that an overlapping exists between t~is the generally accepted notion 'target language' (TL), i.e. the second-language
'.latent language acquisition structure and other intellectual structure.. " the learner is attempting to learn, is here restricted to mean that there is
. The crucial a~!lillmption we arc making here is that those adults who 'sue. only one nOrm of one dialect within the interlingual focus of attention of the
reed' in learnin~ a ..cond language so that they achieve native-speaker learner. Furthermore, we focus our analytical attention upon the only ob-
"compc~nce' have somehow rea(tivateJ the latent language structure which servable' data to which We' can rflalr theoretical prt'dictions: 9 the utterances
Lenneberg describes. This absolute success in a second language affects, as
.. we know from observation, a small percentage of learners - perhaps a . 7 Chomsky (1969, p. 68) txpressts a Vtry similar vitw:
'. . mere 5 %. It follows from this a'mmption that this 5 % go through verydiffe...
".
>
:~~
", .. it must be recognized that one d~5 not Itarn the grammatical structure of a second
language through 'explanation and instruction', beyond the molt elementary rudiments,
, ent psycholinguistic processes than do most second-language learners and that,bf'
'. these successful learners may be safely ignored - in a counterfactual sense' ~ ,. for the simple reason that no one has enough uplicit knowledge about this uructurc to
provide uplanation and instruction."
for the purposes of establishing the constructs which point to the psycltolog- Chomsky gives as a detailed example a property ....hich is durly central to grammar:
ically-rdevant data pertinent to most second-language learners. Regarding that of nominalizuion (Chomsky. 1969, pp. 68 and 52-60). I ~e no point in repeating
the study of the latter group of learners (i. e. the vast majority of second- Chomsky'. detailed arguments which dearly show that a successful learner of English as
.,language learners who fail to achieve native-speaker competence), the notion .". a stcond language could not have learned to make the judgments Chomsky describes
of 'att<mpted learning' is independent of and logically prior to the notion of t':~.
through 'explanation and instruction'.
8 We have also idealiud out of our comideration differences between individual ltarners,
:successful learning'. In this paper, we will focus on attempted learning by" which makes this framework quite incomplete. A theory of Itcond-Ianguage ltarning that
this group of learnets, successful or not, and will assume that they activate'II,~ does not provide a central place for individual differences among learners C4nnot be
different, though still genetically determined structure (referred to here :u. considered acceptable. See Lawler and Selinker (forthcoming) for a discussion of this
,r. tricky question in'terms of profiles of idealized learners who differ one from the other
the latent psychological structure) wheoever they attempt to produce a sen- FJ'
with respect to types of linguistic rules and types of meaningful performance in a second
tence in the second-Ian~uage, that i, whenever they attempt to express mean" ',~x
language.
. ings, which they may already have, in a language which they are in the ," 9 There has been a great dul of misul\drrstalldin~(J'f'rsonaJ communication) of this point.
process of learnin~. .~ .~ ·~t I am not taking an antimentalist position herr. Neither am I ruling out on an a.priori
"This series of 35!illmptiol1!i must be made, I think, ~cause the second-lantJ;l,t . basis perceptual studies in a second language. However, the reader should be aware that
. guage learner who actually achieves native-speaker competence cannot pos'o .." in addition to the usual problems with dttermining whether a subject perceives or under~
'stands an utterance, the analyst in the interlingual domain cannot rtly on intuitive gram-
matical judgments since he will gain information about another system. the one the
5 Fin' pointtd out by HarnlcJ Edward~. learner is struggling with, i.e. the TL. (For a similar methodological problem in another
6 5ft Lawler and Stlinktr (forthcoming) .... htre tht rtlevance of counterfactuals to'a theory domain. see Labov. J 969, p. 71 S). Another, and perhaps the most important, argument
of terond.language Irarnin~ i~ taktn up. I!. against perceptual interlingual studies is that predictions based upon them are not test-
214 IRAL, VOL. XI). AUGUST 1971 INTERLANGUAGE 21S

.which are produced when the learner attempts to say sentences of a TL. This processes (and perhaps some additional minor ones), and that they exist in
ret,of utterances for most learners of a second language is not identical to . the latent psychological structure referred to above. I consider the following
the .hypothesized corresponding set of utterances which would have been to be processes central to second-language learning: first, language transfer;
produced by a native speaker of the TL had he attempted to express the same ~econd, transfer-of-training; third, strategies of second-language learning;
meaning a. the learner. Since we can observe that these two sets of utterances fourth, strategies ofsecond-language communication; and fifth, overgenerali-
are not identical, then in the making of constructs relevant to a theory of zation of TL linguistic material. Each of the analyst's predictions as to the
second-language learning, one would be completely justified in hypothesizing, shape of IL utterances should be associated with one or more of these, or
perhaps even compelled to hypothesize, the existence of a separate linguistic other, processes.
I)'Stem'· based on the observable output which results from a learner's at-
tempted production of a TL norm. This linguistic system we will call 'inter-
language' (IL)." One of the main points of this paper is the assumption that 3. Fossilization
predictions of behavioral events in a theory of second-language learning Before briefly describing these psycholinguistic processes, another notion I
.hould be primarily concerned with the linguistic shapes of the utterances wish to introduce for the reader's consideration is the concept of fossilization,
produced in IL•. Successful predictions of such behavioral events in meaning- a mechanism which is assumed also to exist in the latent psychological struc-
ful performance situations will add credence to the theoretical constructs ture described above. Fossilizable linguistic phenomena are linguistic items,
related to the latent psychological structure discussed in this paper. rules, and subsystems which speakers of a particular NL will tend to keep
It follows from the above that the only observable data from meaning- in their IL relative to a particular TL, I1U matter what the age of the learner
ful performance situations we can establish as relevant to interlingual identi- or amount of explanation and instruction he receives in the TL.l1 I have in
fications are: (1) utterances in the learner's native language (NL) produced mind such fo~silizable structures as the well-known 'errors': French uvular
by the learner; (2) IL utterances produced by the learner; and (3) TL utter- Irl in their English IL, American English retroflex Irl in their French
ances produced by native speakers of that TL. The.e three sets of utterance. IL, English rhythm in the IL relative to Spanish, German Time-Place order
. or behavioral events are, then, in this framework, the psychologically-rele- after the verb in the English IL of German speakers, and so on. I also have
vant data of second-language learning, and theoretical predictions in a rele- in mind less well known 'non-errors' such as Spanish monophthong vowels
vant psychology of second-language learning will be the surface structures in the IL of Spanish speakers relative to Hebrew, and Hebrew Object-Time
of IL sentences. surface order .fter the verb in the IL of Hebrew speakers relative to English.
By setting up these three sets of utterances within one theoretical frame- Finally, there are fossilizable structures that are much harder to classify such
work, and by gathering as data utterances related to specific linguistic struc- as some features of the Thai tone ..ystem in the IL of Thai speakers relative
tures in each of these three systems, (under the same experimental conditions, to English. It is important to note that fossilizablc structures tend to remain
if possible) the investigator in the psychology of second-language learning can as potential performance, reemergi ng 1:l in the productive performance of
begin to study the psychuling\listic prucesses which establish the knowledge an IL even when seemingly eradicated. Many of these phenomena reappear
which underlies IL behavior. I would like to suggest that there are five central in IL performance when the learner's attention is focused upon new and
difficult intellectual subject malter or when he is in a state of anxiety or
other excitement, and strangely enough, sometimes when he is in a state of
able in 'meaningful performant:(' ~jlua(j()ns' (see definition above); a reconstruction of extreme relaxation. Note that the claim is made here that, whatever the
. the nenl upon the part of the Ie-arner would have to bt- made in a perceptual inter- calise, the well-observed phenomenon of 'backsliding' by second-language
'lingualnudy. Such difficulties do not exist when predictions are related to thc shape of
utterances produced as the result uf the learner attempting to exprcss in the TL meanings
which he may alrtady havC'. 12 Gillian Brown has pointed out (penonal communication) that we should worke here
10 -Notions of such separate' lin~uistil' ~y~te'm~ have' been dC'vC'lo~d independently by Jako~ towards a dynamic model where fossilization would be defined relative to various, pcr~
bo.iu (1969) and N,m«, (1971). haps arbitrary, chronological a~C'Kroups.
I~I_ ~ notion 'interlanguagc' is intrudurec1 in SelinkC'r (1969). 13 John Lavcr has helped me to clarify this point.
216 IRAL, VOL. XI}, AUGUST 1972 INTERLANGUAGE 217

leatMn from a TI. norm is not, as has been generally believed, either random of second-language learning; if they are a result of an identifiable approach
or.toward the speaker's NL, but toward an IL norm," by the learner to communication with native speakers of the TL, then we
.' A crucial fact, perhaps the most crucial fact, which any adequate theory are dealing with strategies of second-language communication; and, finally,
of second-language learning will have to explain is this regular reappearance if they are a result of a dear overgeneralization of TL rules and semantic
or=mergl'nce in IL productive performance of linguistic structures which features, then we are dealing with the overgeneralization of TL linguistic
~ thought to be eradicated. This behavioral reappearance is what has led material. I would like to hypothesize that these five processes are processes
me to postulate the reality of fossilization and ILs, It should be made clear which are central to second-language learning, and that each process forces
that the reappearance of such behavior is not limited to the phonetic level. fossilizable material upon surface IL utterances, controlling to a very large
Porexample, some of the subtlest input information that a learner of a second extent tht' surface structures of tl1esc.' utterances.
language has to ma'itn rcg-arc1s subcategori1.ation notions of verbal comple-
Combinations of these processes produce what we might term entirely
""",tation. Indian English as an IL with regard to English" seems to fossilize
fossilized IL competences. Coulter (1968) presents convincing data to demon-
the 'that complement' or V thaI construction for all verbs that take sentential
strate not only language transfer but also a srratl'gy of communication com-
complements, Even when the correct form'has been learned by the Indian
"''- mon to many second-language learners. This strategy of communication dic~
.peaker of English, this type of knowledge is the first he seem. to lose when
. . 'tates to them, internally as it were, that they know enough of the TL in order
bi. attention is diverled to new intellectual subject matter or when he has
to communicate. And they stop learning.'· Whether they stop learning en-
not spoken the TL for even a short time. Under conditions such as these, there
tirely or go on to learn in a minor way, e,g. adding vocabulary as experience
is a regular ~appearam. e of the 'that complement' in IL performance for all
demands [Jain (1969 insists they must] is, it seems to me, a moot point. If
sentential complements.
these individuals do not also learn the syntactic information that goes with
lexical items, then adding a few new lexical items, say on space traveJ, is, I
4. Frot Ctntral ProcesJe5 would argue, of little consequence, The important thing to note with regard
to the evidence presented in Coulter (1968) and Jain (1969) is that nOt only
It· i. my contention that the most interesting phenomena in IL performance
can entire IL competences be fossilized in individual learners performing in
are:those item., rules, and subsystems which are fossilizable in terms of the
their own interlingual situation," but also in whole groups of individuals,
fi~ processes listed above. If it can be experimentally demonstrated that
resulting in the emergence of a new dialect (here Indian English), where
fosliliuble items, rules, and subsvstems which occur in IL performance are
fossilized IL competences may be the _normal situation.
a result of the NL, then we are d;aling with the process of language transfer;
if these fossilizable item" rules, and subsystems are a result of identifiable We will now provide examples of these processes. The examples presented
it~ jn training procedure!!, then we are dealing with the process known as in 'ection 3 are almost certainly the result of the process of language transfer.
the transfer-of-trainirlg; if they are a result of an identifiable approach by A few examples relating to the other processes should suffice for this paper.
the learner to the material to be learned, then we are dealing with strategies
4.1 Overgcneralization ofTL rules is a phenomenon well-known to language
14 St~raJ ptopl~ have ~ljntC'd (lui (~rs(lnal cummunication) that. in this paragraph, there
teachers. Speakers of many languages could produce a sentence of the follow-
".pptars to ~ a cunnC'l'rion soldy ~twC'C'n fossilization and errors. This connection i~ ing kind in their English IL:
. not intended sinct if lurm oul thai 'corrr-ct' Ihin~~ can also ree-merge- whe-n thought to
~.eradic.ttd.C'lptcial/)'if Iheo)' arC' caused hy proc('ues other than language tran.fcr. \
S -Ktith Brown (J'f'tlnn:tl communiC'l\fion) has arKurd that the sociolinguistic status of the 16 To describe- this lituation. Jain (1969) speaks of functional comptUnCt, Corder {I 967)
."languages' or 'dillle'cts' callC'd Indian English, Filipino Englillh. Wesl African English, using the te-rm transitional comptUnct focuses on the- provisional aspect of developing
Welt AfriC2n F~n(h. and m on. places them in a different category from that of the 'competen~' in a second language. Both these notions owe- tht'ir uistence- in the first
IL .ituatktn which I havt httn tftsaibillK. From th~ sociolinguistic point of virw this place, to Chomsky's (1965) notion of linguistic com~tence which is to be distinguished
'.tiunxnt might be jUHified. hUI I am t:ont:e-rne-d in ,his pa~r with a psychological per- from actual linguistic ~rformance.
IpKtive and the rde-vanl idulizat;ons st'em to me II) be identical in all of these! cases. 17 An 'interJin~ual situation' is defined as a specific combination of NL. n, and JL
218 IRAl. VOl.. XiJ, AUC;UST 19n INTERLANGUAGE 219

(I) What did he intended to say?" . of this fossilization can be seen with respect to speakers of this IL over the
age of J 8. who even though they are const:iously aware of the distinction and
where the past ten~e morpheme -ed is extended to an environment in which, , of their recurrent error. in fact. regularly produce he for both he and she.
to the learner, it could IOKically apply, hut just docs not. The Indian speaker stating that they feel they do not necd to make this distincfion in order to
of English whu proJuces the collocation drive a bicycle in his IL performance, communicate. 20 In this case, theil, the fossilizable error is due originally to
:u in (2): a type of transfer-of-training and later to a particular strategy of second-
(2) After thinking little I decided to start on the bicycle as slowly as I language communication,
could as it was not possible to drive fast. 4.3 Concerning the notion 'strategy' little is known in psychology about what
iJ most probably overgeneralizing the use of drive to all vehicles aain, 1969, constitutes a strategy; and a viable definition of it does not seem possible at
pp. 22 Ilc 24; but see footnote 26 here). Most learners of English quickly learn present. Even less is known about strategies which learners of a second lan-
the English rule of contraction which forms things like the concert's from guage use in their attempt to master a TL and express meanings in it. It has
tht conelr/ is. but then these learners max overgeneralize this rule to produce been pointed out 21 that learner strategies are probably culture-bound to some
sentences like: extent. For example, in many traditional cultures, chanting is used as a learn-
ing device, clearly relating to what is learncd in these situations. Crucially,
(3) Max is happier than Sam's these days. it has been argued" that strategies for handling TL material evolve when-
in their English IL. Though this sentence is hypothetical, it illustrates an ever the learner realizes, either consciously or subconsciously, that he has no
earlier point. The learner of English who produces contractions correctly in linguistic competence with regard to some aspect of the TL. It cannot be
aU environments must have learned the following constraint without -ex" doubted that various internal strategies" on the part of the second-language
planation and instnu:tion'. since this constraint was discovered only recently: learner affect to a large extent the surface structurc..'!i of sentences underlying
"contraction of auxiliaries . .. cannot occur when a constituent immediately IL utterances. But exactly what these strategies might be and how they might
following the auxiliary to be contracted has been deleted," e.g. 'happy' in work is at present pure conjecture. Thus, one can only roughly attribute the
(3) (Lakoff, in press). Dozens of examples of overgeneralization of TL rules source of the examples presented herein to one or another strategy.
are provided in Richards (1970). One example of a strategy ofsecond-language learning that is widespread
in many interlingual situations is a tendency on the part of learners to reduce
".2 The transfer-ol-training is a process which is quite different from lan- the TL to a simpler system. According to Jain (1969, pp. 3 & 4), the results
guage transfer (see Selinker, 1969) and from overgeneralization of TL rules. of this strategy are manifested at all levels of syntax in the IL of Indian
It underlies the source of a difficulty which Serbo-Croatian speakers at all speakers of English. For example, if the learner has adopted the strategy that
lovels of English proficiency regularly have with the he/she distinction, all verbs are either transitive or intransitive, he may produce IL forms such
producing in their En~lish IL he on almost every occasion wherever he.or as:
she would be called for according to any norm of English. There is no lan- 4) 1 am feeling thirsty.
guage transfer dfect hen,.' sjll«~. with reganJ to animateness, the distinction or
between he and sbe is the same in Serbo-Croation as it is in English. '9 Accord.. (5) Don't worry, I'm hearing him.
ing to a standard contrastive analysis then there should be no trouble. It and in producing them seems to have adopted the further strategy that the
seems to be the case that the resultant IL form, in the first instance, is due realization of the category 'aspect' in its progressive form on the surface is
directly to the transfer-of-training; textbooks and teachers in this interlingual alw'ays with -ing marking (for further discussion, see Jain, 1969, p. Hf.).
situation almost always present drills with he and never with she. The extent
20 Repllrh'd hy GtorJ.:t' Ml:Cready (p~nonall'omnHllljl:;lti(ltl)"
IS This ICnt~nl'l,' And sentt'lll"t'S likt' it wert 111 f;t(l produced consistently by a middle-aged 21 Ian Pear~on (personal communication).
22 Elaine Tarone (ptnon,,1 communicOllinn).
IsrU'li who was v~ry Ouenl in En/;:lidL
. .Jt I am indept~ 10 Wayles Browne (pasona Immmunication) fUI" clarification of this point. 23 That is. ",hal Cordt'r refers to a~ the learner's "built-in syllabus" (Corder, 1967).
--,"
220 IRAL. VOL XI). AUGUST 1972
INTERLANGUAGE 221

Coulter (1968) reports systematic errors occurring in the English IL per- one ~nd half-an-hour; hypercorrection, e.g. the Israeli who in attempting to
fonnance of two elderly Russian speakers of English, due to another strategy get tid of his uvular fricative for English retroflex (r] produces (w ] befort.
which seems also to be widespread in many interlingual situations: a tendency front vowels, "a vocalization too far forward';15 and most assuredly others
on the part of second-language learners to avoid grammatical formatives such such as long exposure to signs and headlines which according to Jain (1969)
at articles (6), plural forms (7), and past tense forms (8): affect by themselves the shape of English IL utterances of Indians, or at least
(6) It was'" nice, nice trailer, '" big one. (Coulter, 1968, p. 22) reinforce more important processes such as language transfer.
(7) I have many hundred carpenter my own. (ibid, p. 29)
(8) I was in Frankfort when I fill application. (ibid, p. 36) 5. Problems with this perspective
This tendency could he the result of a learning straltgy of simplification, but There are certainly many questions one might wish to ask regarding the per-
Coulter (1968, p. 7 fl.) attrihutes it to a communicatiOtl Slraltgy due to the spective presented so far in this paper; I ,hall attempt to deal with five
past experience of the speaker which h~s shown him that if he thinks about (5.1-5.5). The reader should bear in mind that we are here calling for ti,e
grammatical processes while attempting to express in English meanings which discovery, description and experimental testing of fossilizable items, ruk-s
he already has, then his speech will be hesitant and disconnected, leading and subsystems in interlanguages and the relating of these to the above-
native speakers to be impatient with him. Also, Coulter claims that this stra- mentioned processes - especially to the central ones. What seems to be most
. ugy of stcond-language communication seemed to dictate to these speaken ~rom.isi~g for study is the observation concerning fossilization. Many IL
that a form such as the English plural "was not necessary for the kind of ImgUlstlC structures are never really eradicated for most second-language
communicating they used" (ibid, p. 30). learners; manifestations of these structures regularly reappear in IL productive
Not all of these strategies, it musl be pointed out, are conscious. A sub- performance, especially under conditions of anxiety, shifting attention, and
conscious strategy of second-language learning called Hcue-copying" has been second-language performance on subject matter which is new to the learner.
experimented with hy Crothers and Suppes (1967, p. 211) on Americans learn- It is this observation which allows us to claim that these psycholinguisti..:
ing Russian morphological con~epts. This "copy the cue" strategy is most structures, even when seemingly eradicated, are still somehow present in thl'
probably due tu what they call "probability matching", where the chance brain, stored by a fossilization mechanism (primarily through one of the'"
that the learner will solect an alternative morphological ending related to five processes) in an IL. We further hypothesize that interlingual identifica-
the cue noun is not random. Crothers and Suppes do not provide examples tions uniting the three li.nguistic systems (NL, IL, and TL) psychologically,
of the result uf thi, 'trate~y in meaningful performance situations; an example are activated in a latent psychological structure whenever an individual
would be the r at till' end of words like California and saw which foreign attempts to produce TL senteIOce,.
students of English who have had teachers from the Boston area regularly
reproduce in their Engli,h It. 5.1 The first problem we wish to deal with is: can we always unambiguousl"
identify which of these processes our observable data is to be attributable to',
4.4 To cunclude thi, 'eetion, it ,hould be pointed out that beyond the five
Most probably nol. It has been frequently pointed out (personal communi-
50-called central processes, there exist many other processes which account
cation) that this situation is quite common in psychology. In studies on mem-
to some degree for th(' surface form of IL utterances. One might mention
ory. for example, one often does not know whether one is in fact studying
spelling pronunciations. e.g. speakers of many languages pronounce final
"storage' or "retrieval'. In our case, we may not know whether a particular
-tr on English words as I ~'l plus some form of r; cognate pronunciation, e.g~
constituent IL concatenation is a result of language transfer or of transfer-
English athlete pronounced as [atlit] by many Frenchmen whether or not
of-training or, perhaps, of both. 26 But this limitation need not deter us, even
they can produCt· Ifll in other English words;" holophrase learning Gain,
19(9), e. g. lor h,dr,lII-hollr the Indian learner of English may produce
2S Example- from Briana Statt'man (personal ~mnmullj(ali()n).
26 Th~ drivt 4 bicyclr t'xample Rivell in u·c,ion 4 may. in fact, fit this situation (Ji~e Jain.
24 Eumpl~ frtlm Tum Huckin (pt'f$onal communication). 1969, p. 24).
222 IRA!.. VOl.. XI). AU<;UST 1_71 INTERLANGUAGE 223

if we cannot always sort things out absolutely. By applying the constructs 5.3 The third problem to be treated here concerns the apparent difficulty of
suggeoted in this paper, I believe that relevant data can be found in the very fitting the following type of question into the idealized domain I have been
-many 5e'cond-Janguage-learning situations around us. sketching: how does a second-language-learning novice become able to pro-
duce IL utterances whose surface constituents are correct, i. e. 'correct" with
5.2 The second problem i:'\: how call we systematize the notion fossilization respect to the TL whose norm he is attempting to produce? This question
so that from the basi~ of theoretical constructs, we can predict which items finally brings us face-to-face with the notion of 'success' in absolute terms:
in which interlingual situations will be fossilized? To illustrate the difficulty productive performance in the TL by the second-language learner which is
of attempting to answer this question, note in the following example the identical to that produced by the native speaker of that TL.'· We noted this
non-rnersibility of fossilization effects for no apparent reason. According in section 2 so as to exclude from our idealized domain of inquiry those learn-
to a contrastive analysis, Spanish speakers should have no difficulty with ers of second languages who reactivate 2Q the latent language structure that
the he/she distinction in English, nor should English speakers have any is realized into a native language. In this paper, we are concentrating on
difficulty with the corresponding distinction in Spanish. The facts are quite attempted learning of a second language, unsuccessful in this absolute sense.
different, however: Spanish speakers do, indeed, regularly have trouble with Of course, 'success' in second-language learning need not be defined so ab-
this distinction, while the revene does not ~eem to occur with English learnen solutely. The teacher or the learner can be satisfied with the learner's achiev-
of Spanish." Unlike the Serbo-Croatian example mentioned above, in thil ing what hal been called 'communicative competence' (see, for example,
case there is no clear-cut explanation why Spanish speakers have trouble and Jakobovits. 1970, or Hymes, in press). But this is not the issue here. As was
English speakers do not. In cases such as these, it may turn out that one pro-
cess, e.g. language transfer or transfer-of-training, overrides other considera~
tions, but the stating of the governing conditions may prove very difficult 28 A! wa~ pointed out in footnote 7, Chomsky (1969, p. 68) also adds the ability to provide
indeed. native-speaker-like grammaticality judgments.
In principle, one feels forced to agree with Stephanie Harries (personal 29 Note that this reactivation may be the only explanation possible for an individual who
Communication) who claims that until a theory of second-language learning learns any part of a second language wdl. In this light, Cheryl Goodenough (personal
'can ~nswer questions like: "How do I recognize fossilizable structures in communication) has objectt'd to tht' qualitativt' split bt'tween the 5 % who succt'ed and the
rest of all second· language lurllt'rs. Since in this paPf'r we art' not concentrating on success
advance?" or "Why do some things fossilize and others do not?", all experi- in a second language. as one would in the teaching approach, but on tht' attempt to iso-
ments conducted within the framework provided in this paper must be re- late the latent psychological structure which determines, for any learner, the system
garded as lexploratory' in nature. (To put things in more familiar jargon: with underlying attempted production of a TL norm where the total t'fft'ct of this output ,is
regard. to fossilization, our results are 'descriptive' and not 'explanatory' in clearly non-identity to the hypothesiud Tl norm, then resolotion of this issue should
not affect the discussion, The importance {lfisolating this 5 % is tht' speculation that thest'
natu"".) But this task of prediction may prove to be impossible; certainly as
individuals may not go through an II..
P""d Lukoff points out (personal communication) this task, on the face of Reibtl (1969) stresses the role of tht' latent lan~uage structure in second-language learning
it, may be even tougher than trying to predict errors in second-language by ~uggesting that it is only when sec(lnd-Iall~lla~t' It'arnt'u do the wrong things th,u lht'y
ptrformance - a task notably lat.:kin~ in success. . do nut "succt'ed," i.e. "we s('ek to f'xplain dif!'t'renct's betwt't'n adult learnt'rs, not in
The major justification one has for writing about the construct 'fossili- terms of difft'rences in the innate learnin~ abilities, but rather in terms of tht' way in
which they are applied." (p. 8). Kline (1970) attt'mpu to providt' a point of contact bt'-
zation' at this stage of knowledge is that descriptive knowledge about ILs
tween Reibel's views and mine by suggesting that any rt'or~anintion of an Il to idt'ntit)·
, 'which turns out to suggest predictions verifiable in meaningful performance with a TL must use the kinds of capacities and abilities Rt'ibel dt'scribes.
lituations, leads the way to a systematic collection of the relevant data; thil A different opposinl': vit'w to the penpectivt' of this papt'r has been prt'st'nted by Sandra
task, one which is impossible without this construct, is expected to be relevant Hamlett and Michael Seitz (pt'uonal communication) who have argued that, even for
,'in serious theory construction in a psychology of second-language learning. the vast majority of second·language learners, there is no already formulatt'd arrange-
ment existing in the brain, but that the latt'llt psychological structure alluded to hert' is
devdoped, partly at least, by strategies which ,hangt' up to tht' age of 12 and r~'ll1ain
with an individual for the rest of his lift'. Tht're st't'ms to be at present no critical eOlpiril:al
test for deciding bt'tween the~e two altern;uives.
~2"" Eumplt' from Sol Sarnru (rt'r~llIlal communication),
224 IRAL. VOL. XIJ. AUGUST 1972 INTERLANGUAGE 225

point<d out in section I, tho emphasis upon what the t<acher has to do in Concerning underlying linguistic structure, we ,hould perhaps not be too
ordor to help the learner ad,iev< successful learning belongs to the 'teaching' surprised if it turns out not to matter whose model we need, if an eclectic
ponpoctive, which i, not the perspectiv< of this paptr. Porhaps tho rath.. one will do, or even if such notions as the 'cycle" 'tree pruning', or even 'deri-
curious confusion in the literature of 'learning a second language' with 'teach· vation' prove not to have much relevance. If it is reasonable to assume that
ing a second language' (see footnote 2) can be <xplained by tho failure to soc the only linguistically-relevant unit of a theory of ,econd-Ianguage learning
a psychology nf 'econd-Ianguage learning in terms oth<r than thos< rdat<d is one which is identified interlingually across three linguistic systems (NL,
to '.uccess'. For example, typical learning-theory exp..iments when done in TL, and IL) by means of fossilization and the processes described in section 4,
tho domain of second-language learning would d<mand knowledge of whore then it follows that no unit of linguistic theory, as these units are currently
tho l<arner will tend to end up, not where we would like him to end up, conceived, could fit this criterion. More generally, we should state that there
Exporiments of this type would also demand knowledge of wher< tho s<cond- is no necessary connection between relevant units of linguistic theory and
language lea rnt' r begins. We would claim that prerequisite to both th"e linguistically-relevant units of a p'ychology of second-language learning,·'"
typo. of knowledge are detailed descriptions of ILs - description' not pre· That this assumption is obviously c..'orrcct is dear to me; that many linguists
~ntly available (0 us. Thus, such experiments at present are premature, with will not be convinced is also dear.
the results bound (0 prove conrusin~. For evidence of the relevant unit of surface syntactic structure, applying
Specifically concerning the problem raised in the first sentence of 5.3, it at one and the same time to these three linguistic systems, I refer the reader
'eem, to me that this question, though relevant to the psychology of second- to experimental evidence appearing in my paper on language transfer (Selin-
language learning. i, one that should also not be asked for the present since ker, 1969). In those experiments subject' re'ponded orally in their native lan-
its asking depend, upon our under'tanding clearly the psychological extent guage to questions presented orally in their NL and attempted to respond in
of interlingual identifications. For example, before we can discover how sur- English to parallel questions presented in English. The questions came from
fa~ constituents in all IL get reorganized to identity with the TL, we must an interview designed to elicit manifestations of specific types of surface
have a c1.. r idea of what i, in that IL, even if we cannot explain why it structures in certain syntactic domains. The only experimental instruction
i'thore, In Selinker (1969) I believe I have shown that within a very limit<d given was for each subject to speak in a 'complete sentence'. Replicated results
inter/jngual situation, the basis from which linguistic mat..ial must be r__ showed that the interlingual unit of ,urface syntactic structure transferred
organized in order to be 'correct' has been operationally and unambiguously from NL to IL (not to TL) was a unit roughly equivalent to the traditional
ntablished. But I have there 'aid nothing about the way in which successful direct object or to an adverb of place, an adverb of time, an adverb of degree,
leamen do in fact reorgani7_e linguistic material from this particular IL. Here and so on. I would claim that this unit, a ,urface constituent labelled the
'We can speculate that as part (If a definition of 'learning a second language', syntactic string, has a behaviora~ unity both in the experimental situation and
'sucoessfullearning' of a 'econd language for most learners, involves, to a largo
extent, the reorganization of linguistic material from an IL to identity with
a particular TL. 30 It is important to b~ar in mind that w~ ar~ here workinK in the domain of 'interlingual
identifications' and thus are in a different counterfaetual domain (Lawler and Selinker.
forthcoming) than linguists who work in the domain of the "ideal sp~ak~r-listener"
5.4 Th< fourth problem is: (a) what are the relevant units of this hypothesiz<d
(Chl)msky. 1965), It se('ms to me that researchers in the psychology of sN:ond-language
latent psychological stnKture within which interlingual identifications exist learning a~ in the analo~IHlS pnsition of the language teacher who, Chomsky (1966)
and (b) is there any evidence for the existence of these units? If the relevant admonishes, has the burden of deciding what in linguistics and psychology is relevant
data of the psychology of ,econd-Ianguage learning are in fact paralld ult<r- to his needs.
anees in three linguistic sy,tem, (NL, IL, and TL), then it seems to me reason- Nevertheless, the Jinguistic status of ILs has still to be dl'termined. One would like to
know, for example, whether such things as transformatiolU (lCCUr ill IL grammars, Watkin
abl< to hypothesize that the only relevant, one might say, 'psychologically
(1970) asks whether the rules of IL are of the same general construction or shape as the
real', interlingual unit is one which can be described simultaneously for par- rules for the same phenomena ill the second lan~uage. "or are they in a 'reroded' form?".
allel data in the three 'ystem'. and, if possible, for experimentally-induced. Watkin's data implies the same type of fossilization rl.'lated to som~ similarity among
data in those systems. rules of different ILs.
226 IRAL. VOL. XIJ, AUGUST 1971 INTERLANGUAGE 227

~.. 'in meaningful performance situations,31 and thus, if the results were repli- unit as well as for its candidacy as the unit of realizational structure in inter·
;~.ated in other 'interlingual situations' (i.e. other combinations of NL, TL, lingual identifications.
In<f IL), would account for a large class of IL events. Concerning the notion of relevant units on the phonological level, it seems
With regard to a 'realizational unit', i.e. a syntactic string tied to a specific to me that Briere (1968) has demonstrated that for his data there are several
semantic notion, replicated results from this same series of experiments show relevant units. The relevant units do not always correspond to known lin·
that responses concerning a topic such as 'subjects studied in school', as 0P" guistic units, but rather would depend on the sounds involved; sometimes the
posed to other topics such as 'buying and receiving things' and 'seeing movies taxonomic phoneme is the unit, but the unit in other cases seems not to be
and parades', affected very drastically the surface concatenation of the abov.. describable in purely linguistic terms. Briere evolved an experimental tech-
mentioned strings." This <emantic effect on surface syntactic order in an nique which imitated to a large extent actual methods of teaching advocated
interlingual study, if further replicated in other interlingual situations, would by applied structural linguists: listening to TL sounds, attempted imitation,
provide very powerful evidence for the transfer of the whole realizational use of phonemic transcription, physiological explanations, and so on. If I
may be allowed to reinterpret Briere's data, it seems to me that he has been
working, in another interlingual situation, with exactly the three systems we
, 31 11le' _urfa~ domain considered wa~ constitutnt concatenation after the verb. Sample are discussing here, NL, n, and IL: first, NL utterances which were hypo-
re.ults showed Hatislically-si~nirlcant paralld trends for Nt (Hebrew) and It (English) thesized utterances in American English; second, TL utterances which were
Objtet and T,mt constituents on the one hand and (direct) Objtct and AdfJerb (of
actual utterances in the 'composite language' Briere set up, each utterance
deCr'ff) on the other. That is, whenner an C?biect constituent and a Ti"!t co~stituent
occurrtd after rhto v~rh. thto statistically-dommant surface order was ObJ~ct- T,me, and having been produced by a native speaker of French, Arabic, or Vietnamese;
not the revtrH', both concerning NL respon5es, e. Jt. (9), and IL usponse5, e.g, (10): third, IL utterances which were actual utterances produced by native speakers
(9) raiti ret ha..eret hauJ [Iifney huaimJ of this NL when attempting to produce this particular TL norm. Regarding
'I saw that movie two weeks ago' the sounds Ii.! and I~I in his TL corpus, the unit identified interlingually
(10) I m" [Mrs. Cosman) [today]
across these three systems is the taxonomic phoneme defined distributionally
But whenever an Object con~tituent and an Adverb constitucont occurred after thco verb,
the statistically-dominant surface ordcor waS Adverb-Obj~Cl. and not the reverse. both within the syllable as opposed to within the word (Briere, 1968, p. 73). For
concerning NI. rr'pon,r', co.~. (11) and II. ~sponAeS. e. g. (12): other sounds the relevant phonological unit of interlingual identifications is
(I I) ani ohev Imcoodl luatim] 'I like movies very much' not the taxonomic phoneme, but may be based on phonetic parameters some
(12) I like I nry mu(:h I I movies 1 of which, he says, are probably not known (ibid., pp. 7J & 64).
Importantly, these and all other t'xptrimental results were controlled informally by ob-
If these units in the domain of interlingual identifications are not neces-
serving speakers of all ages over 12, from this interlingual situation, producing IL utter-
ances in meaningful prrformance situations.
sarily the same units as those if!. the native-speaker domain, then where do
32 That is, wh~n th~ respons~~ wncrrned th~ tl)pic 'subjecu studied at school', there occured they come from? An interesting bit of speculation about native-speaker per-
an almost absolute trt'nd toward both the NL (Hebrew) oder Place-Object noun after formance units is provided by Haggard (1967, p. 335) who states that search-
the verb, e.~. (D), and toward the ~ame IL (English) order of surface constituent" e.,_ ing for «the unit" in native-speaker speech·perception is a waste of time.
(14): Alternative units may be available to native speakers, for example under noise
(13) ani nlca lilmlHJ Ihaunivenita] [biologiaJ
'I wan I to stud}" biolll~)' at the university' conditions." While other explanations are surely possible for the wellknown
(14) I will study lin the university] (biology] fact that noise conditions affect performance in a second language, and some-
But when the responses concerned topics such as the other two topics mentioned in the, times drastically, we can not ignore the possible relevance of Haggard's
teo_to thert occurrt'd an almost absolute trend toward both the NL order ObiKIItOv.. intriguing suggestion: That alternative language units are available to indi-
PI.ct after the verb, e.g. (15) and toward the same 11. order of surface constituent., viduals and that these units are activated under certain conditions. It fits in
•. g. (16): very well with the perspective outlined in this paper to postulate a new type
(l5) kaniti ret hahonl (haxanut]
'I bought the watch in the store'
(16) 1 bouKht [my walchl [in Tel Av;v) 33 The fact that Haggard is concerned with alternative units which are inclusive in lar~r
For further details, see Stlinkt'r (1969) sections 3.,41 and 3."2. units has no bearing on the issue under discussion in this section.
"' ,
~':1:l 1/\:\1,.\\1[ ..\ ..1, ;\lH,U'lj I'//!. IN IlKLANGUAtiJ! U\h-...

vi' psycholinguistic unit, available to an individual whenever he attempts to (NL), target language (TL), intedanguage (IL), fossilization, syntactic string,
produce senten~t."s in a second language. Thisinterlingual unit stretches, we taxonomic phoneme, phonetic feature.
hypothesize, across three linguistic systems: NL, IL, and TL, and becomes 4) The psychologically-relevant data of second-language learning are
available to the idealized second-language learner who will not achieve native- utterances in TL by native speakers, and in NL and lL by second-language
speaker competence in the TL, whenever he attempts to express meanings, learners.
which he may already have, in a TL he is learning, i.e. whenever he attemp.ts 5) Intedingual identifications by second-language learners is what unites
to produce a TL norm. These units become available to the learner only after the three linguistic systems (NL, TL, and IL) psydlOlogically. These learners
he has switched his psychic set or state from the native-speaker domain to focus upon one norm of the TL.
the new domain of intedingual identifications. I would like to postulate 6) Theoretical predictions in a relevant psychology of s«olld-Ianguage
further that these relevant units of interlingual identifications do not come learning must be the surface structures of IL sentences.
from anywhere; they are latent in the brain in a latent psychological structure, 7) Successful second-language learning, for most learners, is the rcorgania
available to an individual whenever he wishes to attempt to produce the zation of linguistic material from an IL to identity with a particular U.
norm of any TL. •
8) There exist five distinct processes which are «ntralto second-language
5.5 The final diffi<ulty with this perspective which we will treat here is the learning: language transfer, transfer-of-training, strategies of second-language
following: how can we experiment with three linguistic systems, creating the learning, strategies of second-language communication, and overgeneraliza-
!lame experimental 'onditions for ea,h, with ont: unit which is identified tion of TL linguistic material.
interlingually across tht."se systems? J can only refer the reader once again to 9) Each prediction in (6) should be made, if possible, relative to one of
my own experiments on language transfer (Selinker, 1969) where manifesta· the five processes in (8).
lions of desired con,atcilations of particular surface syntactic structures were 10) There is no necessary connection between rdevant units of linguistic
obtained in what, I believe, was an efficient and valid manner. An oral inter- theory and linguistically-relevant units of a psychology of second-language
view technique was used i the purpose of the interview was to achieve a similar learning.
framework in the three systems whi,h served the interviewer as a guid~ in 11) The ollly linguistically-relevant unit of a psychology of second-lan-
his attempt to elicit certain types of sentences from the subjects. Upon request, guage learning is one which is identified interiinguaJly a~ross the three lin-
I am prepared to make available a transcript of this interview as well as some guistic systems: NL, TL, and I L.
thuughts for its improvement. r~lIturc experimental work, to be undertaken 12) The syntactic string is the unit of surface strUl.:ture transfer and part
within this perspel.:tive, will gu toward investigating the kind and extent of of the unit of realizational transfer.
linguistic structures amenable to this partkular technique.
13) The taxonomic pboneme is. in the case of some sounds, the unit of
intedingual phonology, while in oth... cases no purely linguistic unit seems
relevant.
6, Summar)'
14) There exists a latent psychological structure, i.e. an already formu-
The following are some assumptions which are necessary for research into the lated arrangement in the brain, which is activ~ted whenever an adult attempts
linguistic aspects of the psy<hology of second-language learning and which to produce meanings, which he may have, in a second language which he is
have been suggested by the above discussion. learning.
1) In a theory of second-language learning, those behavioral events which 15) lntedingual identifications, the units mentioned in (12) und (13),
are to be counted as relevant data are not immediatdy obvious. and the processes listed in (8) exist in this latent psychological structure.
2) These data have to be organized with the help of certain theoretical 16) Fossilization, a mechanism whid\ also exists in this latent psychologa
t:onstructs. ical structure, underlies surface linguistic material which speakers will tend
3) Some theoretical constructs relevant to the way in which 'adults· ac~ to keep in their IL productive performance, no lUaller what the age of the
tually learn second languages are: interlingual identifications, native language learner or the amount of instruction he receives in the TL.
230 IRA!. VOL. X13. AU<;UST 1972
INTERLANGUAGE 2\

17) The fossilization mechanism accoonts for the phenomenon of the Crothers, Edward and Suppes. Patrick: F.xpniments in St'cond-Langudgt' Ltarning. AcaJcllll'
regular reappearance in IL productive performance of linguistic material Press. 1967.
which was thou~ht to be eradicated. Fodor. Jerry A,: Psychological Explan.lIion: An ItltrodllCtion to the Philosphy oj Psycho/oKl
Random HousC'. 196ft
18) This latent psy{;holo~ical structure, for most learners, is different
Ha~~~rd, Mark P.~ "Mo~lels and f);ua ill Spel.·ch Pen:eption··. in Models/or the Ptraptl'"
from and exi,t, in addition to the latent language structure described by
oj Sptfch and Vm~al form, ed. oy Weiant Wathen-Dunn. M.I.T. PrC'ss, 1967. 3JI _ 3Y,l
Lenneber~ (1967, pp. 374-379). Hymes, Dell: On Communicative Competence, PC'nguin, (in press).
19) The,e two latent structure' differ in the following ways: (a) the latent Jain, M~ha vir: "Error Analysis of all Indian English Corpus." Unpublished paper, Uni\'ersil \
p'ychological structure has no genetic time-table; (b) it has no direct counter- of Edmburgh, 1969.
part to any grammatical concept; (c) it may not be activated at all; (d) it may Jakobovits, Leon A.: "Second Language Learning and Transfl"r Theory: a Theoretical Asse~,
Illent", Language Ltarning, t 9 (Junl". 1969), 55 -86.
never be realized into a nalural language; and (e) it may overlap with other
jakobovits, Leon A.: Fortign Languagt Lrarning: A Psycholinguistic Analysis oj the lUll,'
intellectual structures. Newbury House, t 970,
20) The qualification ('for most learoers') in (7) and (18) is necessary, Klint', Hden: "Resl"arch in the PsydlUlngy uf Secorld-I.anli:uat:e Learning." Ullpuhli~h,'.,
slnee those adults who seem to achieve native-speaker 'competence', i.e. those paper, UnivC'rsity of Minnesota, 1970,
who learn a second language so that their cperformance' is indistinguishable Labov, William: "Contractiun, DeI(·til1n, and Illhert"nt Variability llf the English COpUI.l'·
Languagt, 4S.4 (t 969),715-762.
from that of nalive ,peakers (perhaps a mere 5 % of all learoers), have not
LakuU. George: "On GC'nerativt Sem.uuks", in SemanticJ - An Inttrdiuiplin",ry Rt~d,',
been taught this performance through 'explanation and instruction' but have in Philosophy: Lingliist~cs, Anthropology and Psychology, ('d. by Danny Steinberg :tIll!
somehow reactivated this latent language structure. Leon Jakobovlts. Cambndge University I'n:ss, (in press).
21) Since it is assumed that the two structures mentioned in' (18) are Lawler, ~ohn and Selinker. larry: "On Paradoxes, Rub. and Research in Second-Langu.1L:,
different and sinl" we know very little about the latent language structure Ll'arnmg", Languagt Learning (in press). '
Lenllt"berg, .Eric H.: Bi%gical FOImdatiom of 1,''''RII.lge. John Wiley and Sons Inc., 1967.
and its activation, then the 5 % mentioned in (20) should be ignored in setti~g
NemsC'r, William: "Approximative Systt'llH (If Furei~n l.anguage Learners".IRAL 9 (1971,
up the idealizations which guide us to the psychologically-relevant data of 115-123.
second-language Ifarning. ' Reibel., D. A.: "Language Lt"arning Strategies for the Adult", paper read at Second hllt'l
. natIonal CongrtJS of Applied l.inguiuics. CambridJi:e UnivC'rsity. Sept., 1969..
Larry Selinker Richards, Jack c': "A NUIl-Contrastivt' Approach to Error Analysis." Paper de/iq'red .It
Department of Linguistics TESOl Convention, San Francis'o, March, 1970.
University of Washington Selin~C'r, larry: "Language Transfer", Ge"rrall.inguistics, 9 (1969).67 -92.
Seattle, Washington 98105 Watkll,l' "K. 1..: ",Fossilil.ation and its Implications Re~arding the Interlanguage HH'O
them. Unpublnhed papt'r, Uni1't'rsit)' of Washington, 1970. .
USA Weinreich, Urit"l: Languages in CoraMt. ThC' Linguistic Circle of New York, 1953.

REFERENCES

Br~~. Eugene J.: A rSyfholi"gI4;stir Study of Phonological Inttrftrtnct. Mouton, 1968.


Chomsky, Noam: AJptets oftltf' rhtory oJSyntax, M,I.T. Press, 1965.
Chomsky, Noam: "Lin~uisti(: ThC'ory", Northtast ConJtrC'nCC' on thC' Ttaching oj Forri".
ungNagtS, 43-49,1966.
Chomsky, Noam: "Linguistics and Philmophy", il1l.angu~gt imd Philosophy, ed. by Sidney
Hook. NC'w York UnivC'rsity PrC'55. 1969, 51-94.
ConlC't. S. Pit: "The SignificancC' of LC'arnC'r's Errou", (RAL, 5 (1967), 161-170.
Couhtr, KC'nnC'th: "I.in~ujstil.· F.rrur- Analy"j50f the Spoken English of Two Native Russian'."
," Unpublished M. A. thesis, UnivC'tsity of Washington, 1968. ' ',J

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