A “linguistic approach” to the idiosyncratic nature of second language acquisition: Monosyllabic place-holders and morpheme orders

It is important that there be different approaches to Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research, some of which will be contrasting and some complementary. In the former case, the contrast may lead to a review of assumptions which will result in mutual or unilateral enrichment. In the latter case, it is obvious that we are to aim at achieving a comprehensive view of SLA. In this respect, in the paper by De Bot, Lowie and Werspoor, “A Dynamic Systems Theory approach to second language acquisition”, while there is some room for a complementary approach, what stands out is a view contrasting with the Universal Grammar (UG) view. For instance, the authors mention Larsen-Freeman (2002) – one of the pioneers of the application of the Dynamic Systems Theory (DST) to SLA research – as suggesting that a UG approach and the DST may be two complementary perspectives, but they emphasize that Larsen-Freeman is very much on the side of emergentist (non-nativist) views. Furthermore, they make it clear that leading DST researchers “leave little room for nativist ideas on language acquisition” (p. 10). However, while the authors put the DST forward as the approach that can avoid the shortcomings of a partial model which only deals with cognitive aspects of language development, they fail to recognize that the cognitive approach has never claimed to have all the answers to the SLA phenomenon, and neither do they. In fact, what we would like to show in this commentary is that the “linguistic” or “cognitive” approach to SLA research can account (and even explain) why native (L1) and non-native (L2) grammars are different. In order to show this, we will address two issues that De Bot, Lowie and Werspoor use as evidence against the nativist approach: Newport's (1991) “less is more” hypothesis and the authors' review of the “variation and morpheme order studies”. We will be discussing their views from the UG approach perspective which we refer to as the “Linguistic Approach” and which has its foundation in the nativist Chomskian tradition which, in the case of SLA research, is represented in volumes such as Liceras (1986), White (1989, 2003), Strozer (1994) and Hawkins (2001), among many others.

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