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.

The relationship between prior knowledge of and interest in a topic is complex. Although knowledge and interest may often go hand in hand, they do not necessarily correlate. The purpose of this study was to separate the effects of prior knowledge and topic interest on second language reading comprehension. Participants in the study were 104 students of English as a second language in an English-for-academic-purposes program at a large American university. On the basis of a prior-knowledge test and a topic-interest inventory, each student read passages and took multiple-choice comprehension tests on topics for which they had all four possible combinations of high and low topic interest and high and low prior knowledge. Results on the reading comprehension measure for the two main effects of prior knowledge and topic interest, although in the expected direction, did not reach significance, possibly because of a significant interaction between those two variables. There was also a significant effect for English proficiency level, as well as a significant interaction between interest and gender, with males more influenced by high topic interest than females. Our results are compared to those of other first and second language studies that have explicitly investigated the interrelationships among topic interest, prior knowledge, and gender.

On April 23rd of this year, at the initiative of the current group of editorial assistants (Elizabeth Grace Winkler, Llorenç Comajoan, and Donald F. Reindl), a symposium was organized on the Bloomington campus of Indiana University to celebrate the 20th anniversary of SSLA's founding. Presentations on the past, present, and future state of research on second language acquisition were presented by Editorial Board and Advisory Committee members Susan Gass, John Schumann, Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig, and Patsy Lightbown. It is noteworthy that this commemorative event, the creation of SSLA, would not have taken place without the direct intervention of another group of graduate students, the Indiana University Linguistics Club. Without the IULC producing and disseminating the fledgling publication that was SSLA in 1978, the journal would never have made it beyond the drawing board. In this note prefacing the last issue of Volume 20, I would like to narrate the conditions of SSLA's birth and comment on the journal's contribution to second language acquisition research.

This paper reports the results of a study of the intonation of 18 Mandarin Chinese speakers lecturing in English. As a basis for the study, it is proposed that intonation be considered a grammar of cohesion in English discourse: Drawing from the intonational model of Pierrehumbert and Hirschberg (1990), it is argued that discrete morphemes of intonation correspond to the categories of cohesion in Halliday and Hasan's (1976) typology. The study investigated the hypothesis that the nonnative speakers who were able to use the intonation system of English most effectively would score higher on a global language test. Using a Computerized Speech Lab to measure pitch, four aspects of intonation were averaged for each speaker: (a) the pitch difference between newly introduced content words and function words, (b) the use of high pitch at phrase boundaries to link related constituents, (c) the use of pitch to distinguish contrasting items from given items, and (d) the paratone or increase in pitch range at rhetorical junctures to signal topic shift. These four measures were chosen for their contribution to the cohesion of the lectures. Multiple regression analysis indicates that the fourth intonation variable, the paratone, was a significant predictor of these subjects' English test scores. Examples are given of the other variables in context from both low- and high-scoring speakers. It is emphasized that intonation is not only a stylistic component of accent but also a meaning-bearing grammatical system.

This paper presents results of a response-latency (RL) experiment with English-speaking learners of German that investigated to what extent—if any—two different groups of second language (L2) learners permit raising of the thematic verb. The framework under which the study was conducted involves varying theoretical predictions derived from the native-language (NL) transfer view of Schwartz and Sprouse (1994, 1996), the gradual-development view of Vainikka and Young-Scholten (1994, 1996), the underspecification view of Eubank (1993/1994), and a local-impairment view that presents a more parsimonious solution to the L2 developmental problem than standard “no access” views. The L2 results reported here show that learners respond in different ways to stimulus sentences with raised and unraised verbs depending on the subjects' level of development. Surprisingly, it is the less advanced learners who exhibit an RL preference for apparently raised-verb experimental stimuli; the more advanced learners do not differentiate between raised-verb and unraised-verb stimuli. Analysis of these findings reveals that the less advanced group may only project VPs, consistent with the gradual-development view of Vainikka and Young-Scholten. Crucially, however, the Local Impairment Hypothesis is the only view that is consistent with the results from the more advanced learners, especially when they are seen in developmental context.

Two hypotheses regarding the distribution of emergent tense-aspect morphology in SLA have been proposed: the aspect hypothesis, which claims the distribution of interlanguage verbal morphology is determined by lexical aspectual class, and the discourse hypothesis, which claims it is determined by narrative structure. Recent studies have tested and supported both hypotheses individually. This study expands the investigation to include an analysis of both narrative structure and lexical aspectual class in a single corpus comprising 74 narratives (37 oral and written pairs) produced by adult learners of English as a second language at various proficiency levels. The results suggest that both hypotheses are necessary to account for the distribution of verbal morphology in interlanguage.

The effect of the presence of cafeteria noise on the perception of native English and Mandarin-accented speech was assessed in a sentence-verification task and a sentence-transcription (dictee) task. Ten advanced-level ESL learners and a comparison group of native English speakers read a set of simple true or false statements. These were presented in quiet and noisy conditions to 24 native English listeners who assessed their truth value and wrote out the utterances they heard. The outcomes of both tasks indicated strong adverse effects of noise on the intelligibility of many of the accented utterances. In fact, of the set of items that were verified perfectly in the noise-free condition, the Mandarin-accented ones were significantly less well verified in noise than the native English ones were. A large degree of interspeaker variability was also noted, particularly for the Mandarin speakers.

This paper seeks to resolve certain questions pertaining to the relationship between gender and second language vocabulary knowledge. One question we examine is whether female and male ESL students at the University of California at Irvine differ significantly in their knowledge of academic vocabulary in English as measured by scores on the Test of Academic Lexicon (TAL). One hundred ninety-two freshman university ESL students participated in the study. A t test, used to investigate differences in the TAL scores of males and females, reveals that the males performed better on the TAL than the females (t = 3.32, p = .001). Analyses of covariance were used to examine questions pertaining to the effect of gender on the TAL, controlling for the possible effects of the students' verbal Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores, length of residence in the United States, and age of arrival in the United States. In all cases, gender remains significantly related to the results of the TAL when controlling for the other variable: for verbal SAT scores, F(1,181) = 5.86, p < .05; for length of residence, F(1,187) = 9.64, p < .01; and for age of arrival in the United States, F(1,185) = 10.22, p < .005. Neither the present study nor the gender literature reviewed suggests that gender itself causes differences in the TAL scores. In analyzing the results, we consider possible explanations for the males' better TAL scores related to reading habits, interactional styles, educational backgrounds, and cultures.

This study investigates children's changing sensitivity to processing cues for identifying agent (word order, case marking, and animacy) as a function of proficiency in a second language. English-speaking learners of Japanese need to appropriately adjust cue strengths in moving from a rigid SVO language to one in which SOV word order is a good general processing strategy, but case marking must ultimately be relied on if it conflicts with this order. English-speaking children in grades K–7 in an immersion school were asked to identify the agent for a set of audiotaped sentences in English and Japanese. The children in this study learned to use SOV word order, lexical semantics, and canonical case marking, but they do not provide evidence of appropriately exploiting noncanonical case marking. We suggest that these results might be accounted for by the context in which input is processed in immersion school classrooms.

Voice onset time (VOT) was measured in the production of /t/ in the initial position of 60 English words spoken by native English (NE) speakers and native Spanish (NS) speakers who began learning English before or after the age of 21 years. The subjects rated the words for familiarity, age of acquisition, imageability, and relatedness to word(s) in the Spanish lexicon. The subjects in all three groups showed two well-known phonetic effects: They produced longer VOT values in the context of high than nonhigh vowels, and longer VOT in one- than in two-syllable words. As expected, the NS subjects who learned English prior to the age of 21 years judged the English words to be more familiar and more like a Spanish word than did the subjects who began learning English later in life. Also, many but not all of the NS subjects produced /t/ with shorter VOT values than did the NE subjects. However, regression analyses showed that none of the lexical factors mentioned above or the text frequency of the 60 English words examined affected the NS subjects' VOT values. Thus, variation in the accuracy with which NS subjects produce English /t/ must be accounted for by factors other than the lexical status of the words in which /t/ occurs.

This study examines aspects of communicative classroom discourse that may affect the potential of recasts to be noticed as negative evidence by young second language learners. The database comprises transcripts of over 18 hours of interaction recorded during 27 lessons in 4 immersion classrooms at the primary level. The 377 recasts in the database have been classified according to their pragmatic functions in classroom discourse and then compared to the teachers' even more frequent use of noncorrective repetition. Findings reveal that recasts and noncorrective repetition fulfill identical functions distributed in equal proportions and, furthermore, that teachers frequently use positive feedback to express approval of the content of learners' messages, irrespective of well-formedness, to accompany, also in equal proportions, recasts, noncorrective repetition, and even topic-continuation moves following errors. The findings suggest that, from the perspective of both learners and teachers, the corrective reformulations entailed in recasts may easily be overridden by their functional properties in meaning-oriented classrooms.

This paper investigates the various ways speakers manage problems and overcome difficulties in L2 communication. Following Dörnyei and Scott (1997), we distinguish four main sources of L2 communication problems: (a) resource deficits, (b) processing time pressure, (c) perceived deficiencies in one's own language output, and (d) perceived deficiencies in the interlocutor's performance. In order to provide a systematic description of the wide range of coping mechanisms associated with these problem areas (e.g., communication strategies, meaning negotiation mechanisms, hesitation devices, repair mechanisms), we adopt a psycholinguistic approach based on Levelt's (1989, 1993, 1995) model of speech production. Problem-solving devices, then, are analyzed and classified according to how they are related to the different pre- and post-articulatory phases of speech processing, and we illustrate the various mechanisms by examples and retrospective comments taken from L2 learners' data.

Second language acquisition theory conventionally represents itself as having been invented ex nihilo in the last decades of the twentieth century. This article investigates the nature of this largely unexamined disciplinary self-concept and questions its validity. I dispute arguments that might be formulated to support the notion that SLA theory has no relevant earlier history, enumerate some of the unfortunate consequences of maintaining this belief, and speculate about benefits to the field that might accrue from abandoning it. Instead of presenting SLA theory as having its origin in the last 20 or 30 years, I suggest that we need to look for ways to identify, investigate, and eventually reconceptualize its true history.

This study investigated the acquisition of the comprehension of overt morphological case marking by adult native speakers of English who were learning Russian or German as a second language (L2). The Russian case-marking system is more complex than the German system, but it almost always provides the listener with case inflections that are reliable cues to sentence interpretation. Two approaches to learning of inflectional morphology were contrasted: the rule-based approach, which predicts that learning is determined by paradigm complexity; and the associative approach, which predicts that learning is determined by the cue validity of individual inflections. A computerized picture-choice task probed the comprehension of L2 learners by varying the cues of case marking, noun configuration, and noun animacy. The results demonstrated that learners of Russian use case marking much earlier than learners of German and that learners of German rely more on animacy to supplement the weaker case-marking cue. In order to further explore the underlying mechanisms of learning, a connectionist model was developed that correctly simulated the obtained results. Together, these findings support the view that adult L2 learning is associative and driven by the validity of cues in the input.

In this paper, I address the nature of the mental representation of an interlanguage grammar. The focus will be on the necessity of positing some sort of hierarchical constituent structure to account for L2 phonology. I discuss relevant data from the domains of the acquisition of segments, syllables, moras, and metrical structure. The interaction of these domains is discussed.

In addition, I look at the acquisition of onset clusters and argue that the acquisition of liquids is correlated with the acquisition of consonantal sequences. Evidence from language change, language typology, and language acquisition suggests that there is a causal relationship between the two. The theoretical framework of feature geometry and derived sonority gives us the apparatus to explain what the second-language learners are doing.

This article reports on a study that investigated the effect of different amounts of planning time on the speech performance of L2 speakers. Subjects were 4 groups of learners of German (31 in total) performing 2 tasks each. The tasks varied in the degree of structure they contained and the familiarity of information they tapped. The control group had no planning time available; the 3 experimental groups had 1, 5, and 10 minutes of planning time, respectively, before they started speaking. Results show fluency and lexical density of speech increase as a function of planning time. Accuracy of speech improved with only 1 minute planning but did not increase with more planning time. Complexity of speech was significantly higher for the 10-minute planning condition only. No significant differences were found for the effect of planning on the different tasks. This study employed various general and specific constructs for measuring fluency, complexity, and accuracy of speech. The interrelationships and qualities of these measures are also investigated and discussed.

In our reply to Margaret Thomas's article “Programmatic ahistoricity in second language acquisition theory,” we first review pertinent literature, concluding that historical awareness is evident in SLA, though it is not as far-reaching as Thomas would like it to be. We then argue that the attitude of most scholars in SLA toward the past is reasonable given that no significant work in SLA from antiquity has been discovered—by Thomas or anyone else—and that if such work exists Thomas has the burden to bring it to light before declaring the field guilty of ahistoricity. We consider various ways to define the field of SLA, arguing that it should be defined theoretically first, and historically second. We claim that the point at which SLA separated itself from language teaching is a logical point from which to date the beginnings of SLA as a true discipline. We consider and reject Thomas's comparison of SLA and its history to various other scientific disciplines and their histories, arguing that these disciplines have true milestones to point to in the distant past, whereas SLA does not. Although we agree with Thomas that a general awareness of the history of philosophy and science is beneficial for scholars in all fields, we make a sharp division between that history and the history of SLA proper. We conclude by arguing that respect for the field of SLA can come only through sound scientific progress, not by appeals to history.

This study assessed global foreign accent in sentences and the production of two English consonants, /[upside-down r]/ and /l/, by 11 Japanese college students during their freshman and senior years (T1, T2). In Experiment 1, native English-speaking listeners rated five sentences spoken by the Japanese speakers and five native English control speakers. Experiments 2 and 3 examined 25 word onsets containing /[upside-down r]/ and /l/. Auditory evaluations by native English-speaking listeners were used to determine: (a) to what extent the consonants produced could be identified as intended at T1 and T2; and (b) whether /[upside-down r]/ and /l/ were produced more accurately at T2 than at T1. The results provided little support for a markedness hypothesis based on statistical frequencies and mixed support for a hypothesis based on perception studies. Some speakers made significant improvement, however, in both global foreign accent and liquid identifiability and accuracy.

How transparent a title is Genesee and Upshur's (G & U) Classroom-Based Evaluation in Second Language Education? First, the word “evaluation.” These days “evaluation” is so commonly attached collocationally to programs and projects that when it stands alone it is usually taken to mean evaluation of programs or projects. G & U seem to use evaluation in the more micro sense of the assessment of individual achievement within the classroom context, taking into account the teacher's purposes, plans, and practices.

This book concentrates on the way young children's speech may vary between the pronouns I, my, and me as the subject of a sentence. For example, one child in the study at 30 months of age alternated between my and I as the subject form, as seen in these two utterances (p. 73):

(1) I like Anna,

(2) My like vanilla.

The fundamental claim is that such variation is motivated and principled. The author writes:

One might want to claim instead that the children were simply confused about the distinctions between various self-reference forms and thus might use them in free variation. (p. 58)

No one has ever claimed that children were “simply confused” when they made pronoun Case errors, and this book's lack of attention to opposing explanations for pronoun Case errors is a major flaw. For those interested in learning more about the phenomenon some important citations are Chiat (1981), Loeb and Leonard (1991), Powers (1995), Rispoli (1994), Schutze and Wexler (1996), and Vainikka (1994). Loeb and Leonard (1991), Powers (1995), and Schutze and Wexler (1996) hold that the child's inability to accurately assign Case leads to these errors as well as a host of simultaneously occurring phenomena such as inaccurate production of agreement and tense marking. Rispoli (1994) views these errors as the result of paradigm building.