interlanguage (english version).doc

Interlanguage
What started SLA research going as a discipline in its own right was the realization that people such as Lado and Weinreich had been over-simplistic in L2 learning only as a relationship between the L1 and the L2. A learner at a particular point in time is in fact using a language system which is neither the L1 nor the L2. Describing it in terms of the L1 and the L2 misses the distinctive features of L2 learning: a third language system is involved—that of the L2 learner—which also needs to be described. In other words, the independent grammars assumption applies to L2 learning as well as to first language acquisition, in this case involving independence from both L1 and L2. Nemser(1971) captured this insight through the term ‘approximative systerm’ : ‘Learner speech at a given time is the patterned product of a linguistic system, La[approximative language], distinct from Ls[source language] and Lt[target language] and internally structured’. An approximative system has some properties present in neither the L1 nor the L2. This approximative system gradually approaches the target language, although it seldom merges with it totally; sometimes it reaches a stable plateau.(Nemser 1971).
“Interlanguage”, often abbreviated to IL, was the term introduced by Larry Selinker(1972) that became widely accepted for the L2 learner’s independent language system. Indeed at one stage ‘interlanguage’ was effectively the name for the whole field of L2 research, as witnessed the 1970s journal Interlanguage Studies Bulletin that became Second Language Research in the 1980s. Selinker emphasized not just the existence of interlanguage but also where it came from. He looked for its origin in the process through which the mind acquires a second language. L2 learning differs from the first language acquisition in that it is seldom completely successful; 5 percent of L2 learners have ‘absolute success’ in his view. The L2 fossilizes at some point short of the knowledge of the native speaker. Selinker(1972) proposed the lucky 5 percent of the successful L2 learners take advantage of a ‘latent language structure’ in the mind like that used in the first language acquisition, that is to say the LAD. The 95 percent of learners who are less successful rely on a ‘psychological structure’ also ‘latent in the brain’ and ‘activated when one attempts to learn a second language’, but distinct from the latent language structure. Both interlanguage and approximative system lay stress on the change in the learner’s language system over time. According to Selinker(1992), the difference between interlanguage and Nemser’s approximative system is that interlanguage does not necessarily converge on the target language.
Selinker(1972) claims that interlanguage depends on five central processes that are part of the ‘latent psychological structure’:
● Language transfer, in which the learner projects features of the L1 on to the L2.
● Overgeneralization of L2 rules, in which the learner tries to use L2 rules in ways which it does not permit.
● Transfer of training, when teaching creates language rules that are not parts of the L2, as when a teacher’s over-use of “he” discourages the students from using “she”.
● Strategies of L2 learning, such as simplification, for example when the learner ‘simplifies’ English so that all verbs may occur in the present continuous, yielding sentences such as “I’m hearing him”.
● Communication strategies, such as when the learner omits communicatively redundant grammatical items and produces “It was nice, nice trailer, big one leaving out “a”.
The crucial insight contributed by Selinker is not the actual processes that he puts forward but his insistence that an explanation is called for in terms of the processes and properties of the mind. He postulates not only an independent grammar but also a psychological mechanism for creating and using it. Selinker(1972) is also ambiguous about whether the five processes are for the creation of interlanguage or for its use, witness remarks such as ‘ I would like to hypothesize that these five processes are processes which are central to second language learning, and that each process forces fossilisable material upon surface IL utterances.’
Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition by Vivian Cook (1993:pp17—19)
In recent years researchers and teachers have come more and more to understand that second language learning is a creative process of constructing a system in which learners are consciously testing hypotheses about the target language from a number of possible sources of knowledge: limited knowledge of the target language itself, knowledge about the native language, knowledge about the communicative function of language, knowledge about language in general, and knowledge about life, human beings, and the universe. The learners, in acting upon their environment, construct what to them is a legitimate system of language in its own right—a structured set of rules that for the time being provide order to the linguistic chaos that confronts them.
A number of terms have been coined to describe the perspective which stresses the legitimacy of learners’ second language systems. The best known of these terms is interlanguage, a term that Selinker (1972) adapted from Weinreich’s (1953) term “interlingual.” Interlanguage refers to the separateness of a second language learner’s system, a system that has a structurally intermediate status between the native and target languages. Nemser(1971) referred to the same general phenomenon in second language learning but stressed the successive approximation to the target language in his term approximative system. Corder (1971:151) used the term idiosyncratic dialect to connote the idea that the learner’s language is unique to a particular individual, that the rules of the learner’s language are peculiar to the language of that individual alone. While each of these designations emphasizes a particular notion, they share the concept that second language learners are forming their own self-contained linguistic systems. This is neither the system of the native language nor the system of the target language, but instead falls between the two; it is a system based upon the best attempt of learners to provide order and structure to the linguistic stimuli surrounding them. The interlanguage hypothesis led to a whole new era of second language research and teaching and presented a significant breakthrough from the shackles of the contrastive analysis hypothesis.
The most obvious approach to analyzing interlanguage is to study the speech and writhing of learners, or, what has come to be called learner language (James 1990). Production data is publicly observable and is presumably reflective of a learner’s underlying competence--- production competence, that is. Comprehension of a second language is more difficult to study since it is not directly observable and must be inferred by overt verbal and nonverbal responses, by artificial instruments, or by the intuition of the teacher or researcher. It follows that the study of the speech and writing of learners is largely the study of the errors of learners. “Correct” production yields little information about the actual interlanguage system of learners, only information about the target language system that learners have already acquired.
Principles of language learning and teaching by H.D. Brown. (1994: pp203-204)

In the 1970’s, Interlanguage emerged as a term in a newly formed discipline Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and its adoption is regarded as a symbol for the establishment of SLA. Selinker(1972),who is the initiator of Interlanguage in SLA, defined Interlanguage (IL) as the systematic knowledge of a second language(L2) which is independent of both learners’ first language(L1) and second language. Other terms that refer to the same basic idea are “approximative system” and “transitional competence”. Another influential figure in SLA, Ellis(1999:710), summarized related meanings of Interlanguage as the following: 1)to refer to the series of interlocking systems which characterize acquisition, 2)to refer to the system that is observed at a single stage of development, and 3)to refer to particular L1 and L2 combinations.
The development of Interlanguage is susceptible to three rudimentary rules summarized by Larsen-Freeman and Long(2000:81),who argue that 1) ILs vary systematically, 2)ILs exhibit common accuracy orders and developmental sequences, and 3)ILs are influenced by the learners’L1. As can be seen, IL evolves orderly development and it takes up different forms with internal coherence while learners’ proficiency improves, thus amenable to systematic linguistic analysis. It also can be found obviously that transfer is a crucial factor that gets along the growth of IL while mother tongue may constantly permeate the emerging IL grammar at various levels. In fact, interlanguage approaches systematically towards target language, undergoing developmental stages with permeability, and may finally get stabilized or fossilized at certain level. Along IL developmental continuum, permeability emerges continuously as a property of IL (Adjemian 1976), which is related to other features as systematicity and fossilization and is interwoven with them. Language transfer is one presentation of permeability which refers to the susceptibility of IL to infiltration by L1 and L2 grammars. Unlike other natural languages that have an essentially stable end-state and are relatively impervious to other linguistic systems, IL is constantly subject to a number of impinging forces from the mother tongue and target language in the form that target grammar is partially acquired or improperly generalized, while the mother tongue may immerge into IL grammar along all developmental stages. Permeability is claimed to be a unique property to IL, (Adjemian 1976) by which they may be differentiated from all other natural language systems. The permeability of IL can be discerned in several ways, for example, the Chinese-English Interlanguage is subject to the penetration of Chinese, while English rules such as passivization is either underused or overgeneralized in the form of free variation or may turn out to be fossilized at an advanced English level. One of the ultimate forms of IL development and the end-state of transfer is the so-called fossilization: the persistence of non-target-like competence in IL. Selinker(1972:178) remarks that fossilization is “perhaps the most crucial fact, which any adequate theory of second language acquisition will have to explain” and hence one of the unique properties of ILs. “Fossilized linguistic phenomena are linguistic items, rules, and sub-systems which speakers of a particular L1 tend to keep in their IL relative to a particular TL,…”(Selinker 1972:215). Han(2005)argues that fossilization occurs locally and that it is a process observable in its manifestation as a product.
Reference:
Adjemian,Christian.(1976). On the nature of interlanguage systems. Language Learning, 26(2),297-320.
Ellis,Nick C.(2002).Frequency effects in language processing,A review with implications for theories of implicit and explicit language acquisition.SSLA,24,143-188.
Ellis,Rod.(1992).Second Language Acquisition and Language Pedagogy.Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters LTD.
Ellis,Rod.(1994).Understanding Second Language Acquisition.Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ellis,Rod.(1999).The Study of Second Language Acquisition.Shanghai:Shanghai Foreign Language Education and Research Press.
Han,Zhaohong.(2005). Fossilization in adult second language acquisition.Columbia University Working Papers in TESO L& Applied Linguistics,5(1),1-4.
Selinker,Larry.(1972).Interlanguage.International Review of Applied Linguistics,10,209-31.
Selinker,Larry.(1997).Rediscovering Interlanguage.London:Longman Group UK Limited.
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