Second Language Acquisition and Its Relationship to Universal Grammar

For almost twenty years (following Corder 1967) much study of second language acquisition has been carried out with the assumption or outright claim that the basic processes underlying both first and second language acquisition are the same. Recent formulations of this notion make use of the currently evolving theory of Universal Grammar, arguing from the module-specific assumption of linguistic knowledge and arguing that adults are faced with the logical problem of language acquisition, just as children are. Such formulations need to be examined seriously in light of the fundamental differences in the two language acquisition cases, including those just mentioned. Four major areas of difference between the first and second language acquisition cases will be presented and explored: completeness, equipotentiality, previous knowledge, and fossilization. It will be argued that these differences are sufficient to remove the possibility that the underlying processes can possibly be the same in the two cases. The role of Universal Grammar in explaining how second language acquisition occurs will turn out to be much more modest than present claims indicate, with parameter setting, or resetting, as currently envisioned, an impossibility.