Second‐Language Acquisition and the Computational Paradigm*

The central claim of the cognitive science paradigm is that the mind/brain can be thought of as an information‐processing device. Classical theories require explicitness about the representations in which knowledge is encoded because processes are denned as algorithms computing over them. In much current second‐language acquisition (SLA) research, there is talk of “process” and “processing” without talk of representation or, conversely, proposals about representation with no clarity about how structures are exploited during parsing or production. To accept this state of affairs is not to take the paradigm seriously. I offer an analysis of gender attribution in French L1 and French L2 acquisition to show how one can develop explicit models of acquisition, blending together the findings of linguistics and experimental psycholinguistics.