For three decades theoretical linguistics has had little impact on language teaching, although sociolinguistics has been employed in curriculum design and test construction. Applied linguistics has been eclectic and has seldom applied pure linguistic research. Theoretical linguists, for their part, have not encouraged attempts to apply their results. Theory and practice were separated largely because the theoretical results were so tentative. However, recent theoretical advances suggest important applications for linguistic theory in foreign language teaching and in the testing of proficiency. The acquisition of a nonnative language is probably subject to biological constraints that are closely related to those factors that guide and control first language acquisition. Methodology and test construction must allow for this. Research must determine precisely what the factors are and how they interact. Theoretical linguists interested in such research should be included in interdisciplinary teams working on foreign language learning and testing.
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References
1.
1. These teams will also include, where appropriate, sociolinguists and psychologists. Linguists primarily interested in experimental work on acquisition, or speech processing, rather than in the investigation of the language systems are often called psycholinguists. If the field of theoretical linguistics is identified in the way that I have suggested, it is not clear that there is any real justification for making a sharp distinction along such lines, since all theoretical linguists are psycholinguists in that they have no goal other than that of understanding the innate principles of mental organization that result in the observed structure of language.
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2. See, for example, Wilga Rivers, The Psychologist and the Foreign-Language Teacher (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964). Rivers was, in fact, ahead of her time.
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3. Larry Selinker, “Interlanguage,”International Review of Applied Linguistics, 10:209-231 (1972).
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4. Since the notion of “communicative competence” has played such an important role at times in applied linguistics, it may be worth emphasizing that Hymes himself consciously used the word “theoretical” in his paper introducing the notion—but he carefully pointed out how he intended this to be taken: “This paper is theoretical. One connotation of `theoretical' is `programmatic'; a related connotation is that one knows too little about the subject to say something practical. Both connotations apply to this.”Dell H. Hymes, “On Communicative Competence,” in Sociolinguistics, ed. J. B. Pride and Janet Holmes (London: Penguin Books, 1972), p. 269. Later in the same piece, Hymes explicitly contrasts his work with theoretical linguistics in something like my sense.
5.
5. Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures (The Hague: Mouton, 1957).
6.
6. Noam Chomsky, “Linguistic Theory,” in Readings in Applied Transformational Grammar, ed. Mark Lester (New York: Holt, 1970; 2nd ed., 1973), pp. 51-60.
7.
7. Joshua A. Fishman, “Introduction,” in Readings in the Sociology of Language, ed. Joshua A. Fishman (The Hague: Mouton, 1972), p. 6.
8.
8. Melvin Fox and Betty Skolnick, Language in Education (New York: Ford Foundation, 1975), p. 6.
9.
9. Joshua A. Fishman, Sociolinguistics: A Brief Introduction (Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 1970), p. 6.
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and Ronald Wardhaugh, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986).
11.
11. For example, Evelyn M. Hatch, Second Language Acquisition (Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 1978).
12.
For other references, see Stephen Levinson, Pragmatics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
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Gillian Sankoff and Penelope Brown, “The Origins of Syntax in Discourse,”Language, 52:632-666 (1976).
14.
14. For a contrary view, see Fishman, “Introduction,” p. 7.
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15. Particularly as represented in Stephen D. Krashen, Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning (Oxford: Pergamon, 1981).
16.
16. Eric Lenneberg, Biological Foundations of Language (New York: John Wiley, 1967).
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17. For example, as represented in Joseph Greenberg, ed., Universals of Language (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966).
18.
18. Edward Keenan and Bernard Comrie, “Noun Phrase Accessibility and Universal Grammar,”Linguistic Inquiry, 8:63-100 (1977).
19.
19. For example, Fred R. Eckman, “Markedness and Degree of Difficulty in Second Language Learning,” in Proceedings of the Fifth Congress, International Association of Applied Linguists, ed. J.-G. Savard and L. Laforge (Montreal: University of Laval Press, 1981), pp. 115-126.
20.
20. Interestingly, it does not seem to have been Chomsky or any of his followers, but Thomas Sebeock in a review in Language, 39:466 (1963), who first clearly pointed out how reasonable it would be for the genetic code to play a direct role in determining the structure of linguistic codes.
21.
See also Frederick J. Newmeyer, Grammatical Theory: Its Limits and Possibilities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), esp. chap. 5, “The Applicability of Grammatical Theory.”
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22. For example, see the articles collected in Charles A. Fergusen and Catherine E. Snow, eds., Talking to Children: Language Input and Acquisition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
23.
23. Nina Hyams, “The Acquisition of Parameterized Grammars” (Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, Graduate Center, 1985).
24.
24. Dan Finer and Ellen Broselow, “L2 Acquisition of Reflexives,” in NELS 16: Proceedings of the 16th Annual Northeastern Linguistic Society Meeting (Amherst: University of Massachusetts, forthcoming).
25.
See also Ellen Broselow, “Second Language Acquisition,” in Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey, vol. 4, ed. F. Newmeyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). Both these papers contain bibliographies that include the work on second language acquisition in this framework, and both discuss its potential relevance to the field.
