This paper reviews current research on language and gender and discusses the implications of such work for gender-based research in second language acquisition. Recent work in sociolinguistics, generally, and language and gender research, more specifically, has rejected categorical and fixed notions of social identities in favor of more constructivist and dynamic ones. Thus, in this paper I elaborate a conception of gender that has not generally informed research in the field of second language acquisition, and point to more recent work in the field that theorizes and investigates gender as a construct shaped by historical, cultural, social, and interactional factors.

This paper reports on two studies that addressed the issue of ultimate attainment by late second language learners. The aim of the studies, which included a carefully screened group of highly successful Dutch learners of English in their designs, was to determine whether or not late second language learners who had achieved a nativelike performance in the pronunciation of a second language could be identified. Speech samples provided by two groups of learners, one of which consisted of highly successful learners only, and a native speaker control group were rated for accent by native speakers of English. The ratings obtained by some learners were within the range of the ratings assigned to the native speaker controls. Such results suggest that it is not impossible to achieve an authentic, nativelike pronunciation of a second language after a specified biological period of time. Examination of the learning histories of the highly successful learners lead the authors to argue that certain learner characteristics and learning contexts may work together to override the disadvantages of a late start.

One of the differences between Chinese and English is that the former allows both null subjects in finite sentences and null objects, but the latter allows neither. This cross-linguistic variation is believed to be related to the underspecification of I and topic drop in Chinese but not in English. This paper reports on an empirical study investigating the unlearning of null subjects and null objects by 159 Chinese learners in their L2 acquisition of English. In L1 acquisition, it has been found that English-speaking children display an asymmetry by frequently allowing null subjects but rarely null objects. The results of this study indicate that there is an asymmetry in Chinese learners' L2 English, which, however, is opposite to that found in English L1 acquisition: Chinese learners are able to reject the incorrect null subject in English, but unable to detect the ungrammaticality of the null object. It is proposed that the unlearning of null subjects by Chinese learners of English is triggered by the evidence in their input indicating the specification of AGR(eement) and T(ense) in English, and that the difficulty in the unlearning of null objects is related to the lack of informative evidence to unset the [+ topic-drop] setting in Chinese learners' L2 English.

In this paper we address the need for replication studies in the field of second language acquisition and discuss the problems surrounding standards of reporting research. A particular focus is on the level of detail necessary for replication to take place. The lack of uniform standards is noted with specific examples of problematic reporting taken from descriptions of second language learners' proficiency levels and measures of linguistic accuracy in second language writing research. We propose ways that we believe will lead to more thorough reporting of research and that will therefore allow others to engage in replication.

The book under review follows other research by Biber in the field of register variation (cf. Biber, 1988; Biber & Finegan, 1994). It further develops the thesis that multidmensional analysis of many different linguistic variables can help posit theoretical and conceptual primitives for the analysis of register. It also explores a corollary that the primitive for register variation in different languages can be productively compared.

It was only about a year ago, in a reckless moment of shelf-purging, that I reluctantly placed my original offset copy (circa 1975) of The Good Language Learner into the paper-recycling bin. Many of us fondly remember that big orange-covered prepublication volume, dog-eared, battered, and stuck together with tape. Now, almost two decades after the first publication of The Good Language Learner (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 1978) this reissue appears as part of Multilingual Matters' “Modern Languages in Practice” series. It is the first time this series has featured a reprint of “classic” (p. vii) volumes of interest to foreign language researchers and teachers.

This volume is dedicated to Bill Rutherford, a long-time friend and colleague, whose commitment and dedication to the study of interlanguage has inspired many of us. The various papers deal with relevant issues in the study of interlanguage with the aim of addressing the wide range of theoretical and pedagogical questions that Rutherford has tried to answer throughout his career. This multifaceted character of the book is very appealing, and so is the inquisitive and provocative tone of several of the papers. I have chosen to group the contributions under five different headings, depending on the cognitive and behavioral sciences that constitute their main focus of attention.

Interlanguage and Learnability, the published version of Yip's doctoral dissertation, examines some salient aspects of Chinese speakers' English Interlanguage (CIL) with insights from the Principles and Parameters Theory and research in language typology. On the basis of the Subset Principle and the notion of preemption, the book addresses learnability questions of how the second language learner progresses or fails to progress in the acquisition of English. The author has presented the book carefully and logically with the goal of readability in mind, which makes the book accessible to an audience interested in second language research but with little theoretical background or knowledge of Chinese linguistics. Another commendable quality of the book is the author's ability to interrelate CIL features that can easily be wrongly treated as separate and independent and analyze them in a holistic way.

A landscape of popular perceptions increasingly indifferent to French has sent teachers around the United States scurrying for new books that will draw students to the language they love. In many cases, the profession has fixed on Francophonie as a solution, offering, it seems, the practical, down-to-earth usefulness that the profession thinks students want and providing, at the same time, a neat link to popular and sometimes simple-minded notions of multiculturalism. Ager's new book, 6 years after his excellent Sociolinguistics and Contemporary French, demonstrates that Francophonie is far more problematic than many have thought. Less technical than the earlier book, this emphatically interdisciplinary work ought to be required reading for all prospective teachers of French.

Have you ever read a book and said to yourself, “Boy I wish I had that back then?” In the area of data handling and manipulation, this is that book. Davidson has compiled 30 principles by which one can effectively handle data. The audiences for this text are: “(a) graduate students and novice researchers who want to expand their knowledge of the use of computers in the social sciences, including education, and (b) educators who want to improve data gathering in their teaching institutions” (p. x). Davidson offers this book as a companion to statistical texts. If you are looking for the equation for a dependent t-test or want to review the assumptions for ANOVA, this is not the book you are looking for. If you want to know how to efficiently handle information, for instance, research data, this is the text for you.

The semantic potential referred to in the title of this book is the ability of humans to learn the (closed-class) terms for basic spatial relations, such as (for English) onto, above, and through. Regier presents a modified connectionist model of this ability designed to address three questions: (a) What kind of system can learn spatial terms? (b) How can this system function without negative evidence? and (c) What are the universal constraints on learnable spatial terms? The answers suggested to these questions are: (a) a modified connectionist network—one which incorporates structural constraints motivated by human physiology; (b) the assumption of mutual exclusion, that is, that different terms have mutually exclusive denotations; and (c) the structural constraints that are incorporated into the network.

An invaluable contribution of scholarly papers on the bilingual–bicultural nature of deaf people is the volume edited by Ila Parasnis. This collection of 18 insightful papers is a welcome contribution in the context of recent national debates about whether deaf people are considered a minority group with their own unique linguistic and cultural identity, or considered as audiologically disabled individuals. Collectively, the authors of the papers provide strong arguments in favor of recognizing the bilingual and bicultural nature of deaf people's experience. The contents of this well-edited book provides both theoretical and practical knowledge leading to the empowerment of deaf people and to expanded views of bilingualism and second language acquisition. Reflective presentations by deaf people and applied linguistic discussions by researchers are combined to provide researchers and practitioners innovative perspectives on the development of psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic competence of this unique population. The authors also contribute to research on linguistic, cognitive, and social aspects of language and literacy development.

This volume contains 34 papers presented at the Groningen Assembly on Language Acquisition in September 1995. According to the editors, the conference was designed to promote “a lively discussion about the merits and constraints of different approaches to language acquisition.” Not surprisingly, in a conference that explicitly mentions it is continuing in the tradition of GALA 1993, Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition, 23 of the papers in one way or the other deal with the innate properties of language and their status in language acquisition, whereas 7 papers have a connectionist perspective. Only 2 of the connectionist papers provide data from language learners. Two papers describe aspects of first language acquisition without an obvious theoretical allegiance. Only 1 paper considers how children make use of negative input provided in an experimental setting for learning about irregular verb forms. There is not a single paper on how interaction with caregivers influences language acquisition or how language is socially constructed.