As far as phonology and morphology are concerned, the available evidence indicates that the role of L1 in shaping interlanguage is confined to those of its rules that are needed to account for its global alternations, alternations that are independent of its morphology (cf. Cearly 1974, Dressler 1985, Kilbury 1981, Singh and Ford 1982, 1987, Singh and Martohardjono 1989, Wode 1978, and Wurzel 1977, among others). The rules needed to account for the local, morphologically dependent alternations of L1 or the ones needed to account for its word-formation processes do not play such a role. Interference, in other words, can be caused only by across-the-board phonological rules of L1. So-called morphophonemic rules of L1 do not cause it, and morphological interference from L1 seems not to exist as word-formation errors in intermorphology are the results of illegal extensions of L2 word-formation rules (cf. Singh 1989 and Singh and Martohardjono 1989). The purpose of this note is to critically examine the accounts contemporary theories of phonology provide of this state of affairs and to argue that the account provided by the sort of theory proposed in Ford and Singh (1983, 1985a, 1985b) and Singh and Ford (1982, 1987) is the most satisfactory one.

Does phonological conditioning have a privileged status in allomorphic alternations? Most synchronic descriptions appear to assume that if simple phonological conditions can account for some alternation, they automatically constitute the relevant factors chosen by speakers in their internalized grammars (but cf. Hooper 1976:87 or Klausenburger 1979:29–36 for divergent views). Intuitive notions of simplicity cannot provide a solution because simplicity is actually an empirical issue (cf. Chomsky 1965:37–47). The answer can only come from the analysis of external evidence, i.e., errors, language acquisition, historical changes, etc.

L’application d’une théorie linguistique, essentiellement élaborée à partir de données internes, à des données externes (diachronie, acquisition, performance, pathologie, traitement informatique, etc.) et sa vérification à partir de ces dernières pose de nombreux problèmes. Le premier de ces problèmes est celui de l’exportation des prédicats de la théorie dans un domaine autre (et généralement plus englobant) que celui pour lequel ils ont été définis.

Linguistic analyses of aphasic patients’ performances have developed to the point where interesting, non-trivial descriptions and explanations of pathological performances are available in linguistic and processing terms. The purpose of this paper is to present a short synopsis for linguists of several recent analyses of aphasic patients’ disturbances in the sphere of comprehension of syntactic form. This presentation is designed to illustrate some of the logical and methodological issues regarding the analysis of aphasic data, as well as to present specific results of our investigations. On the basis of our case studies, we also suggest several aspects of syntactic structure and parsing.

To an outsider looking at linguistic theory, the problem of internal vs. external evidence seems to arise out of a conflation of two relatively distinct enterprises. The first of these tries to establish a claim that there is a distinct, organic, language faculty (a language organ), that is, a species-specific characteristic common to all humans. The second is an attempt to abstract from the facts of diversity a structure that has equivalent universal characteristics and thus can be seen as an ideal type or as an ideal initial state condition (of a pure and uniform experience) under which a language is acquired by a native speaker. As I understand it, the relationship between these two enterprises is yet to be fully determined given the fact that the physical mechanism that has been deduced to correspond to a property of mind is as of now largely unknown.