In this paper, various definitions of markedness are discussed, including the difference in the assumptions underlying psychological and linguistic approaches to markedness. It is proposed that if one adopts a definition derived from theories of language learnability, then the second language learner's prior linguistic experience may predispose him or her towards transferring marked structures from the first language to the second, contrary to usual assumptions in the literature that suggest that second language learners will avoid marked forms. To test this hypothesis, adult and child learners of French as a second language were tested using grammaticality judgment tasks on two marked structures, preposition stranding and the double object construction, which are grammatical in English but ungrammatical in French, to see if they would accept French versions of these structures. It was found that the second language learners did not accept preposition stranding in French but did accept the double object construction, suggesting that transfer takes place only with one of the two marked structures. In addition, the children took tests on these structures in their native language to see if they perceived them as in any sense psycholinguistically marked. Results show that they do not treat marked and unmarked structures differently in the native language. It is suggested that the concept of markedness may cover a range of phenomena that need to be further clarified and investigated.

This paper describes recent theoretical developments in cognitive psychology that can be applied to second language acquisition and uses the theory to analyze phenomena discussed regularly in the second language literature. Some limitations of linguistic theories in addressing the role of mental processes in second language acquisition are identified, and current cognitive learning theory in general is outlined. The paper then examines the theoretical model developed by John Anderson (1983, 1985) as it applies to memory representation, learning, and language skill acquisition. The remainder of the paper describes possible applications of this model to issues in second language acquisition and suggests that the theory is useful both in explaining second language acquisition processes and in identifying areas in which research is needed.

In an empirical investigation, the results of which are reported elsewhere in greater detail (Wolff, 1985), an attempt was made to discover more about the strategies and processes specific to second language (L2) comprehension. On the assumption that information processing is of a universal cognitive nature, no differences in the cognitive processes themselves involved in first language (L1) and L2 comprehension were expected. It was, however, expected that differences would emerge in the way common strategies and processes were applied in the decoding of texts and utterances. We assumed that the differences would be of degree and not of kind, and that the extent and exploitation of these processes in L2 comprehension could be distinguished from L1 comprehension. The experimental design closely followed that developed by L1 comprehension research. A text was presented to an informant followed by the instruction to recall it. We adopted this type of experiment for two reasons: (a) It has proved its reliability in L1 research, and (b) our results could be compared to those obtained in L1 research. The similarities and differences between L1 and L2 results were thus quite easy to analyze.

Recent perspectives on language transfer have highlighted the role of psychotypology and have given new life to Newmark's ignorance hypothesis. This paper examines such perspectives in the light of a body of data in French from a beginning learner of that language whose native language is English but who in addition has some knowledge of Irish, Latin, and Spanish. The fact that Spanish emerges as a privileged transfer source seems to point to a psychotypology factor, and certain distributional and contextual evidence appears to show that ignorance is in many cases triggering thè transfers. However, because ignorance does not seem to explain all cases, some speculation is entered into, on the basis of clues in the data, regarding the role of memory codes in transfer.