Development and variation in learner language

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between variation in the oral inter language of learners of English as a second language and the propagation of these rules through the spread of fresh lexical environments for their operation. It is argued that there considerable systemacity in this process. The study then goes on to examine the feasibility of incorporating these findings into oral proficiency descriptions of language development and concludes that the same data can be used more productively and predictably from within Manfred Pienemann's Processability Theory.