Chronological and Stylistic Aspects of Second Language Acquisition of Consonant Clusters

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A major focus in second language acquisition (SLA) studies for the past two or three decades has been the role that universal factors play in acquisition. Prior to then, the influence of transfer had been well documented, since the early work of Lado (1957) and even earlier work of Weinreich (1953). However, in 1971 Nemser reported Hungarian learners of English used substitutions that occurred in neither native English nor Hungarian; likewise, Johansson (1973) noted that L2 learners of Swedish produced sounds that occurred in neither Swedish nor the native languages. These nontransfer substitutions have been termed universal developmental variants (part of Universal Grammar [UG]) because they are similar or identical to those occurring in L1 acquisition. Although these substitutions had been well documented, there was no attempt to describe the interrelationship of transfer and developmental factors until Major (1986a, 1987) proposed the Ontogeny Model (OM) to describe a relationship of these two factors for both chronology and style. The present study further tests this model, the data largely supporting the claims for chronology but not for style. This work is significant because it rigorously tests claims concerning the interaction of transfer and universal factors, and although the claims for stylistic variation were not supported, the study provides extensive data with research implications for variation studies. The importance of variation in SLA has been pointed out by numerous researchers, including Tarone (1988), and in a recently published volume on variation in SLA (Bayley & Preston, 1996), which quite significantly contains a chapter by Labov.Although about a dozen years old, the OM has implications for an ongoing debate in SLA (not restricted to phonology): whether UG is or is not accessible to the learner. The model predicts that at early stages of acquisition, UG will not play a major role because the influence of transfer is strong and the influence of developmental factors (subsumed under UG) is minimal.According to the model, however, at later stages of acquisition the role of UG will increase because transfer decreases and developmental factors decrease.The OM has also had an impact on very recent work in L2 phonology, for example, Broselow, Chen, and Wang (1998) and Hancin‐Bhatt and Bhatt (1997), who employ Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993). From an Optimality Theory framework, Hancin‐Bhatt and Bhatt discuss the interaction of transfer and developmental factors and state: “In so doing, we can begin to give a linguistic‐theoretic interpretation to Major's (1986, 1987, 1994) ontogeny model” (p. 368).