THE INTERLANGUAGE HYPOTHESIS EXTENDED TO CHILDREN1

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the Interlanguage (IL) hypothesis should be extended from (1)adult second‐language acquisition settings to (2) those non‐simultaneous child language acquisition settings where the major sociolinguistic variables is the absence of peers who are native speakers of the target language (TL). The paper first establishes the need to postulate the existence of an IL. Next, data from a Toronto French immersion program are presented which suggest that, as in adult second‐language speech, the strategies of language transfer, simplification, and overgeneralization of TL rules affect the surface forms of the second‐language speech of children in this program. Finally, the possibility is mentioned that, under the sociolinguistic conditions of (2) above, ILs will develop as dialects in their own right, an important possibility for theories of pidginization and creolization, as well as for general theories of language change.

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