Relevance Theory and second language learning/behaviour
In my review article of Sperber and Wilson (1986=95), published in this journal (Foster-Cohen, 2000), I suggested that relevance theoretic work in second language acquisition had barely begun. The current issue of this journal is intended to demonstrate that, despite its young history, research into second language study adopting a Relevance Theory approach is now a vigorous and important player in our field. The impact, I believe, of the current collection is that it demonstrates how relevance theoretic researchers think about second language data, how they argue with each other over theoretical issues, and how they can and do provide insight into key issues in ways worthy of attention by researchers in other frameworks. Most importantly, the collection demonstrates both how behaviours that are general to all language users as well as those particular to second language (L2) learners can be understood from this theoretical perspective. At the basis of the application is that second language learners are not some unusual breed of speaker= hearer (Foster-Cohen, 2000; Rosales Sequieros, this issue). The first two articles in the issue address specific topics in the acquisition of particularly difficult morphosyntactic distinctions in English. Zegarac’s article examines the acquisition of the English definite article the by L2 learners who do not have an article system in their first language (L1); he looks at Croatian and Serbian.