The learner's problem of arranging words

In the course of the acquisition of a second language in everyday communication, the learner passes through a series of more or less elaborate repertoires of linguistic devices that allow him to express himself and to understand others with varying degrees of success when he tries to communicate with his social environment. Repertoires of this sort we call learner varieties. We may assume that both the internal organization of a learner variety and the transition from one variety to the next are systematic in nature and that because of this systematicity, both "the internal organization of learner varieties" and "the logic of development" are problems worth studying. This paper deals with the first of these problems, the internal organization of learner varieties, and more particularly with the question of how learners arrange words in their utterances if their repertoire is still very limited and most of the normal syntactic devices of the target language are not yet available to them. Its aim is therefore to attempt to find out what other organizational principles they can call on to make themselves understood. We think that the investigation of learner varieties should eventually deepen our understanding of the acquisition process, through a study of the second problem: the logic of development. Moreover, is should also cast some light on language and its functioning in general, and it is this latter aspect that motivates the present study. Why should the investigation of the use of almost pathologically restricted systems such as elementary learner varieties tell us something that could not much more easily be uncovered by looking at normal, fully developed language, whose investigation is more advanced in many respects? In fullfledged languages, the interplay of forms and functions is extremely intricate and tight they have a much higher degree of integration when compared to