The incidence of nativelikeness in adult second language acquisition is a controversial issue in SLA research. Although some researchers claim that any learner, regardless of age of acquisition, can attain nativelike levels of second language (L2) proficiency, others hold that attainment of nativelike proficiency is, in principle, impossible. The discussion has traditionally been framed within the paradigm of a critical period for language acquisition and guided by the question of whether SLA is constrained by the maturation of the brain. The work presented in this article can be positioned among those studies that have focused exclusively on the apparent counterexamples to the critical period. We report on a large-scale study of Spanish/Swedish bilinguals (n = 195) with differing ages of onset of acquisition (<1-47 years), all of whom identify themselves as potentially nativelike in their L2. Listening sessions with native-speaker judges showed that only a small minority of those bilinguals who had started their L2 acquisition after age 12, but a majority of those with an age of onset below this age, were actually perceived as native speakers of Swedish. However, when a subset (n = 41) of those participants who did pass for native speakers was scrutinized in linguistic detail with a battery of 10 highly complex, cognitively demanding tasks and detailed measurements of linguistic performance, representation, and processing, none of the late learners performed within the native-speaker range; in fact, the results revealed also This study was made possible by a research grant to K. H. and N. A. from The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (grant No. 1999-0383:01). We are greatly indebted to the participants of the study, who without hesitation agreed to go through the 4-hour long and quite demanding test session. We would also like to thank Johan Roos for carrying out the testing and data collection, Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam AO and Nativelikeness in an L2that only a few of the early learners exhibited actual nativelike competence and behavior on all measures of L2 proficiency that were employed. Our primary interpretation of the results is that nativelike ultimate attainment of a second language is, in principle, never attained by adult learners and, furthermore, is much less common among child learners than has previously been assumed.

Results from a number of recent studies suggest that nativelike adult second language (L2) learners possess a high degree of language learning aptitude, the positive effects of which may have compensated for the negative effects of a critical period in these learners. According to the same studies, child learners seem to attain a nativelike command of the L2 regardless of high or low aptitude, which has led researchers to conclude that this factor plays no role in early acquisition. The present study investigates the L2 proficiency and language aptitude of 42 near-native L2 speakers of Swedish (i.e., individuals whom actual mother-tongue speakers of Swedish believe are native speakers). The results confirm previous research suggesting that a high degree of language aptitude is required if adult learners are to reach a L2 proficiency that is indistinguishable from that of native speakers. However, in contrast to previous studies, the present results also identify small yet significant aptitude effects in child SLA. Our findings lead us to the conclusions that the rare nativelike adult learners sometimes observed would all turn out to be exceptionally talented language learners with an unusual ability to compensate for maturational effects and, consequently, that their nativelikeness per se does not constitute a reason to reject the critical period hypothesis.

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This article challenges a recent proposal for the theoretical interpretation of L1 and L2 interaction that results from the abrupt change of language environment in internationally adopted children. According to this proposal (Pallier, Dehaene, Poline, LeBihan, Argenti, Depoux and Mehler, 2003; Ventureyra, Pallier and Yoo, 2004), such children experience a total loss of their L1, while, as adults, they exhibit a nativelike ultimate attainment of their L2. These authors suggest that what they see as a total loss of L1 allows a resetting of the neural network that normally subserves L1 retention and hence permits a complete acquisition of the L2. Data from two of our own research projects, one on L1 remnants in Korean adoptees in Sweden (see Park, forthcoming), and the other on age of acquisition and ultimate L2 attainment of Swedish (see Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam, in press), which included data from Latin American adoptees in Sweden among other participants, suggest (i) that L1 remnants are indeed maintained, (ii) that L2 attainment isnotenhanced by severe L1 attrition, and (iii) that there is an age dimension to both the degree of L1 attrition and the level of L2 ultimate attainment in international adoptees. We therefore contend that a maturational interpretation of language replacement data is preferable.

In this paper, the acquisition of Swedish syntax of negation by adult second‐language learners has been studied. Insights into the route of acquisition have been gained through a close examination of the learners' variation in their placement of the negative element, i.e., the way in which some learners variably place the negation before and after the finite verb. This type of variation has previously been seen as random and irregular, but through application of devices for the study of variable data, such as implicational scales (DeCamp 1971), variable rules (Labov 1969) and linguistic continua (DeCamp 1971, Bickerton 1975), it has been possible to discover regular patterns in the variation. Such regularities have previously been found in sound system acquisition by second‐language learners (L. Dickerson 1975, W. Dickerson 1976). The route of acquisition has been found to be highly regular for the group of 160 subjects who were examined in this study, and furthermore, independent of differences in background factors of the learners, such as length of education and knowledge of foreign languages. Most interestingly, the route of acquisition has also been found to be the same for learners with different source languages. Thus the findings reported in this paper suggest that the process of acquisition of grammatical structures is a regular and dynamic one, in that there is a successive and continuous transition from one state to another. The behavior of a group of backsliders in the same syntactic area has also been studied. It is found that what is acquired last is also the first to be given up. These findings are in agreement with the Jakobsonian view of a natural sequence in language acquisition and language loss.

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This paper discusses research that has been carried out on maturational constraints for SLA, specifically on the conceptualisation formulated in the critical period hypothesis (CPH). Our review shows that the positions taken by researchers are very diverse, something we believe has its basis in a lack of explicit hypothesis formulation and the use of insufficiently sensitive research instruments. Researchers disagree whether all, only some, or no learners can reach native-like ultimate attainment in a second language. We conclude that there is strong support for maturational constraints, although the CPH itself cannot be maintained in its original formulation. We also propose a unitary interpretation of existing empirical results based on the observation that learners who have been identified as indistinguishable from native speakers characteristically exhibit non-native features that are unperceivable except in detailed and systematic linguistic analyses.