This article examines experimental data of SLA of English reflexives. A carefully designed experiment to tap syntactic constraints of interlanguage grammar and the consideration of the consistency of responses of individual subjects reveal the systematicity of interlanguage grammar much more explicitly than previous studies. Of subjects' behaviour, 95% perfectly matches the sanctions of parameter values suggested in Wexler and Manzini's (1987) Governing Category Parameter and Proper Antecedent Parameter. However, re-examined in the light of the alternative hypotheses in the Binding Theory since Wexler and Manzini (1987), interlanguage grammar may violate the sanctions of Universal Grammar (UG) parameters for the variaton of referential properties of anaphors. Taking into account of this new evidence, the author suggests: 1) SLA is systematic; 2) L2 learners' interpretations of English reflexives are attributed to their linguistic knowledge; and 3) UG is available in SLA, and SLA of the referential properties of English reflexives is carried out by (re)setting parameter values.

We show experimentally that for the electrohydrodynamic instability in nematic liquid crystals the threshold for the onset of spatial turbulence can be increased by at least a factor of 2 by superimposing noise on the applied voltage. We find that for sufficiently high noise intensities a direct transition from the spatially homogeneous state to turbulence via intermittency can be induced.

This study investigates whether intermediate Japanese learners of English (JLE) show any variability in sensitivity to the overuse of 3rd person singular (3sg)-sand if they do, what the causes may be. The results of the experiment indicate that JLE do exhibit variability: JLE showed sensitivity to ungrammaticality caused by a discrepancy in person features between subjects and verbs. In addition, they were sensitive to number feature disagreement when the plurality of subjects was expressed syntactically, namely, by using the conjunctionand(e.g.,Tim and Paul), by the demonstrativetheseand by a numeral quantifier (e.g.,these two secretaries). However, they were not sensitive to such disagreement when subjects were marked only by plural-s(e.g.,The chefs). Based on these results, we suggest that the failure of JLE to use 3sg-smay not lie in the difficulty of subject–verb agreement, but in the detection of the number feature of sentential subjects. We suggest that intermediate JLE have problems both with the number feature at the lexicon/syntax level and with its morphological mapping at the level of morphology.

Second language acquisition (SLA) research in the last 20 years appears to have shown that Universal Grammar (UG) constrains SLA, and a number of specific models of SLA have been offered. However, some crucial problems have been left unsolved in previous models suggested by the Principles and Parameters Approach; the Minimalist Program is likely to provide a better account of the data. The acquisition of the obligatoriness of overt subjects in English is one such problem. The Minimalist approach suggests that first language (L1) transfer is realized as the transfer of lexical items and their features.This further implies that some cross-linguistic effects do not exist at the initial stage of development, but may emerge gradually in the course of second language (L2) development in accordance with the expansion of L2 lexicon and the number of lexical items to be placed in the sentence structure. With these considerations, the Minimalist Program provides us with a new framework for explaining data concerning the L2 acquisition of non-null subjects in English, especially the developmental changes of interlanguage grammar and L1 influences on it.

%e report the temporal developments of the variance and distribution of fluctuations of macroscopic order in a structure-formation process using an electrohydrodynamic instability of a nematic liquid crystal at f& f"where f and f, are the applied and the critical field frequencies separating two different instabilities: a convective flow instability and a forced oscillatory instability of the director. At f & f" the dissipative structure appears essentially as the forced oscillatory instability of the director in a three-dimensional pattern in space. The temporal development of the variance is qualitatively in good agreement with the result expected from the noisy Landau equation for the early stage, which resembles the result in a transient process of laser radiation, theoretically and experimentally studied by Arecchi and Degiorgio, but not for the late stage. This comes from the spatial inhomogeneity of the macroscopic order. The distributions of the macroscopic order fluctuation have profiles similar to the Gaussian type (or lognormal type in the presence of externally applied noise) for the early stage, and have an asymmetric profile with negative skewness for the late stage.This would suggest that the growth process of the dissipative structure for the late stage is dominated by totally different kinetics from that for the initial stage.