ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we consider recent treatments of the role of the native language, first dealing with the morpheme order studies and then dealing with the reaction to that body of research. In Chapter 4, we discussed the work of Dulay and Burt (1973, 1974a, 1974b, 1975) on prepubescent children, which was important in its influence on moving the emphasis from a behaviorist view of language learning to a view of second language acquisition that relied more on mental processes. It was not clear, however, whether the same findings would apply to the acquisition of a second language by adults. Bailey, Madden, and Krashen (1974) conducted an influential study to investigate precisely this issue. As with the Dulay and Burt study, there were two groups of learners. The first group was comprised of 33 native speakers of Spanish and the second group, the non-Spanish group, was comprised of 40 native speakers of a variety of languages (Greek, Persian, Italian, Turkish, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Afghan [Pashto], Hebrew, Arabic, and Vietnamese). The BSM was administered to these 73 adults. Results showed consistency with the results of the Dulay and Burt studies (Fig. 5.1). Additionally, the two adult groups showed similar results, as is seen in Fig. 5.2.
