ABSTRACT
The field of second language acquisition (SLA) has enjoyed a profitable relation-ship with formal linguistics throughout the years, a relationship that most would agree is beneficial and even necessary for the development of SLA theory. However, the adoption of formal constructs by SLA theorists is often done without rigorously testing the applicability of those constructs to the second language (L2) context, potentially resulting in situations in which theorists maneuver to make L2 data fit the constructs rather than ensuring that the constructs fit the data.
