ABSTRACT
Linguistics has impacted research in Second language acquisition (SLA) since the early days of the development of the field, with many linguistic theories having had some relevance. This chapter deals with what are known as formal approaches. It means an approach that takes language form as its subject matter. The chapter focuses on the learner’s linguistic system. A formal linguistic theory is used to describe that system. It also focuses on three areas in which the SLA relationship with other academic disciplines has been most heavily felt: linguistics, psychology, and sociolinguistics, broadly construed to include sociocultural orientations. The chapter also deals with nativist approaches to language, which claim that at least some aspects of language learning involve innateness. The UG approach to SLA begins from the perspective of learnability. The assumption of innate universal language properties is motivated by the need to explain the uniformly successful and speedy acquisition of language by children, in spite of insufficient input.
