Studying Processability Theory -- Editorial page -- Title page -- LCC data -- Table of Contents -- Contributors -- Abbreviations -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- PART I. The facts -- 1. Developmental schedules -- 1. Introduction and overview -- 2. English question formation -- 3. Analysing ESL question formation in interlanguage data -- 4. The big picture: ESL development -- Summary -- Study questions -- 2. Learner variation -- 1.Introduction -- 2. Variation and solving developmental problems -- 3. Variation and linguistic redundancy -- 4. The role of conversational context -- 5. The role of grammar -- 6. The role of situational context -- Summary -- Study questions -- PART II. The theory -- 3. The psycholinguistic basis of PT -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Key features of language production -- 2.1 Processing components are relatively autonomous specialists which operate largely automatically -- 2.2 Processing is incremental -- 2.3 The output of the processor is linear, while it may not be mapped onto the underlying meaning in a linear way -- 2.4 Grammatical processing has access to a grammatical memory store -- 3. Incremental language generation -- 4. The processability hierarchy -- 5. LFG and processability -- 6. Feature unification -- 7. Linking arguments and constituents to functions -- Summary: Processability hierarchy -- Study questions -- 4. Explaining developmental schedules -- 1. ESL acquisition: Empirical evidence -- 2. Applying the processability hierarchy to ESL acquisition -- Summary -- Study questions -- 5. Explaining learner variation -- 1. Learner variation is constrained -- 2. Learner language is steady - despite learner variation -- 3. Bad variational choices trigger stabilization -- Summary -- Study questions -- 6. L1 transfer -- 1. The Developmentally moderated transfer hypothesis -- 2. The rationale of the DMTH.

3. Empirical evidence -- 4. A common misunderstanding -- Summary -- Study questions -- 7. Research Methodology -- 1. Data collection -- 2. The role of communicative tasks in data collection -- 3. Transcription -- 4. Finding regularities: Data analysis and implicational scaling -- 5. What counts as acquired? Data density and acquisition criteria -- Summary -- Study questions -- PART III. Applying PT to other contexts -- 8. Japanese as a second language -- 1. Some key features of Japanese grammar -- 2. Empirical support -- 3. Brief overview of work on Japanese L2 within the PT framework -- Summary -- Study questions -- 9. Pidgins and Creoles -- 1. Introduction -- 1.1 Tok Pisin (West Sepik dialect) -- 1.2 Ghanaian Pidgin English -- 1.3 Sranan -- 2. Inflectional morphology in pidgins and creoles -- 3. Syntactic structures -- 3.1 Basic word order: SVO, SOV -- 3.2 Question formation -- 3.3 Negation -- 4. Conclusion -- Summary -- Study questions -- 10. Bilingual first language acquisition -- 1. Introduction -- 2. A brief description of methods used for comparing linguistic development across the different languages in BFLA -- 3. Using PT for cross-linguistic comparison -- 4. A case study of a Japanese-English bilingual child -- 4.1 Data -- 4.2 Haru's morphological development of English and Japanese -- 4.3 English -- 4.4 Japanese -- 4.5 Comparison of Japanese and English -- Summary -- Study questions -- PART IV. Practical applications -- 11. Diagnosing L2 development -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Rapid Profile - The history -- 3. Linguistic profiling of ESL development using Rapid Profile -- 3.1 Training the analysts -- 3.2 Interactive training sessions -- 3.3 Eliciting speech samples -- 4. Tasks for data elicitation -- 5. Rapid Profile - A feasibility study for the EFL classroom -- 5.1 Overview of the main results of the study -- 6. Future perspectives.

6.1 Extending the stages of acquisition -- 6.2 Implications for teaching -- 6.3 Multilingual Rapid Profile -- Summary -- Study questions -- 12. Teaching -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The Teachability Hypothesis -- 3. Input and output in foreign language teaching -- 4. Developmentally moderated approaches to the foreign language classroom: Focus on form and TBLT -- Summary -- Study questions -- References -- Appendices -- Appendix A:Transcript A -- Appendix B:Transcript B -- Appendix C -- Name index -- Subject index.