The Multiple Grammars Theory and the nature of L2 grammars
Attempts to provide representational accounts of second language (L2) optionality are always welcome because they provide us with tools to determine whether and to what extent non-native grammars are idiosyncratic. In their keynote article, Amaral and Roeper (this issue; henceforth A&R) have also devised a specific way of accounting for how an L2 (or an L3 or an Ln grammar) is added to the initial first language (L1) representation. However, we are left with the need to determine more specifically what is actually added; whether the end result is a grammar with the same features (or parametric properties) as the input L2 grammar, as well as what the predictive power of the model may be. In this commentary, I will refer to previous L2 research dealing with optionality in order to: