One of the central explanatory problems facing a theory of SLA is, of course, the fact that the process of acquisition generally does not work very well. There are various explanations for this lack of success, but for researchers who work within the framework of generative linguistic theory, an obvious choice is to claim that there is a difference in what used to be called access to Universal Grammar (UG). It could be claimed, for instance, that UG is, in effect, no longer at work and that the adult acquisition process is fundamentally different from native language acquisition. It could be claimed that cognitive factors extrinsic to UG no longer function effectively, or it could be claimed that some well-defined element of UG is no longer accessible to the adult learner.

Hawkins is one of the foremost proponents of this third position. Hawkins and his associates have put forward the representational deficit hypothesis, which essentially claims that adult learners are unable to acquire uninterpretable features of the second language (L2) that are not represented in the first language (L1). This is, of course, a sort of contrastive analysis hypothesis, but with a big difference: It is offered within the framework of a well-articulated theory and identifies what would be considered a natural kind under this theory. This does not mean that the hypothesis is correct, but it suggests a worthwhile research program; the papers collected in this volume, a festschrift for Hawkins, are a fair example of work being done in this program.

This volume includes nine papers: Goad and White on determiners in Turkish-English interlanguage; Snape on English article use by Mandarin speakers; Vainikka and Young-Scholten on verb raising; Yuan on the use of L2 Chinese wh-words by English and Japanese speakers; Jiang on reflexives and obligatory objects in the L2 English of Chinese speakers; Lozano on the use of null and overt subject pronouns in English-Spanish interlanguage; Parodi on the acquisition of clitic doubling and left-dislocation in L2 Greek by English and Spanish speakers; Tsimpli and Papadopoulou on manner-of-motion verbs in the L2 Greek of Slavic and Germanic speakers; and Liszka on French L1 speakers’ use of English simple present and present progressive. Most of the papers report on experimental research that would generally be expected: grammaticality-judgment tasks, picture description, and sentence interpretation, among others. Although the research presented is sometimes thought-provoking, there are no breakthroughs reported, no conclusions converged on, and no points settled. Nonetheless, it was definitely worthwhile to collect these papers in one volume.

The question of whether SLA is hampered by representational deficits is not only a central question in SLA theory, but it is also a hard question with many possible answers, even granting the premises of UG theory, and even further granting that there are representational deficits. It could be argued that uninterpretable features are unavailable to the L2 learner; or rather that it is the interpretable features that are unavailable (this position is unfortunately not represented in this collection); or it could be argued, as in Goad and White’s paper, that the deficient representation is not syntactic but phonological. Having these papers together in one collection lets the interested reader sample and compare a number of different approaches to, and (tentative) conclusions regarding, this question.

However, the interested reader is the catch: The contributors are not just working within the Minimalist framework, they take this to be a given, and evidently assume a like-minded readership (for instance, Parodi is the only author to explain the difference between interpretable and uninterpretable features). Readers who approach this book from outside this framework may feel that parameters are being proffered rather freely and ad hoc, that the explanatory machinery sometimes seems like a wheel to break butterflies on, or that little attempt is made to motivate the hypotheses (why should only certain features be unacquirable?); come to think of it, some insiders may, too. Overall, however, this is serious work on a serious subject, and anyone interested in the question of failure to converge on the target grammar would do well to take a look at it.