Chapter 3. Perspectives on L2 teacher’s nearnativeness: Linguistic, psycholinguistic, contact linguistics and pedagogical approaches

What is it about?

We approach non-native grammars from a linguistic, a psycholinguistic, a contact linguistics and a pedagogical perspective in order to argue that a refined version of the Interlanguage Hypothesis and its most immediate successor, the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis, as well as the Competing Grammars Hypothesis, constitute a suitable framework for defining near-nativeness in general and teacher’s near-nativeness in particular. From the point of view of linguistics, we rely on formal features to compare native and near-native grammars. When it comes to the psycholinguistic basis of near-native grammars, we discuss their potential idiosyncrasies in relation to the cognitive mechanisms involved in the representation and processing of native grammars. The pidgin-creole continuum and the code-switching patterns that emerge in language contact situations serve as the basis for discussing native and non-native sensibility to features. Key concepts such as the critical period and the age factor, optionality or crosslinguistic influence underlie the different levels of discussion undertaken here.

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