1. Introduction
In his article in the first issue of this journal, Rex A. Sprouse (2009) presents a critique of two of my recent papers (Plag 2008a, 2008b) in the Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, in which I put forward the hypothesis that creoles are conventionalized interlanguages of an early stage. Sprouse’s critique would deserve a detailed treatment, which however, due to the space limitations imposed on this response, has to wait for another occasion. It may be worthwhile, however, to clarify at least some of the more important points raised in his article, one methodological, two theoretical. Sprouse accuses me of an ‘uncritical acceptance of Pienemann’s Processability Theory’, of entertaining a ‘traditional conception of transfer’, and of an ‘unwillingness to confront the rich generative literature on transfer’. In the following I will comment on each of these points.
2. Processing
It can be generally stated that the debate on the role of second language acquisition in c...