NATURAL SEQUENCES IN CHILD SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION1

The acquisition sequences of 11 English functors were compared for native Chinese‐ and Spanish‐speaking children learning English. Three different methods of speech analysis used to obtain the sequences are described in detail. All three methods yielded approximately the same sequence of acquisition for both language groups. This finding provides strong support for the existence of universal child language learning strategies and suggests a program of research that could lead to their description.