Research methodology

PT-based studies make testable claims about language acquisition. Any study of language acquisition that makes testable claims needs to be based on observations of the acquisition process. One major method of observation (used both in research on child language as well as second language acquisition) is observation based on corpora of naturally occurring or elicited conversations. As Processability Theory has been substantiated by an extensive amount of corpus data across various second languages, we will concentrate on how to collect and analyze corpus data in this chapter.¹ In particular, we will take a closer look at the following aspects of using corpus data in studies of SLA: Data collection Transcription Finding regularities: Data analysis and implicational scaling What counts as acquired? Data density and acquisition criteria