progress report

Thought I'd write a lot during this break, but instead, I looked at the massive amount of writing I'd already done, that was in danger of rotting away on a single disk which I carry in my briefcase (mind you: the single biggest danger is that I misplace stuff)...so, I began restoring.

Lo and behold, I have almost enough to write a book, and I haven't even finished. Today I restored about eight articles, which I will link for you, but following questions remain.

There are about five under "Language as a self-organized (-ing?) system" and about eight that go under various names, from "Principle Wanted" (ambiguous for reasons stated earlier), to "After Krashen Reboot" or even "After Krashen call the insurance" or "After Krashen learn the rules of the road". I had rejected the overt references to Krashen since only a few of them are really about Krashen; however, it seems I need a new overarching name, and don't yet have it. I'll work on it.

Now the obvious question is whether the first five and the second eight can be tied together in any way. There are two more that deal specifically with grammatical correction and are even more loosely joined, conceptually, to these thirteen. Yet I sense that virtually everything I've said comes straight out of my experience and if that's all that binds it, maybe I should just keep it where it is in the back reaches of my personal collection.

So 5 + 8+ 2 (the last two being unrestored as of yet) plus a whole trove of blog posts (some of them are referenced here and elsewhere, and may be redundant)...is that enough? If not, what is missing?

More coming. I actually have more to say, but haven't said it.

Interlanguage- I'm still interested in Seliger's theories and what has come of them. If I remember correctly, people didn't understand them well (this was in graduate school) and couldn't quite tell you the difference between interlanguage and interference, which, for all I know, has replaced it again. Interlanguage was a "new" theory when I studied it, but it made a lot of sense, and explained things in such a way that the new learner did not look like he was unable to pick up a pencil because of a sweater lying on top of it.

Markedness theory- Linguists has always had trouble defining this because as soon as they do, they have to explain how something can be marked phonetically but unmarked semantically, etc. My purpose will be to show that the learner must himself/herself define it and use it for his/her own purposes.

What I originally called Volume theory, I have to rename because the name just doesn't sit well with me. This has been stored in the back reaches of storage, because I don't want to lose it, but, if it's a useful concept, it should have a useful name and go forward, perhaps in the book. It is a partner with Translation Plateau, one of the first things I wrote, which I consider important enough to keep and integrate.

more later, as I said.