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Pinker and Prince (1988, 1994) propose that there are two separate systems involved in linguistic representation and processing; one system is rule-governed, and incorporates symbolic hierarchical linguistic representations, the other is associative with linguistic information represented in a more distributed fashion. One particular linguistic feature of English said to exemplify the principles of this dual-mechanism model is inflectional morphology. Pinker and Prince (1988; 1994) present a range of evidence showing that native speakers of English process regular inflectional items in ways that are both quantitatively and qualitatively different from irregular inflectional items. This dual-mechanism model has been largely investigated within the context of first language (L1) learning, and has received considerable support from investigations using a number of different research paradigms. Nonetheless, there have been a number of serious criticisms in that the apparent behavioural distinctions between regular and irregular inflectional items can be supported by an alternative associative system (Elman, Bates, Johnson, Karmiloff-Smith, Parisi & Plunkett, 1996). The research presented in this dissertation investigates how knowledge of second language (L2) inflectional morphology might be processed and represented. The research is grounded within the theoretical framework provided by the dual-mechanism model and evaluates whether the claims and assumptions of this model are relevant to how L2 learners process, represent and learn about inflectional morphology. Three experiments are presented which address the issues of: compounding with regular and irregular noun plurals (Experiment 1); past tense generalization with regular and irregular verbs (Experiment 2); and finally, the development of knowledge of a new inflectional paradigm (Old English noun plurals, Experiment 3). Each of these experiments provides findings which are difficult for the dual-mechanism model

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the development and use of certain grammatical morphemes, i.e., the English inflections for plural, possessive, present progressive and past tense in the speech of educable mentally retarded (EMR) adolescents. The performance on two grammatical tasks of EMR subjects was compared to that of normal control subjects matched by mental age scores. The first task was to produce, verbally, the required inflection for a novel (nonsense) word on a modified version of Berko’s Test of English Morphology (BTEM) (Berko, 1958). Secondly, subjects responded to grammatical contrasts in lexical or real words at levels of imitation, comprehension and production on a modified form of the Imitation, Comprehension and Production Test (ICP) (Fraser, Bellugi and Brown, 1963). The results of this study revealed statistically significant poorer performance in the use of English inflections by EMR adolescents when compared with control subjects of similar mental age, specifically in the use of less common allomorphs for plural, possessive and past tense.

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