been also produced from other sources, see, for example, Bialystok and Frohlich, 1977, 1978a, 1978b.) These studies are consistent with this generalization: we see the natural order for grammatical morphemes, that is, the child's (second language) difficulty order (similar to the order of acquisition; Krashen, 1977), when we test subjects in situations that appear to be "Monitor-free", where they are focused on communication and not form. When we give our adult subjects tests that meet the three conditions, i.e. a pencil and paper "grammar"-type test, we see "unnatural" orders, orders unlike the child L2 order of acquisition or difficulty order. The interpretation of this result is that the natural order reflects the operation of the acquired system alone, without the intrusion of the conscious grammar, since adult second language acquisition is posited to be similar to child (second) language acquisition. When we put people in situations where the three conditions are met, when they have time, are focused on form, and know the rule, the error pattern changes, reflecting the contribution of the conscious grammar.

It appears to be the case that unnatural orders are the result of a rise in rank of certain morphemes, the late-acquired, more "learnable" items. In English as a second language, when performers are put in situations where they can and do Monitor, we see a rise in rank of the third person singular morpheme and the regular past, both late-acquired, low on the list in Table 2.1, and both relatively straightforward, both syntactically and semantically. (See studies by Larsen-Freeman, 1975, described in Chapter IV, Table 4.1; and Brown, described in Note 4, Chapter IV.)²

Use of the conscious Monitor thus has the effect of allowing performers to supply items that are not yet acquired. As we shall see in Chapter IV, however, only certain items can be supplied by most Monitor users; the Monitor does a better job with some parts of grammar than with others. Specifically, it seems to do better with rules that can be characterized as "simple" in two different ways. First, rules that do not require elaborate movements or permutations; rules that are syntactically simple. Easy rules in this sense include bound morphology, such as the third person singular in English, or the de + le = du contraction in French. Difficult rules in this sense include the English wh- question rule, which requires moving the questioned word to the front of

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