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Table 1. Differences between SLA and FLA.
| FLA | SLA | |
| Overall success | Success is guaranteed. Learning a first language is about as natural to humans as walking upright. | Complete success is very rare; only about 5% of L2 learners have absolute success. |
| Variation | There is little variation among L1 learners with regard to overall success or the path they follow. | L2 learners vary in both their degree of success and the path they follow. |
| Goals | The goal is target language competence. | L2 learners may be content with less than target language competence. |
| Fossilization | Fossilization is unknown in child language development. | The L2 fossilizes at some point short of the knowledge of the native speakers. |
| Intuitions | Children develop clear intuitions regarding what is a correct and an incorrect sentence. | L2 learners are often unable to form clear grammaticality judgments. |
| Instruction | Children do not need formal lessons to learn their L1, so FLA is more in the sense of acquisition in natural settings. | L2 learners generally need formal instruction to learn the target language, so SLA is more in the sense of learning in formal settings. |
| Negative evidence | Children’s errors are not typically corrected; correction is not necessary for acquisition. | Correction is generally viewed as helpful and, by some, as necessary. |
| Affective factors | Success is not influenced by personality, motivation, attitudes, and so forth. | Affective factors play a major role in determining proficiency. |
| Previous knowledge | There is none. | There is already an established L1. |
Source. Ellis (1994, p. 107).
account for L2 learners’ fossilization in the acquisition process of English articles. As proposed by Hawkins and Chan (1997),
the virtual, unspecified features associated with the initial state of functional categories like C, Agr, D, and which determine parametric differences between languages, are available in that form