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refers to cases where an L2 learner uses two or more linguistic variants to express a phenomenon which has only one realization in the target language. For example, Ellis (1985) reports a learner of L2 English who uses two variants for expressing negation in contiguous chunks of speech: No look my card/Don't look my card. In trying to explain the sources of such variability in SLA, researchers have generally worked from an assumption, first elaborated in work by Labov (1972) on native speakers of English, that variability is a systematic function of factors like the degree of formality of the context of utterance and the nature of the surrounding linguistic context. There have been a number of proposed explanations of L2 variability: learners have a set of L2 grammars, each appropriate to different contexts of use ( Tarone, 1983 ); learners go through a developmental phase of variability ( Ellis, 1985 ); variability is the result of using two types of knowledge, one subconsciously acquired, the other consciously learned ( Krashen, 1981 ); variability results from differences in processing loads associated with different types of task ( Hulstijn and Hulstijn, 1984 ). Labov (1972) showed that in native (American) English there is systematic variability which correlates both with the social group membership of the speaker, and the communicative purpose for which she or he is ... log in or subscribe to read full text