How APT is your theory: Present status and future prospects

Extract

To begin with, we thank the commentators for their remarks, which both intrigued and challenged us in various ways. Time and space limits prevent us from doing justice to all the points they raised, so we will focus on those we consider most significant and are best prepared to deal with. One of these points, of course, is the overall character and status of our proposal. Pienemann terms Acquisition by Processing (APT) ‘an interesting point of departure’ (p. 38) for the development of a theory of acquisition and processing. Harrington and Carroll say in effect that it can't be done; others seem more open to the possibility. In any case, we quickly accept Roeper's suggestion that what we have presented is more a ‘prole-gomena’ (p. 21) to a theory than a full-fledged theory in itself.