Dear All: At the risk of being redundant, I'd like to stress that finding construction X appears in a given students' writing before construction Y does is not, in itself, evidence of an "organic" developmental sequence. It's a precondition for such an interpretation, but it doesn't mandate it. Establishing causation requires (at the minimum) examining the widest possible variety of student-produced language from the widest possible range of contexts and from the widest possible range of students ("possible" here being determined by both theoretical and pragmatic concerns). The main problem, as Ed has pointed out, is that this kind of research is amazingly labor-intensive (forget CEOs; Congress should fund Ed a legion of research assistants). --- Bill Spruiell To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/