Larry Selinker

Larry Selinker (September 19, 1937 – May 10, 2026) was the professor emeritus of linguistics at the University of Michigan and former director of the university's English Language Institute. In 1972, Selinker introduced the concept of interlanguage, which built upon Pit Corder's previous work on the nature of language learners' errors. Corder's and Selinker's work became the foundation of modern research into second-language acquisition, and interlanguage is accepted as a basic principle of the discipline.

Education Selinker received his B.A. from Brandeis University in 1959, where he studied Near-Eastern studies. He received his M.A. from The American University in 1960, in the subject of linguistics. Selinker studied at Georgetown University for his doctorate, which he received in 1966.

In his 1972 paper, Selinker proposed that interlanguages have all the normal properties of natural languages. In other words, they are systematic and bound by rules in the same manner as any other language. Furthermore, Selinker proposed that interlanguage is based on three basic principles: over-generalization from patterns found in the language being learned, transfer from patterns found in the learner's native language, and fossilization, the phenomenon of a learner's language ceasing to develop.