"A major strength of Major's work is his delineation of the parameters of the OPM....Major is to be congratulated on producing a work that can be read profitably by specialists and nonspecialists alike....this book provides a readable overview of L2 phonological research and theory....[ Readers] who are looking for an overview of a complex area of L2 acquisition, along with an explanatory mechanism and theory of the same, will need look no further." The Modern Language Journal
"It is much to Major's credit that he has developed a truly comprehensive model of the basic structural sources that shape IL in its development. In doing so, he not only synthesizes much previous work (including his own) on variability, transfer, developmental processes, universals, markedness and similarity as determining factors in SLA but, more significantly, he produces out of this a deceptively simple and workable typology of far-reaching relevance for a whole series of linguistic phenomena....the OPM should function as an important orientation marker for future research in SLA and should...enlighten second language professionals as to the basically simple structural factors involved in IL development." Second Language Research
