8.
False: Language is learned mainly through imitation
True: Learners produce many novel sentences that they could not have heard before. The sentences are based on their developing understanding of how the language system works. Many examples provide evidence that language learners do not simply internalize a long list of imitated and memorized sentences.
9.
Parents usually correct young children when they make grammatical errors.
There is considerable variation in the extent to which parents correct their children's speech. The variation is based partly on the children's age and partly on parents' social, lingusitic, and educational background.
10.
False: All of the mistakes that second-language learners make are due to interference from their first language.
True: The first language is not the only influence on second-language learning. Learners from different backgrounds often make the same kinds of errors, and some of these errors are remarkably similar to those made by native-language speakers. In such cases, second-language errors are evidence of the learners' efforts to discover the structure of the target language, rather than transfer patterns from their first language.
