Unified Competition Model: A Critical Look at Transition Theory

As a psycholinguistic model of language comprehension and acquisition, the Unified Competition Model was developed to account for both first and second language comprehension and acquisition. The Unified Competition Model posits that languages have a number of cues which receivers of language use in order to comprehend the input they receive. This model is based on the idea that mental processing involves competition. Moreover, The Competition Model, drawing on functionalist and connectionist views of language learning, denies the existence of a language-specific faculty. Furthermore, in the literature, a distinction is made between property theory and transition theory. The present paper aims to delve into the transition theory underlying the Unified Competition Model as applied to the acquisition of L1 and L2.