Studies on learner language have shown formulaic speech to be a common phenomenon, especially in early phases of development. In this paper the occurrence of formulaic speech will be further evidenced by the results from studies on tutored adult learners' acquisition of word order rules in Swedish as a second language. The investigation of favorable/unfavorable contexts for the application of these rules in spontaneous speech showed that the rule application is often related to the actual words involved. The results thus indicate not only that memorization of strings and formulaic speech are important in language learning as a means of facilitating conversation in early learner language, but also that they affect the application of syntactic rules in several respects.

The term “formulaic speech” is used here in a broad sense and includes complete expressions like jag vet inte “I don't know”, and different types of frequent combinations of words constituting various parts of sentences, that appear to be used as ready-made units in processing. The criterion for regarding a sequence as a chunk/prefab is the learners' manifestation of them as such in their speech, as shown either by a more frequent than average correct production of a certain structure, or by errors in structures that are otherwise correct.