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The theme of this article is that much SLA research would gain if it took account of its place within an overall understanding of the component parts of this complex discipline and the relationship between them. In the article I first provide comments on UG based accounts of SLA, functionalist accounts of SLA, and processing accounts of SLA. In each case I seek to examine their specific contribution to an overall understanding of the discipline and at the same time to state the limits of that contribution. I also seek to examine whether the differences between these approaches derive from fundamentally contradictory beliefs or whether there is a degree of complementarity. In doing so, I argue in favour of a view which stresses complementarity, without seeking to deny the validity of underlying differences of opinion. I argue that the major ‘holes’ in the discipline arise from the difficulty of dealing with the way in which linguistic knowledge is created either through triggering or through the linking of conceptual knowledge to linguistic form. The missing element may be a failure to incorporate an awareness of how processing and memory systems work. I examine the contribution of the limited number of accounts which do assign importance to processing and to memory before concluding that this is an area on which future research should focus.
