amp; Starren 2007; Pfaff 1992; Starren 2001; see also Vainikka et al. 2017 for other morphosyntactic patterns in L2 English). We may therefore be dealing with a more general phenomenon that characterises interlanguages that develop naturalistically and under low contact conditions, and perhaps in learners with low literacy skills. Although further research is needed to test this hypothesis, the specific patterns described here would have gone unnoticed by analysing only language classes or, in general, learners with a high level of education.