A study of interlanguage comprehension, part of a larger project by the Gothenburg research group, investigated the telephone conversations between advanced learners and native speakers of Swedish. In four of the eight conversations, the non-native speakers called the public library to get information on how to borrow books; in the other four the same persons called the police station to ask what to do upon losing a wallet. Analysis of the conversations suggested that the inferential comprehension processes in transactional communication must be preceded by linguistic decoding. In the cases studied, communication proceeded smoothly due to situations that promoted the creation of mutual cognitive environments. The study suggested that the speaker's contribution is as important as the listener's. (LB)