TY - JOUR
T1 - The on-line processing of binding principles in second language acquisition
T2 - Evidence from eye tracking
AU - Kim, Eunah
AU - Montrul, Silvina
AU - Yoon, James
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2014 Cambridge University Press.
PY - 2014/7/14
Y1 - 2014/7/14
N2 - This study examined how adult L2 learners make use of grammatical and extragrammatical information to interpret reflexives and pronouns. Forty adult English native speakers and 32 intermediate-advanced Korean L2 learners participated in a visual world paradigm eye-tracking experiment. We investigated the interpretation of reflexives (himself) and pronouns (him) in contexts where there is a potential coargument antecedent and in the context of picture noun phrases (a picture of him/himself), where the distribution of reflexives and pronouns can overlap. The results indicated that the learners interpreted reflexives in a nativelike fashion in both contexts, whereas they interpreted pronouns differently from native speakers, even when learners had advanced English proficiency. Adopting the binding theory as developed in the reflexivity/primitives of binding framework (Reinhart & Reuland, 1993; Reuland, 2001, 2011), we interpret these results to mean that while adult L2 learners are able to apply syntactic binding principles to assign an interpretation to anaphoric expressions, they have difficulty in integrating syntactic information with contextual and discourse information.
AB - This study examined how adult L2 learners make use of grammatical and extragrammatical information to interpret reflexives and pronouns. Forty adult English native speakers and 32 intermediate-advanced Korean L2 learners participated in a visual world paradigm eye-tracking experiment. We investigated the interpretation of reflexives (himself) and pronouns (him) in contexts where there is a potential coargument antecedent and in the context of picture noun phrases (a picture of him/himself), where the distribution of reflexives and pronouns can overlap. The results indicated that the learners interpreted reflexives in a nativelike fashion in both contexts, whereas they interpreted pronouns differently from native speakers, even when learners had advanced English proficiency. Adopting the binding theory as developed in the reflexivity/primitives of binding framework (Reinhart & Reuland, 1993; Reuland, 2001, 2011), we interpret these results to mean that while adult L2 learners are able to apply syntactic binding principles to assign an interpretation to anaphoric expressions, they have difficulty in integrating syntactic information with contextual and discourse information.
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U2 - 10.1017/S0142716414000307
DO - 10.1017/S0142716414000307
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84947937708
SN - 0142-7164
VL - 89
SP - 1317
EP - 1374
JO - Applied Psycholinguistics
JF - Applied Psycholinguistics
IS - 2
ER -