Second language acquisition and Binding Principle B: child/adult differences

Abstract

L1 acquirers experience considerable delays in mastering properties related to Binding Principle B, performing inaccurately with respect to possible antecedents for pronouns well after the age of 6. Most accounts attribute this delay to performance phenomena (lack of pragmatic knowledge, processing capacity, etc.). In this article, I show that adult learners do not exhibit the same kinds of problems with Principle B. Intermediate-level adult learners of English as a second language (French and Japanese speakers), as well as a native-speaker control group, were tested using a truth value judgement task to determine their interpretations of pronouns. The L2 learners performed like native speakers in disallowing local antecedents for pronouns, suggesting that Principle B is not problematic in adult acquisition, in contrast to child acquisition.© Arnold 1998 0267-6583(98)SR137OA

Comprehension of reflexives and pronouns in sequential bilingual children: Do they pattern similarly to L1 children, L2 adults, or children with specific language impairment?

“…allows only local binding (e.g., Hiragawa, 1990;Yip & Tang, 1998). In addition, White (1998) showed that the interpretation of pronouns in Japanese intermediate learners of English is affected by finiteness, i.e. they reject local antecedents in bi-clausal finite contexts, but accept local antecedents in bi-clausal non-finite contexts.…”

The interpretation of pronouns by Japanese Learners of English

“…The present study used the same methodology as White (1998), that is, a truth <LINK "ito-r31"> value judgment test with pictures. The task was given to the subjects as a booklet and they wrote their answers directly on the booklet pages.…”

“…In total, 21% involved the wrong antecedents for the pronouns, and the Korean subjects were more accurate in their interpretation of pronouns in the sentences with embedded nonfinite clauses than in the sentences with finite embedded clauses. White (1998) conducted an experiment to examine the interpretation of The results showed that for finite biclausal sentences (Type 1) both L2 learner groups showed highly accurate knowledge. For the biclausal sentences with nonfinite embedded clauses (Type 2), there were no differences between the groups in the case of the nonlocal antecedents.…”

“…Second, these studies did not analyze the knowledge of pronouns as such, but analyzed it in relation to the learner's knowledge of reflexives. For example, White (1998) concluded that adults know and observe Principle B and <LINK "ito-r31"> they have an advantage over L1 learning children in the interpretation of pronouns in this way. Third, although White (1998) concludes that L2 learners did not treat <LINK "ito-r31"> pronouns and reflexives in the same way, they did not always show accurate knowledge of pronouns in all the test sentences.…”

“…In monoclausal sentences L2 learners as well as native controls accepted ungrammatical antecedents at a fairly high rate. Finally, White (1998) used only those sentences of which <LINK "ito-r31"> it is known that L1 learning children fail to reject ungrammatical antecedents, but did not include those sentences in which L1 learning children successfully reject ungrammatical antecedents (i.e., quantified antecedents). Besides, the subjects in both studies are at relatively high proficiency levels, raising the issue of whether it is appropriate to compare the two groups of L1 learning children, on the one hand, and L2 learning adults, on the other.…”