Acquisition of binding of English reflexives by Turkish L2 learners: A neo-gricean pragmatic account

Abstract

This study looks at how pragmatic constraints affect the acquisition of the binding of English reflexives by adult Turkish L2 learners. Pragmatically biased and pragmatically netural sentences are compared to find out whether pragmatic bias towards a non-local antecedent overrides the parameter setting of English and causes learners to choose as possible antecedents NPs outside the binding domain. Both group and individual results indicate that pragmatically biased sentences lead the subjects to consider pragmatic information to the extent that it can override their syntactic knowledge. Therefore, this study incorporates the pragmatic theory of anaphora in which the interpretation of a reflexive is subject to the I-principle, a pragmatic strategy which finds an antecedent for the reflexive that gives the most informative, stereotypical interpretation in keeping with our knowledge about the world. The I-principle seems to be operative for Turkish speakers in selecting an actual antecedent among several possible ones both in their L1 and their L2.