The Push and Pull of Syntax and Pragmatics over Reflexives: The System Exchange Hypothesis

Abstract

As learners of a second language progress past the advanced stage, there are cer-tain features that may continue to set near-native speakers apart from native speak-ers. This may be apparent in non-native like acquisition of the phonology (retaining L1 features), having a non-native like control of the grammar, or not having a full sociopragmatic understanding. In this study, we examine bilinguals’ understanding of reflexive pronouns that straddle the syntactic-pragmatic interface due to how their L1 and L2 process reflexives. Exploratory by nature, we examine five native English speakers, one Spanish speaker and one Chinese speaker with a mixed back-ground. The aim of this article is to understand their interpretation of the Chinese reflexive pronoun ziji ‘self’which is understood here to be pragmatically regu-lated (Huang 2000). The key question is whether the participants have a native-like interpretation of ziji, matched with native-like processing. This is achieved by using phased choice methodology (Sperlich 2015) and using subjective measures of confi-dence and knowledge source, including reaction timing, to arrive at a well-rounded understanding of how the judgement was made. Ultimately, it is found that prag-matic ziji does present some difficulties for our participants, namely they have con-tinued difficulty in selecting for the long-distant antecedent given their preference for the local antecedent, which is reflected in timing measures. Thus, they have yet to fully transition their L2 anaphoric systems to a pragmatic-style one as is present in Chinese, presenting a possible area of fossilization. This issue gives raise to the System Exchange Hypothesis introduced in this study.