Noriko Yoshimura

Zibun and locality in L2 Japanese

Abstract Second language learners encounter difficulty in interpreting the anaphoric relationship between a reflexive pronoun and its antecedent because they often fail to reset their parameter appropriately. However, the recent interface theory has called this parameter conversion approach into question, in particular, whether L2 learners do indeed reset their language parameter during the course of L2 acquisition. This paper explores this issue by conducting an experiment with a truth-value judgment task on the interpretations of zibun among English and Chinese speaking adult learners of Japanese. The results support our hypothesis that the short-distance interpretation of zibun can be acquired early if “locality” is the core notion of human cognition, as assumed in Universal Grammar, whereas long distance interpretation takes time to acquire because of the syntax-pragmatics interface. We emphasize that the parameter resetting approach cannot provide a plausible account for this “short vs. long” asymmetry in the acquisition of zibun binding.