International Forum on Frontier Issues in Applied Linguistics (al2020)

36 / 2020-07-11 19:12:43

The Second Language Acquisition of Chinese Reflexives at the Syntax/Pragmatics Interface

Chinese reflexives,Second Language Acquisition

Forum on Frontier Issues in Applied Linguistics > second language acquisition

Chinese has two reflexive forms, namely ziji and taziji. Chinese ziji can be either long-distance or locally bound. Chinese reflexive taziji is generally locally bound, similar to English reflexive himself. Besides, Chinese taziji can also be interpreted as an emphatic pronoun, which may take an antecedent that is prominent in the context. Overall, the interpretation of Chinese reflexives is subject to a combination of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic factors. The current study looks into the interpretation of Chinese reflexives at the syntax/pragmatics interface by English speakers, that is, whether they could choose the appropriate antecedents of reflexives in accordance to the immediate context. A truth value judgment task was employed to tap into this knowledge of 73 English speakers as well as 45 Chinese native controls. The 73 English speakers were classified into three Chinese proficiency levels on the basis of an independent Chinese proficiency test: 21 elementary learners, 31 intermediate learners and 21 advanced learners. All the subjects were asked to judge whether ziji and taziji could refer to long-distance subject antecedent, long-distance object antecedent as well as local antecedent. The results indicate that the English-speaking learners are more and more like the Chinese controls in the interpretation of Chinese reflexives as a function of L2 proficiency. However, even the advanced learner group fail to be native-like in their performance. The implication of the results is discussed in relation to Sorace’s (2005) and Sorace and Filiaci’s (2006) Interface Hypothesis.