Acquisition of binding of English reflexives by Turkish L2 learners: A Neo-Gricean pragmatic account

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 neutral sentences are compared to find out whether pragmatic bias towards a non-local antecedent overrides the parameter sett ing of English and causes learners to choose as possible antecedents NPs ou tside the binding domain. Both group and individual results indicate that p ragmatically biased sentences lead the subjects to consider pragmatic infor mation to the extent that it can override their syntactic knowledge. Theref ore, this study incorporates the pragmatic theory of anaphora in which the interpretation of a reflexive is subject to the I-principle, a pragmatic st rategy which finds an antecedent for the reflexive that gives the most info rmative, stereotypical interpretation in keeping with our knowledge about t he world. The I-principle seems to be operative for Turkish speakers in sel ecting an actual antecedent among several possible ones both in their L1 an d their L2. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.