چکیده:
Recent research in the area of Second Language Acquisition has proposed that bilinguals and L2 learners show syntactic indeterminacy when syntactic properties interface with other cognitive domains. Most of the research in this area has focused on the pragmatic use of syntactic properties while the investigation of compliance with a grammatical rule at syntax-related interfaces has not received due attention. In this study, the compliance of 67 Persian native speakers and 52 Persian speaking L2 learners of English with the Overt Pronoun Constraint (OPC, henceforth) a proposed UG principle, at the syntax-pragmatics interface is investigated. Both groups of participants demonstrated violations of the OPC at the syntax-pragmatics interface. It is argued that the results of this study both confirm and complement Sorace and Filiaci’s (2006) Interface Hypothesis while showing that difficulties at interface contexts are more a result of interface complexities than cross-linguistic influence.
خلاصه ماشینی:
In this study, the compliance of 67 Persian native speakers and 52 Persian speaking L2 learners of English with the Overt Pronoun Constraint (OPC, henceforth) a proposed UG principle, at the syntax-pragmatics interface is investigated.
Introduction In recent Second Language Acquisition research, several studies (Montrul, 2004; Iverson & Rothman, 2008; Rothman, 2007; Serratrice, Sorace, & Paoli , 2004; Sorace, 2004, 2005; Tsimpli & Sorace, 2006) have suggested that interfaces of syntax and other cognitive domains pose difficulties for L2 learners and bilinguals in terms of interpreting and observing syntactic properties.
Although most studies on cross-linguistic influence investigate bilingual acquisition contexts (Haznedar, 2010; Montrul, 2004; Paradis & Navarro, 2003), Sorace and Filiaci (2006), as mentioned above, have suggested that syntactic indeterminacy as a result of the syntax-pragmatics interface can also be applied to L1 attrition and second language acquisition contexts.
The OPC has been presumed to be part of the grammar of all null subject languages and providing Persian sentences with pragmatic context gives us the opportunity to examine the influence of the syntax-pragmatics interface on compliance with a presumed UG principle.
4. Discussion The OPC, as a UG principle (Lozano, 2008; Perez-Leroux & Glass, 1999; White, 2003), rules that an overt pronoun in the embedded subject position cannot be bound by a quantified matrix subject.
, 2004) have shown that at interfaces of syntax with other cognitive domains bilinguals and L2 learners demonstrate pragmatically inappropriate uses of the overt pronoun in a null-subject language under cross-linguistic influence.