Journal of Japanese Linguistics 28 (2012) Zibun and locality in L2 Japanese * Noriko Yoshimura, Mineharu Nakayama ** , Tomohiko Shirahata *** , Koichi Sawasaki, and Yasushi Terao University of Shizuoka, The Ohio State University/National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics ** , Shizuoka University *** 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. Areas of interest: zibun, locality, logophoricity, interface theory, second language acquisition 1. Introduction It has been claimed in the Principles and Parameters approach that second language (L2) learners encounter difficulty in interpreting the anaphoric relationship between a reflexive pronoun and its antecedent because they often fail to reset their parameter appropriately. For instance, English reflexive himself takes Tom as its sole antecedent as in (1a), but the Japanese counterpart zibun can refer to either Taro or Kazu in (1b). (1)a. John i thought Tom j was blaming himself *i/j . b. Taro i -ga Kazu j -ga zibun i/j -o semeta to itta. Nom Nom self-Acc criticized that said ‘Taro said that Kazu blamed himself/him.’ English speaking learners of Japanese would have difficulty interpreting zibun as Taro if they fail to reset their parameter (i.e., L1 transfer). Likewise, a failure to reset their first language (L1) value or L1 transfer would predict that Japanese speaking learners of English would end up overgenerating the interpretation with himself referring to John. Indeed, these interpretations or L1 transfer effects have been reported, for instance, in Finer and Broselow (1986), Hirakawa (1989, 1990), Thomas (1991), and Wakabayashi (1996) for himself; Yuan (1994, 1998) for ziji; Kano and Nakayama (2004), Shirahata (2002), Takahashi (1998), * This paper was presented at the 7 th International Conference on Practical Linguistics of Japanese at San Francisco State University. We would like to thank the JJL reviewers and the conference participants for their helpful comments. We would also like to thank the participants in the experiments, Makoto Nishikawa and Chika Yoshida for data collection, and Seth Goss and Zheng Xuan Qian for their assistance in English and Chinese translations. This research has been partially supported by the 2010 University of Shizuoka Faculty Research Fund, the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) 20520551 and 233020116 from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and the University of Shizuoka Global Center of Excellence for Innovation in Human Health Sciences. Brought to you by | University of Sussex Library Authenticated Download Date | 2/26/19 8:24 AM