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Universal Grammar and the interpretation of reflexives in a second language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Margaret Thomas
Margaret Thomas*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
*
Department of Linguistics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
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Abstract

This article addresses the debate about whether adult language learners have access to the principles and parameters of universal grammar in constructing the grammar of a foreign or second language (L2). I investigate the interpretation of English reflexive pronouns by native speakers of Japanese and of Spanish, and the interpretation of the Japanese reflexive zibun by native speakers of English and of Chinese. The data suggest that L2 learners observe constraints defined by universal grammar, constraints which they could not have derived solely from inspection of the input data, nor from the treatment of anaphors in their native language. Thus these results support the proposal that adult learners have access to universal grammar.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , June 1991, pp. 211 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 by Linguistic Society of America

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their help, and to acknowledge the assistance of Susumu Kuno, Suzanne Flynn, and Catherine Snow in the larger project from which these results are drawn. The generous support of a Dokkyo University International Cooperation Research Fellowship made collection of the Japanese data possible.

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