The Effect of UG in the L2 Acquisition of Long-Distance Binding

The Effect of UG in the L2 Acquisition of Long-Distance Binding

  This study deals with two theoretical issues relevant to binding, namely argument/adjunct distinction and the finiteness domain effect, by investigating the interlanguage of 44 Korean native speakers learning English. Various types of LD binding were tested to see the effects of the contrasts between argument and adjunct anaphors and between finite and non-finite clause boundaries. The results show that Korean speakers allow LD binding significantly more freely when the anaphor is in an adjunct position, and they also do so when binding takes place over a non-finite clause. These results are rather surprising because in Korean the argument/adjunct distinction does not play a role for binding purposes, and because neither Korean nor English has the finiteness domain effect for LD binding. Accordingly, the result of this experimental study supports the view that interlanguage is UG-constrained.