ABSTRACT
Recently, there has been a great deal of interest in the interpretation of reflexives by second-language (L2) learners of English. Specifically, some second-language acquisition (SLA) researchers have sought to address the question whether L2 learners of English, whose first languages (Lis) treat reflexives differently from the way they are treated in English, interpret English reflexives in the same way that native speakers of English interpret them or in a manner consistent with the interpretation of reflexives in their first language. In these previous L2 studies, L2 learners’ intuitions about the behavior of English reflexives were obtained through either a picture identification task or a multiple-choice task. A major conclusion of these previous studies was that L2 learners fail to judge English reflexives in a manner that is consistent with the target language. Instead, their interpretation of the L2 reflexives is consistent with the interpretation that these would have in a larger or a superset grammar, such as that of the learners’ L1. In other words, these studies indicate that the Subset Principle (see the following), which is claimed to be operative in L1 acquisition, is not operative in L2 acquisition.
