English Natives' Interpretation of Pronominals in Japanese : Evidence from a Pilot Study

Abstract

A pioneering study of acquisition of pronouns in discourse, Pérez-Leroux and Glass (1999) assume that adult English learners of L2 Spanish can acquire pronoun use in discourse (i.e. topic and focus) though they need time to learn it. However, Sorace (2006) reports near-native Italian speakers overuse overt pronouns in subject positions in topic context, which is non-native like. Japanese is a language which allows null subjects like Italian and Spanish (though the licensing systems are different), but it also allows null objects. I follow the study of Pérez-Leroux and Glass (1999), and investigate whether the advanced English speakers’ pronoun use is native-like or not.