부산대학교 도서관

The study investigated how Korean learners of English as Foreign Language (EFL) interpret English reflexives violating syntactic conditions. Specifically, the study examined i) whether the learners accept the interpretation of English reflexives that violate syntactic conditions when the appropriate context for the Long-Distance (LD) binding of the antecedents are provided with pictures, and ii) if the binding interpretations of the EFL learners differ according to the type of embedded clauses (i.e., finite vs. non-finite) in bi-clausal sentences. Twenty-three Korean adult EFL learners and 11 English native speakers participated in the Truth-value Judgment Task with Pictures – composed of 80 English sentences provided with pictures. The overall results were as follows: First, Korean EFL learners tended to disallow binding by long-distance antecedents that violated syntactic constraints, even in the presence of the pragmatically-biased contexts with pictures. In addition, no significant difference was found with the type of embedded clause. This research then calls for a need to re-examine the issue of ‘tensed-infinitive asymmetry’ as was proposed earlier by Yuan (1994).