2012 Volume 29 Issue 1 Pages 1-37
The purpose of this paper is not simply to give an empirical description, but rather to give a theoretical explanation of the syntactic mechanism for reflexive binding in interlanguage grammar by proposing Feature Transfer and Feature Learning Hypothesis, with the idea of φ-feature (de)composition. Our hypothesis demands that formal features in an L1 item, if specified featurally, should be transferred to interlanguage grammar, while underspecified features in an L1 item should not. We will demonstrate that the reflexives in the interlanguage grammar of Japanese learners of English are φ-defective and their syntactic properties are explained with our hypothesis coherently under the current minimalist binding theory through Agree.
