Binding interpretations in adult bilingualism: A study of language transfer in L2 learners and heritage speakers of Korean

This dissertation investigates the acquisition and maintenance of the binding properties of Korean anaphors in two groups of adult bilinguals: post-puberty L2 learners and adult simultaneous bilinguals who speak Korean as a minority (heritage) language. The aim is to tease apart UG-hased and language-specific properties in L2 acquisition and bilingualism, in examining understanding of core/grammatical vs. exempt/logophoric binding (Pollard and Sag 1994) that is increasingly gaining prominence in theoretical studies of binding. Specifically, I investigate the role of language transfer by examining Korean grammar in bilingual speakers of different contact languages (i.e. English and Chinese).;In this study, I hypothesized the following: (i) UG-based binding properties are acquired easier than language-specific binding properties in L2/bilingual acquisition, (ii) knowledge of the stronger/contact language in bilinguals will affect the binding interpretations of Korean as a weaker language, (iii) the effect of transfer will be stronger in post-puberty L2 learners than in simultaneous bilinguals.;Two anaphors (caki and caki-casin) were investigated to test core vs. exempt binding of Korean. Two experiments were conducted --- one with Truth Value Judgment with stories, which tests core binding properties such as size of Governing Category (Manzini and Wexler 1987) and Sub-command (Tang 1989), and the other with Grammaticality Judgment Task coupled with Preferential Sentence Interpretation, which tests exempt binding properties such as logophoricity conditions (Sells 1987) and strict vs. sloppy reading in VP ellipsis (Huang and Liu 2001). Overall results show that the subjects performed better with UG-based properties than language-specific properties. The results also reveal the effects of transfer from different languages in interpretations of Korean core binding by bilingual groups; however, bilinguals did not show expected transfer with language-specific interface properties in Korean exempt binding. Overall responses show that the early bilinguals are more similar to Korean monolinguals compared to the late bilinguals.