This paper reports on an experimental study which tested the claims of the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis and the Domain-by-Age-Model by comparing the performances of Arabic- and Chinese-speaking child and adult L2 learners in the acquisition of English reflexives. Whilst English and Arabic allow only local binding of reflexives, Chinese allows local and long-distance binding of reflexives. 60 L2 learners were given a word-based mean length of utterance proficiency test to confirm their proficiency level and, then, they were divided into six groups: Arabic-speaking children (n = 15); Arabic- speaking adults (n = 15); Chinese-speaking children (n = 15); Chinese- speaking adults (n = 15); an L1-English child (mean age 9.60) control group (n = 15); and an L1-English adult control group (n = 15). L2 learners’ interpretation of English reflexives was elicited through a 48-item Simon-Says- game. The results showed significant differences between the performance, of the L2 groups, and that of native speakers; yet, the majority of L2 learners were close to an 83.33% acquisition threshold. Also, by showing no significant difference between the child and adult L2 groups, the results indicated support for the Domain-by-Age-Model. As for the syntactic difference between reflexives and pronouns, L2 learners did not differentiate between them, scoring higher in reflexives.
KeywordsSecond Language AcquisitionReflexive BindingSyntaxFundamental Difference HypothesisDomain-by-Age ModelUniversal Grammar
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