Article

Syntactic Principles and Limits in Language Usage with Reference to Pronominal Anaphors in Second Language Acquisition

Soon Bok Kim 1
Author Information & Copyright
1Sejong University

Copyright ⓒ 2016, Sejong University Language Research Institue. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Published Online: Jan 01, 2017

Abstract

Language has been argued as communication tool to use and/or to teach how to use it in terms of its function, form, distribution, meaning in the field of linguistics or second language acquisition (SLA). In the scientific study of language there have been proposed extensive theories and grammars for description of what it is and for explanation of why it is so. In the field of SLA related theories and practices have been claimed with focus on syntactic function and discourse function. However, the pedagogic approaches were easily started out with from the translation approach to the syntactic approach, resulting in its limits by syntactic dependence in the discourse use of language. The discrepancy between the syntactic approach and the discourse approach is reviewed and addressed in this paper in the sense of syntactic limits in discourse use with reference to the English pronominal anaphor which has anaphoric function by syntactic dependence and which has discourse function as connector in creating text.

Keywords: syntactic dependence; pronominal anaphor; discourse dependence; second language acquisition

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