The Effect of Local and Global Cues on the Comprehension of Pseudoclefts in L2

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of canonical word order as a global cue and resumption as a local cue on the comprehension of pseudoclefts in second language (L2). Sixteen female Persian speaking L2 learners aged between 15 and 18 years were recruited from a secondary school, using a picture selection task. Consisting of 27 items including 10 object pseudoclefts with resumptive pronoun, 5 object pseudoclefts without resumptive pronoun, 5 subject pseudoclefts and 7 fillers. The obtained data was analyzed by conducting a One-Way Repeated Measure ANOVA. The results showed that resumptive pronoun significantly simplified the comprehension of object pseudoclefts and object pseudoclefts were comprehended more accurately than subject pseudoclefts. The results were also discussed with reference to current theories of sentence processing.