Abstract
Sentence comprehension in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) contexts is influenced by many factors. One of the most important ones is the processing mechanism of relative clauses which can be analyzed in different frameworks by researchers. So far, a wide range of research has been conducted on the processing mechanism of relative clauses in a number of languages. The results have shown a tendency toward two major categories which have been proven to be of significance, namely subject preference and object preference. Studies conducted on native speakers of English, for instance, have demonstrated subject preference by the participants. Consequently, in this study, the researchers conducted a self-paced reading experiment employing Linger software, and the data were analyzed by using the SPSS Statistics version 25. It aims to investigate the processing mechanism of English relative clauses by Iranian EFL learners. The participants were nine males and 21 females of advanced English learners majoring in the English literature, all being native speakers of Farsi. The results indicate that that the correctness percentage of subject relative clauses, and also subject modifying ones, are significantly higher than that of object ones. The results also indicated that subject relatives were processed swifter than object relatives. Finally, the researchers discussed the reasons behind such a tendency among the participants of the experiment in terms of a number of theories and principles. The findings of this study are expected to be employed in language syllabus designing as well as in grading or sequencing of materials by educators and teaching material developers.
Highlights
On account of different grammatical and lexical elements that relative clauses can have, this structure calls for a significant level of cognitive resources to process, which places a greater burden on working memory as well
24 sets of sentences were constructed, each of which was formed in four different conditions, as mentioned in the theoretical background of the study, i.e. the subject-modifying subject relatives (S-SR), the subject-modifying object relatives (S-OR), the object-modifying subject relatives (O-SR) and the object-modifying object relatives (O-OR)
Having conducted a self-paced reading experiment using Linger software and analyzing the acquired data by SPSS, the researchers of this paper have come to the conclusion that, quite like English native speakers, English subject preference is applicable to Iranian learners of English
Summary
On account of different grammatical and lexical elements that relative clauses can have, this structure calls for a significant level of cognitive resources to process, which places a greater burden on working memory as well. Relative-clause structures are quite common across most languages. The structures of relative clauses are, divergent across languages. Three typological aspects regarding the structure of relative clauses are of main concern when it comes to research. It can be said that an investigation of the structure of relative clauses can revolve around the head position (e.g. head-initial vs head-final), basic word orders (e.g. SVO vs SOV), and/or relativizers. This research is among the realm of the second type, which is basic word orders, in terms of its comprehension and processing
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