NATIVE AND NONNATIVE INTERPRETATION OF PRONOMINAL FORMS

Abstract

This study investigates the influence of grammatical role and discourse-level cues on the interpretation of different pronominal forms in native speakers of French, native speakers of Turkish, and Turkish learners of French. In written questionnaires, we found that native speakers of French were influenced by discourse-level cues when interpreting ambiguous overt subject pronouns in French, whereas native speakers of Turkish were mainly influenced by a syntactic cue—subjecthood—when interpreting null subjects (pro) in Turkish translation equivalents. When interpreting implicit subjects of nonfinite dependent clauses (PRO), native speakers of both French and Turkish were influenced by subjecthood. Finally, Turkish learners of French were influenced by discourse-level cues in the interpretation of overt pronouns as well as PRO and showed no subject preference in either case. These results are in line with approaches to second language (L2) acquisition that stress the role of discourse-level principles in the processing and use of a L2 (Clahsen & Felser, 2006; Klein & Perdue, 1997).