Processing and use of relative clauses in L2 comprehension and production

Abstract

Many L2 learners of English have more difficulties in producing relative clauses (RC) than in reading and comprehending them. This study examined the relationship between L2 learners’ production and comprehension of RCs by the type (subject RCs vs. object RCs) and the embedding position (center vs. right). Forty-four Korean learners of English participated in the comprehension and production study consisting of a self-paced reading task and a picture description task. The results showed that participants tended to produce SRCs than ORCs. In comprehension, reading times for ORCs in center embedding was slower than in those in right embedding, indicating that the position of RCs affected the comprehension of ORCs. The results are discussed in terms of RC acquisition hypotheses and memory-based processing complexity theory.