The effect of canonical word order on the production and comprehension of pseudoclefts in L2

Subject Areas : Journal of Teaching English Language Studies

Ashraf Montaseri ^{1 *}

1 - Islamic Azad University, Takestan, Iran

Received: 2013-12-30 Accepted : 2014-02-02 Published : 2014-02-01

Keywords: word order, Cleft, Pseudocleft, Resumption,

Abstract :

This study investigated the effect of word order and age on the production and comprehension of pseudoclefts in L2 across two experiments. For each experiment 16 female students aged between 179 and 210 months were recruited from a secondary school. These students were divided into two groups based on their age range; one group for investigating the effect of word order and age on the production and another on the comprehension of pseudoclefts in L2 by a test including 27 items. The items of the test included 10 Subject pseudocleft, 10 Object pseudocleft and 7 fillers. Production was examined by a sentence repetition task and comprehension by a picture selection task. The results indicated that (i) Word order is a determining factor in production and comprehension of pseudoclefts in L2. (ii) Age does not significantly affect production or comprehension of pseudoclefts in L2.