Resumptive pronouns in English-Chinese and Arabic-Chinese interlanguages

Abstract

While resumptive pronouns (RPs) are generally not allowed in English relative clauses, Chinese allows the use of RPs in indirect object position and genitive position but not in subject and direct object positions. Arabic languages allow RPs in direct object position as well as in indirect object position and genitive position, although not in subject position of the matrix clause. The different behaviours of RPs in the three languages raise interesting questions in L2 research. An empirical study was conducted, which involved advanced Palestinian-speaking learners of Chinese and intermediate English-speaking learners of Chinese. Given that the Palestinian speakers were more advanced learners of Chinese than the English speakers and that the use of RPs is available in Palestinian but not in English, it was hypothesized that Palestinian speakers would be more accurate in judging Chinese sentences with the use of RPs than English speakers. However, this hypothesis is not confirmed in the study. We will account for the difference between the two groups on the basis of L1 transfer and learnability problems.