English Pronoun Resolutions by Chinese EFL Learners Within the Framework of the Phase Theory

This paper reports an empirical study of English pronoun resolutions by Chinese EFL learners at two proficiency levels.The instrument is a story-based truth value judgment task programmed with E-prime.The results indicate that both the experimental group and the control group fared better on the interpretation of pronouns in biclausals than on the rejection of coreference in the binding domain in the monoclausal sentences containing possessed representational noun phrase.Comparisons between the two L2 groups and the native control group showed that the low group performed worse than the native control group on taking local embedded subject DPs as antecedents for pronouns in the nonfinite clausals.Significant differences were also uncovered in accepting the subject of monoclausal sentences as legitimate antecedents between the L2 groups and the native speakers.It is assumed that the head category and completeness of the phase are responsible for these differences.