Understanding L1 and L2 reference comprehension in speech: focusing referents and pronouns

In this study, we present data from two experiments investigating the effect of prosodic focus marking on German L1 and L2 speakers’ interpretation of pronouns. Experiment 1 tested L2 speakers’ interpretation of personal and demonstrative subject pronouns. Experiment 2 examined L1 and L2 speakers’ interpretation of unaccented and accented personal subject and object pronouns. The results of experiment 1 reveal that L2 speakers are sensitive to the different functions of the two subject pronouns. However, grammatical role and focus marking influenced referential choice to similar degrees for both pronouns, suggesting that L2 speakers’ weighting of these linguistic factors differs from that of L1 speakers. Experiment 2 showed L1 and L2 speakers to prefer the subject referent for both subject and object pronouns. Referent preference reversal is only observed with the accented subject pronoun in L1 speakers. Ultimately, this study emphasizes the varying levels of sensitivity to grammatical role and information structure observed not only for the different pronoun types but also among different speaker groups.