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4.1 Results of the Forced-Choice Task ............................. 48

4.1.1 Results of the Chinese Native Speakers .............. 49

4.1.2 Results of the Chinese Learners ......................... 51

Chapter Five Conclusion ................................ 73

5.1 Major Findings of the Study ........................... 73

5.2 Implications ...................................... 74

Chapter Four Results 

4.1 Results of the Forced-Choice Task

A total of 2688 continuations were selected by both native Chinese speakers and Chinese language learners. These continuations were categorized into three types: 307 yes, and (34.26%), 505 yes, but (56.36%), and 84 no (9.38%) for canonical sentences; 194 yes, and (21.65%), 553 yes, but (61.72%), and 149 no (16.63%) for cleft sentences; and 57 yes, and (6.36%), 144 yes, but (16.07%), and 695 no (77.57%) for exclusive sentences. The presented information in Table 4.1 is the frequency distribution and proportion of these continuations under different focus conditions for each proficiency group of Chinese natives and learners. 

Chapter Five Conclusion

5.1 Major Findings of the Study

The aim of this study is to examine differences between Chinese native speakers and Chinese learners acquiring exhaustivity in cleft constructions using a forced-choice task. In order to test whether there is a difference in processing proficiency between L2 learners and natives, a self-paced reading task was adopted in Exp 2. Additionally, both tasks investigated whether L2 proficiency had a significant influence on the interpretation. The major findings were as follows. 

Firstly, it has been found that sentence type has a significant impact on the interpretation of exhaustivity for both L1 and L2 speakers. Specifically, exclusives exhibit stronger exhaustivity, while canonicals have weaker exhaustivity compared to clefts (Destruel & Donaldson, 2017). Secondly, L2 speakers have been found to exhibit different inferential patterns from those of native speakers, particularly with respect to the shi-cleft, which is consistent with the findings of Liu (2020). Thirdly, L2 proficiency does not strictly modulate the interpretation of exhaustivity. While high-proficiency learners in Exp 1 are found to have acquired the exhaustivity of exclusives, and low-proficiency learners exhibit a nativelike behavior with shi-clefts, there is no difference in reading times between the two proficiency groups in Exp 2. Lastly, L2 learners exhibit longer reading times not only on the asserted and presupposed content but also on the pragmatic content during language comprehension, indicating that there is a difference in processing proficiency between native speakers and L2 learners for each sentence type, regardless of L2 Chinese proficiency. 

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