Iranian EFL learners’ knowledge of overt pronoun constraint in English

The present study aims to investigated Iranian L2 speaker`s knowledge of the overt pronounconstraint (OPC) in English. It also aims to examine L2 learners understanding of UniversalGrammar (Chomsky 1981, 1986, 2000, 2001) and if it is common to all languages. Specifically,this study takes a new look at the L2 acquisition of knowledge of the overt pronoun constraint(Montalbetti 1984) by Persian learners of English. The current work examines whether Iranianlearners of English can obtain native-like knowledge of OPC in their sentences. Forty femalelearners of English (intermediate and advanced) completed three tests, a Pet test and an EnglishOPC test with a Persian OPC test at the Kish English Language Institute in Tehran, Iran. Thesecomprised a multiple choice test for English language proficiency (PET test) to determine thelevel of each participant, and a multiple choice OPC test including English and Persian questionsto measure the possible effect of null or overt pronoun structures in sentence construction,evaluating the participants` knowledge of OPC usage. Results from the experiment show that L2speakers can successfully achieve knowledge of the OPC regardless of pronoun position in theirtarget language in both levels. However, the advanced level candidates performed much betteron the OPC construction in the English test than those in the intermediate. There was asignificant dependency between the English language proficiency level and the understanding ofOPC structures. We believe that language proficiency affects the use of OPC in learners ofPersian, suggesting that OPC may not hold true in different situations. The findings of thecurrent study may have suggestions for L2 learners and teachers.