Volume 7-2 April 2011.

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Title
Overt Pronoun Constraint in Persian

 Authors

Seyyed Mohammad Reza Amirian (Ph.D. Candidate)
University of Tehran, Iran.
Reza Bagheri Nevisi (Ph.D. Candidate)
University of Tehran, Iran.

Bio Data
Seyed Mohammad Reza Amirian is a Ph.D. candidate of TEFL at the University of Tehran. He is a lecturer in applied linguistics at Sabzevar Teacher Training University, Iran. He has published books and articles and presented in a number of national and international conferences. His primary research interest includes test fairness, differential item functioning, reading assessment and UG.
    
Reza Bagheri Nevisi is a Ph.D. candidate of TEFL at the University of Tehran, Iran. He is a lecturer in applied linguistics at Qom University. He has published articles and presented in many national and international conferences.  His research interest includes task based language teaching and learning, communicative language teaching, language assessment, and second language acquisition.

Abstract
This study investigated the status of Overt Pronoun Constraint (OPC) in Persian. OPC asserts that in a language with overt/null pronominal alternation, an overt pronoun cannot receive a quantified antecedent. A group of 36 adult Persian learners with different first language backgrounds participated in the study. For data collection purposes, a written questionnaire consisting of four different patterns was developed.  There were four tokens for each pattern: (1) the biclausal sentences with quantified antecedent and null subject, (2) quantified antecedent and overt pronoun, (3) referential antecedents and null subjects, and (4) referential antecedents and overt pronouns. In order to have a baseline for comparison, a control group of 19 adult Persian native speakers took part in the endeavor. The results of the study showed that the difference in the interpretation of null and overt pronominals by this group of Persian learners was meaningful. Moreover, it was found that Persian learners demonstrated a native-like mastery of Overt Pronoun Constraint in Persian.

Keywords: Overt pronoun constraint, Null antecedent, Referential antecedent, Matrix subject antecedent.