Salience-based vs. exposure-based strategies in L2 pronoun resolution in French

International audienceWe investigated pronoun resolution strategies in French native speakers and in German L2-learners of French. French and German differ in antecedent preferences in ambiguous constructions such as ?The postman hit the pirate before he went home?: while French shows a N2-preference, which is explained by the availability of a construction that unambiguously refers to N1, German, which does not have this alternative, shows a N1-preference.&nbsp;<br /> In questionnaires, we tested French active and passive sentences to investigate (a) whether the L2-learners would apply the same strategy as natives in the active condition (i.e. N2-preference), and (b) whether the explicit topicalization of a referent as a consequence of passivization influences interpretation preferences in both groups (resulting in more N1 choices).&nbsp;<br /> The results show that German learners continue to apply the L1 strategy in the L2, preferring the N1 significantly more often than the French natives in the active condition (57% vs. 23%). Crucially, the number of N1 choices increased significantly in both groups in the passive condition (74% vs. 62%). These results support salience-based strategies in L1 and L2 pronoun resolution and suggest that L2-learners might have difficulty acquiring strategies based on the frequency and availability of alternative constructions in the L2