Native and Nonnative Speakers’ Preferences for Preposition Pied‐Piping Versus Stranding in English Wh‐Relative Clauses

The current study investigated from a usage‐based perspective how phrasal frequency and collocational strength of verb–preposition collocations influence preposition placement in wh‐relative clauses. Native English speakers and Chinese learners of English as a second language of the intermediate and advanced English proficiencies completed a sentence completion task and an acceptability judgment task. The results showed that native and nonnative speakers had an overall preference for preposition stranding. Native speakers had a stronger acceptance of preposition pied‐piping than nonnative speakers; advanced learners had a stronger acceptance of pied‐piping than intermediate learners. The collocational strengths of verb–preposition combinations had a significant effect on the productive use and acceptability of preposition placement for both native speakers and advanced learners. Intermediate learners’ preposition placement was more affected by phrasal frequency. Overall, the findings confirm that the distributional properties of verb–preposition collocations influence speakers’ preference for the type of wh‐clause structure, which provides strong support to the usage‐based account of grammar analysis and grammar acquisition.