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Lee, On-Soon. 2016. Testing the Role of Expectation in L2 Processing of English RCs. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 41-3, 501-519. Two major explanations for the difficulty of processing object RCs (e.g., The professor that the student criticized went on vacation in Texas.) make two different predictions about where the difficulty first appears. The memory-based account predicts difficulty at the relative clause verb (i.e., criticized), while the expectation-based account predicts difficulty at the onset of the noun phrase within the object RC (i.e., the of the student). To examine why L2 learners had the relative difficulty of processing object RCs, the current study thus examines the two predictions with a sentence continuation and a self-paced reading task in experiments conducted with Korean L2 learners of English. The results show that the learners experienced difficulty processing object RCs at the relative clause verb, but not at the onset of the noun phrase. This finding suggests that English L2 learners’ memory limitations, but not their expectations, explain the difficulty they experience in processing English object RCs (Korea University).