The purpose of this research was to study the role of learner treatment in comprehending restrictive relative clauses by EFL learners under formal instruction. The instructional materials of 104 students were examined to obtain the frequency of the types of restrictive relative clauses in the subjects' input. The frequency list was then correlated with the difficulty order obtained from the subjects' performance on a test of comprehending relative clauses. The results did not reveal any significant relationship. The difficulty order, however, showed close correspondence with the Accessibility Hierarchy (Keenan and Comrie 1977). In addition, the results indicated that the relative ease/difficulty of comprehending relative clauses relates to such universal determinants as interruption/non interruption, word-order arranged/rearranged, and parallel/non parallel function.
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