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Third pattern: N + subclause 
The last pattern to be analysed is “N + subclause”, with 46 occurrences in the 
source speeches and 251 in the students’ interpretations. There are eight different 
types of items that help forming this pattern: that, which, who, where, why, gerund, 
past participle. The complementizer that is the most frequent item used to form 
this pattern (50% of all occurrences). 
(66) iron hand that belonged to one of the German counts (Item #6 – IN04) 
(67) lecture which is the most speculative of the series (Item #1 – IN03) 
(68) Victorian English men who first saw these pictures (Item #37 – IN03) 
(69) places where exchange of information occurs (Item #55 – IN02) 
(70) reason why these are so interesting (Item #34 – IN04) 
(71) photons hitting the retina (Item #71 – IN01) 
(72) cultural boundaries applied everywhere in the world (Item #57 – IN03) 
Table 19 – Renditions for the “N + subclause” pattern 
STU01 STU02 STU03 STU04 STU05 STU06 STU07 STU08 Total 
Close 20/46 
23/46 
12/25 
9/28 
9/21 
12/39 
17/39 
5/7 
45.28% 
Div. 
11/46 
12/46 
4/25 
11/28 
6/21 
14/39 
10/39 
/ 
24.42% 
Red. 
13/46 
7/46 
7/25 
2/28 
4/21 
8/39 
9/39 
2/7 
21.23% 
Zero
/ 
/ 
/ 
3/28 
1/21 
5/39 
2/39 
/ 
4.18% 
Exp. 
2/46 
3/46 
1/25 
2/28 
/ 
/ 
/ 
/ 
2.75% 
Subst. / 
1/46 
1/25 
1/28 
1/21 
/ 
1/39 
/ 
2.13% 
As it can be seen in Table 19, this pattern is markedly different from the other 
patterns, with one fourth of divergent renditions (24.42%) and a fifth of reduced 
renditions (21.23%). These two percentages are much higher than the average 
percentages, being respectively 18.56% and 16.80%. As this pattern is quite 
frequent in the source speeches (46 occurrences), syntactic complexity is high. It 
is measured as the number of subordinate clauses per utterance length (Plevoets 

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Results and discussion 
 
page 77 
& Defrancq, 2018). Close renditions also drop and reach 45.28% of all 
occurrences, which is the lowest percentage of close renditions among the three 
patterns. Given the high syntactic complexity, which is a well-known predictor of 
high cognitive load (Gile, 2008; Chmiel & Mazur, 2013), we can thus conclude that 
this is clearly the most challenging pattern for students. 
In addition, it is important to note that, for two students, namely STU04 and STU06, 
the proportion of divergent renditions (39.29% and 35.90%) is more important than 
the proportion of close renditions (32.14% and 30.77%). Finally, zero renditions 
surprisingly have very low percentages (4.18% compared to 9.07%, the average 
percentage for all NPs). It appears that students did not omit the items but rather 
condensed them (high percentage of reduced renditions).