中文驢子句與光桿條件句之第一語言習得

Abstract

本研究旨在探討，中文為母語之兒童對於量化相關句構之詮釋與發展。探討內容為兒童第一語言習得之過程中，對中文驢子句與光桿條件句詮釋的差異，以及影響其詮釋之因素。本研究包含兩階段的詮釋測驗：第一階段是單句測驗，觀察兒童對量化相關句構之理解差異；第二階段則是加入語境，用以了解兒童是否會因而影響其解讀。研究對象依年齡與年級共分為四組：幼兒園大班、小學二年級、四年級、成人，每組皆為十八人。 研究結果顯示，該兩種句構的詮釋隨著年齡的增長，解讀能力逐漸與成人之詮釋一致。首先，對於這兩種句構的比較，每組兒童皆能在解讀上，顯示兩種句構並無相關性，而在這兩種句構的解讀方面，越高年級越能掌握到其意涵。在驢子句裡，量化詞對解讀有深遠的影響，但各個量化詞影響語句詮釋有不同的趨勢：「每」的意涵最為明確，因此每組孩童皆能容易解讀其語句；「不是每個」對於幼兒園大班尚有難度，但小學二年級、四年級孩童已能有成人解讀能力；「有些」所表達的意涵最為模糊，實驗所收錄之孩童，在解讀上尚未完全成熟。另外，光桿條件句則是測試句構之對等性對解讀之影響，實驗結果顯示，每組皆在對等條件句上表現較佳，且皆在對等結構上和成人有相近的解讀能力；但在不對等條件句上，只有小學二年級、四年級才有和成人一樣的解讀能力。最後，探討語境的加入是否影響兒童對於此兩種句構上的解讀，實驗結果顯示，除了幼兒園大班對於語境加入並無太大差異外，其他組皆在語句之詮釋上，有著顯著的影響。國小二年級已可以詮釋在偏置語境下的驢子句，而國小四年級則可以完全解讀支持語境與偏置語境下的驢子句，及支持語境下的光桿條件句。The present study investigated children’s first language acquisition of donkey sentences and bare conditionals in Mandarin Chinese, which are both concerned with quantification. Aiming to discover a developmental pattern of acquisition, this study explored children’s knowledge of quantification and how each construction affects their readings by testing their interpretations of the two constructions from an empirical perspective. Four issues regarding the two constructions were taken into account, which were the construction-related factor, construction-specific factors, contextual effects, and age effects. Kindergarten, Grade 2 and Grade 4 were recruited as experimental groups, and adults as a control group to compare their interpretations, each of which consisted of eighteen subjects. Every subject finished two phases of tasks, which were sentences in isolation and sentences in context. In both phases of the experiments, the subjects were asked to determine which picture best described the target sentence to test their interpretation, a universal or existential reading. The results of this research identified a developmental pattern of the acquisition of donkey sentences and bare conditionals in Mandarin Chinese. It was found that overally, children under seven years old had difficulty interpreting quantificational sentences. First, concerning the relatedness of the two constructions, all the four groups showed a unanimous tendency in that bare conditionals were not in the same vein to donkey sentences in terms of interpretations where the latter was easier to interpret. In addition, quantifier types of donkey sentences are vital to interpretations, where the quantifier mei ‘every’ was already acquired by children as young as KS, bushi meige ‘not every’ was interpreted in an adult-like manner by Grade 2, and youxie ‘some’ could not be obtained with an adult-like interpretation by any child group. This showed that mei ‘every’ was the easiest to acquire, followed by bushi meige ‘not every’ and lastly youxie ‘some.’ Another construction-specific factor, parallelism, was identified crucial to readings where all the child groups exhibited adult-like interpretations of parallel bare conditionals, but only Grade 2 and Grade 4 could have interpretations in an adult-like manner of nonparallel ones. This indicated that nonparallel sentences were more challenging to interpret than nonparallel ones. Moreover, with respect to contextual effects, children by the stage of Grade 2 could obtain adult-like interpretations of donkey sentences in biasing context, but it was not until they were at Grade 4 could they interpret both donkey sentences and bare conditionals in supporting context with adult-like readings. As a result, contextual effects were found, and the subjects’ interpretations were greatly affected by context but in different ways to the two constructions.