台灣兒童複雜句的理解與表達之研究

Abstract

本論文研究主旨為探討台灣不同年齡之兒童對於含有名詞子句、關係子句 與副詞子句等中文複雜句的理解與表達。研究議題共有四項：(ㄧ)是否分枝方向是個會影響複雜句習得的因素；(二)三種複雜句的結構如何影響複雜句 的習得順序；(三)在複雜句習得方面，理解與表達的差異為何；(四)優選理論如何能解釋複雜句的習得。

為了尋求以上議題之答案，本研究進行了三個包含左分枝與右分枝結構的名詞子句、關係子句與副詞子句的實驗。每項實驗更細分成兩個測驗，亦即理解測驗與表達測驗。在各項測驗中，受試者針對電腦播放的圖片與語句或提問以口說回應。受試者人數為108 人，平均分佈於六個年齡組別，各組年齡分別為 3、4、5、6、7 歲之兒童組及大學生所組成之成人組。

結果顯示在各年齡層中，右分枝結構的名詞子句比左分枝結構的名詞子句容易，但此偏好在關係子句與副詞子句上卻是相反。此發現與 Huang (1982) 對於中文之無標記分枝方向的分析一致，也就是，中文裡分枝方向的偏好應依據詞頭之句法類目追溯至 X0 或 X’層。此外，結果也顯示雖然7歲兒童尚未習得三種複雜句，但6歲以前含名詞子句之複雜句的習得明顯比含有關係子句與含有副詞子句之複雜句更好。此發現與兒童語言習得中論元優先於修飾語 (Gasser& Smith, 1998; Mintz Gleitman, 2002; Naigles & Gelman, 1995; Smith & Sera, 1992; Waxman & Booth, 2001)、論元與其詞頭之語意相關(Pollard & Sage, 1987) 以及儉約原則相同。另外，大致說來，理解的表現比表達來得好，但是，當在處理無標記或已習得之結構時，受試者在理解與表達的表現相當，有時表達比理解更好。理解的表現比表達來得好，可能起因於在習得過程中，表達需依賴理解 (Keenan & MacWhinney, 1987)，或者表達時需要比理解時更多的工作記憶容量 (Mcdaniel et al., 2010)；而理解與表達的表現相當或者表達比理解好，可能是因為對於已經習得該語言的語言使用者而言，表達時能夠控制自己要說什麼，但理解時無法得知即將要聽到的是什麼 (Mcdaniel et al., 2010; Zeevat, 2001)。而各別從理解測驗與表達測驗所得到的結果來看，本研究證實在理解上 NVN-schema hypothesis (Bever, 1970) 與 Early Immediate Constituent hypothesis (Hawkins, 1994) 的有效性，以及在表達方面 Syntactic Prediction Locality Theory (Gibson, 1998) 的有效性。最後，綜合三個實驗所得之結果，本研究採用優選理論在句法上現有的限制與其他相關理論，建議以優選理論解釋複雜句習得可能是可行的，然而，仍有部份不足仍待未來相關研究或理論補足或改善。

綜合以上所論，本研究結果與分枝方向理論預期不同，而是支持 Huang (1982) 對中文 X’句法的分析。我們的發現也證明關係子句與副詞子句的屬性較為類似，因兩者之習得過程相同。此外，優選理論允許語言中有超過一個以上結構的可能性，可能是個較為實用的理論架構。This dissertation aims at investigating (a) whether directionality is a factor influencing the acquisition of complex sentences in Mandarin, including complement clauses (CCs), relative clauses (RCs) and adverbial clauses (ACs), (b) how the constructions of the three complex sentence types affect the acquisition order of the complex sentences, (c) how the comprehension and production differ in acquiring complex sentences, and (d) how Optimality Theory (OT) can account for the acquisition of complex sentences.

In pursuit of answering to these research questions, three experiments concerning complex sentences with left- and right-branching CCs, RCs and ACs were conducted. Each experiments included two tasks, that is, the comprehension and production tasks, in which subjects of the study orally responded to the utterances or elicited questions matched with pictures broadcast by the computer. There were 108 subjects equallydivided into five child groups (aged 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 years old) and one adult group (undergraduates), participating in each experiment.

The results showed that for each age group in complex sentences with CCs right-branching structures are easier than left-branching ones, while in complex sentences with RCs and those with ACs the preference of directionality reversed. This finding is compatible with Huang’s (1982) view in relation to the unmarked branching direction in Mandarin, in which the preference of directionality should trace back to X0 and X’ layers according to the syntactic category of the head. In addition, it is found that although 7-year-olds were not able to master the three complex sentence types, the fact that CC complex sentences were acquired better than those of RC or AC complex sentence type before the age of 6 was quite clear, a finding that is in agreement with the priority of arguments over modifiers in child acquisition (Gasser& Smith, 1998; Mintz Gleitman, 2002; Naigles & Gelman, 1995; Smith & Sera, 1992; Waxman & Booth, 2001), the associated semantics between the arguments and their heads (Pollard & Sage, 1987) as well as the language economy. Furthermore, our results also revealed that generally speaking, the comprehension task bears less difficulty than the production task; however, when tackling the unmarked or acquired constructions, Mandarin speakers tend to comprehend and produce equally well, sometimes even produce better than comprehend. This can be explained by the fact that production is dependent on comprehension in acquisition (Keenan& MacWhinney, 1987), the claim that the demand for working memory resource in production is higher than in comprehension (Mcdaniel et al., 2010) as well as the hypothesis that for a language user who has mastered the language, production may be easier than comprehension because he can control what he is going to say but not what he is going to hear (Mcdaniel et al., 2010; Zeevat, 2001). Moreover, the results obtained from the comprehension task and from the production task respectively demonstrated the validity of the NVN-schema hypothesis (Bever, 1970) and the Early Immediate Constituent hypothesis (Hawkins, 1994) in comprehension and that of the Syntactic Prediction Locality Theory (Gibson, 1998) in production. Finally, gathered the results from the three experiments, by adopting the existing OT constraints and relevant theories, it is suggested that OT might be a feasible theoretical framework to account for the acquisition of complex sentences although some deficiencies still await further modifications.

To conclude, the results refuted the branching direction theory claimed by Bever (1970), Dryer (1992) and Goodluck (1991) but supported the X’-structure of Chinese proposed by Huang (1982). Our findings also proved that the attributes of RCs and ACs were similar since they were acquired in the same way. Additionally, OT accounts, which allow the possibilities of more than one structure in a language, may be a more practical theoretical framework.