Is it Difficult to Acquire Subjacency and the ECP?

承接條件和空號原則很難習得嗎？

本文主旨在應用「第二語言習得」理論，探討外籍學生中文疑問詞問句中兩項參數：承接條件（Subjacency）及空號原則（ECP）的習得情形。針對以上兩參數之特性（如：優先作用（superiority effects），「補語連詞＋痕跡」作用（that-trace effects），主∕受詞不對稱作用（subject/object asymmetries），疑問詞島嶼限制（wh-island constraints），複合名詞組限制（complex NP constraints），子句主語限制（sentential subject constraints），本實驗共設計喜好測驗和看圖排序測驗。研究對象為就讀於國立臺灣師大國語中心的20名以英語為母語和20名以日語為母語的外籍學生，以及20名以中文為母語的中國人。實驗結果顯示，除英語組在優先作用上仍然有些許母語轉換的現象外，英語組與日語組都正確地將母語設定值轉換為所學習語言的設定值，證實了普遍語法在第二語言習得中的確扮演了重要的角色。此外，三組實驗對象都在「無優先作用」的題目上表現較弱，日語組的表現並沒有明顯地比英語組來得好。最後，本實驗亦發現「空號原則」並沒有比「承接條件」難習得。

This paper aims to examine English- and Japanese-speaking adult learners' acquisition of Subjacency? and the Empty Category Principle? (ECP) (Chomsky 1981, 1986) in Chinese. The participants were forty intermediate foreign students of the Mandarin Training Center of National Taiwan Normal University: half were native English speakers and half Japanese. In addition, there were twenty native controls. Two tasks (i.e., a preference task and an ordering task) were designed on the basis of the following properties concerning Subjacency and the ECP: wh-island constraints, complex NP constraints, sentential subject constraints, that-trace effects and subject/object asymmetries, and superiority effects. The results show that, except for the superiority effect, neither group of L2 learners carried their L1 knowledge to acquire Subjacency and the ECP, suggesting that L1 influence is not significant. Furthermore, it was found that the Japanese speakers did not perform significantly better than the English speakers. This shows that Universal Grammar is still available, since our participants have reset their L1 parameters to proper L2 values. In addition, among these features our participants did less well on non-superiority, and the native controls rejected island violations more strongly than either group of L2 participants. Finally, Subjacency and the ECP were found equally easy for our participants to acquire.