中文疑問詞疑問句的習得

Chinese-Speaking Children’s Production of Wh-Questions

本文探討兒童如何習得中文單一子句疑問詞疑問句。雖然英文、日文、韓文、廣東話都有相關實驗的探討，但是卻沒有一致的結論。中文到目前為止並無相關實驗的探討，所以我想嘗試探討這個問題，以彌補這方面的缺失。本篇文章先探討中文疑問詞疑問句中主詞和受詞的不對稱性問題，再設計一實驗，以檢測疑問詞疑問句中單純的主詞和受詞不對稱性對兒童習得此一句型難易度的影響。本實驗主要探討簡單疑問詞疑問句，包括主詞疑問句和受詞疑問句。關鍵性的問題是主詞疑問句是否比受詞疑問句較容易習得，而年齡又扮演什麼樣的角色。實驗結果顯示主詞疑問句比受詞疑問句較容易習得，而且不同年齡層的小孩所呈現的結果是相同的。

This paper deals with the acquisition of monoclausal wh-questions in Mandarin Chinese. Several experiments on the acquisition of wh-questions in Cantonese, English, Korean, and Japanese have been reported; however, the studies have yielded different results. In addition, no study of this issue in Mandarin Chinese-has been conducted. Hence, an experiment has been designed to test for the pure syntactic effects of a possible subject/object asymmetry in the relative difficulty of wh-questions in Mandarin Chinese. This experiment focuses on simple wh-questions which are subject wh-questions (e.g., Who is kicking John?) and object wh-questions (e.g., Who is John kicking?), and the crucial issue is whether subject wh-questions are easier to acquire than object wh-questions in Mandarin Chinese and how important is the role of age in the acquisition of wh-questions. The results show that subject wh-questions are much easier for Chinese-speaking children than object wh-questions and younger and older children do not behave differently.