語言使用者處理語句時運用的各式表徵

Multiple Representations in Grammatical Processing

Clahsen and Felser (2006) 認為母語學習者（含孩童）與外語學習者運用的語句表徵的差別在於，外語學習者僅能運用詞彙、語意為基礎的句法表徵，而母語學習者則能夠運用純粹句法運算的深層表徵。本文引用文獻中語句處理的實徵研究反駁這樣的觀點。首先，成人的母語人士並非總是運用深層表徵，他們常常也會運用夠用就好 (good enough) 的表徵，因此成人母語人士的語句處理表現與外語學習者的語句處理表現並非如Clahsen and Felser 所宣稱的有基本差異。另一方面，孩童的語句表徵因為受限於成熟因素的影響，並非一開始就具備完整的成人般的深層表徵。再者，有研究證據顯示成人母語人士與外語學習者能夠運用共享的表徵進行跨語言的語句處理。由此可知，語言使用者（母語成人、母語孩童、外語學習者）使用的語句表徵並非只有深層與淺層表徵的不同而已。研究者同時也得要考慮這些語言使用者也會運用著足夠好表徵、部分表徵以及共享表徵等各式表徵進行語句處理。文末介紹如何以句法啟動 (structural priming) 此一實驗派典，探華語為第二語言習得者可能運用的各式語句表徵。

This paper begins with a well-accepted view between first and second language acquisition that native speakers including children’s syntactic representation employed in comprehension is fundamentally different from non-native adult learners’ (Clahsen and Felser 2006). The main claim proposed by C & F indicates that native speakers employ syntactically-based representation for comprehension whereas non-native adult speakers make best use of semantic-pragmatic strategies for comprehension. Nonetheless, the study presents evidence from language comprehension to showcase that native speakers do not always employ deep and syntactically-based representation but also employ good-enough representations, and children employ partially abstract representation in comprehension whereas non-native adult speakers can employ native-like deep representation of syntax which is shared between their first and second languages. Evidence challenges C & F’s claim. In the end, the study laid out the studies of structural priming to shed light on the future research on the representation in sentence processing.