中文作為第二語言中的名詞短語可及性遞進階

Evidence of the Accessibility Hierarchy in Relative Clauses in Chinese as a Second Language

關係子句在中文裡是一種常見且複雜的結構。雖然在對英語作為第二語言學習的研究中，關係子句的討論已經有很多，直至最近幾年研究者們才開始注意中文關係子句習得的問題。很多已有的英語類的研究發現，「名詞短語可及性遞進階」這一起源於語言類型學標誌性的假說常常可以預測或者解釋哪一種類型的子句對學習者來說更難習得。本項目測試了這種由易到難的遞進階和標誌性在中文作第二語言的學習過程中是否有所體現。通過讓學習者完成句子連接的任務，研究指出對學習者來說，主語關係子句是最容易的，其次是賓語關係子句。另外學習者對空位和代詞的使用，也表明學習者的中介語語法符合這個「可及性遞進階」對人類自然語言的總結。實驗說明「可及性遞進階」不僅適用於中心名詞在前的英語等語言，也適用於中文作為第二語言的學習。

Relative clause (RC) structures are productive and complex in Chinese. While second language acquisition studies of RCs in English has a long tradition, it is only in recent years that the Chinese as a second/foreign language researchers started to pay close attention to the comparative difficulties of different types of Chinese RCs for learners. A well-known markedness generalization regarding the RC structure is the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (AH), and its implications in second language acquisition have been well-attested in English and other postnominal RCs. This research tests if Chinese as a foreign language learners’ production ease of different RC types adheres to the order of the AH, and if such markedness is reflected in RC-forming strategies in learners’ interlanguage. Learners in a written sentence combination task produced more target-like subject and direct object RCs than indirect object and object of preposition RCs. Further evidence for a subject RC preference was found in error analysis. Meanwhile, learners used gap and pronoun strategies within the AH constraint, indicating that their interlanguage grammar is comparable to that of natural languages. We conclude that the implicational generalization of the AH holds true in second language (L2) Chinese.