詞頻與詞類對詞彙語意理解之影響：來自眼球運動之證據

The roles of word frequency and parts of speech in sentence comprehension: Evidence from eye-tracking

在全球化的潮流下，第二外語的學習越來越受到重視，而詞彙是學習語言過程中必備的元素，也是構成閱讀文本的基本單位；因此，本論文希望透過語料庫為本之語言分析，結合眼動儀器的利用，透過眼動實驗的結果，從詞彙面向探討詞頻和詞類特性與臺灣西班牙語學習者在閱讀歷程中訊息處理模式之關聯性，期能藉由對語言認知程序的進一步瞭解，提出因應第二外語學習之參考原則。本研究所分析的詞彙特性包含西語詞頻與詞性，詞彙高低頻率的界定以語料庫所查詢出之語料結果作為基礎，並以詞彙中的動詞、名詞和形容詞三大詞類作為討論範圍。以語料庫為本之分析結果設計眼動實驗，透過對凝視的相關指標，剖析詞頻高低、不同詞類和語意理解正誤之關係。本眼動實驗所獲致之結論顯示所分析變數間存在著互動的關聯性：當學習者閱讀西語句子時，1.高頻動詞的凝視比例高於高頻形容詞，而低頻動詞的語意理解正確率也高於低頻形容詞。2.高頻形容詞的凝視比例低於低頻形容詞，而高頻形容詞的語意理解正確率則高於低頻形容詞。凝視比例代表學習者對實驗興趣點的關注，實驗結果顯示學習者對於高頻動詞的敏感度比高頻形容詞大，因此，學習者也對於高頻動詞有較好的語意理解能力。當比較不同詞性中高低詞頻的差異時，研究結果發現學習者只有對形容詞類的高頻詞較敏感，因此他們對高頻形容詞的語意理解正確率也較高。根據研究結果我們建議：相較於形容詞，因爲動詞通常是句子結構的關鍵核心，學習者的注意力需要被導引到句中的動詞上，以達到更佳的理解效果。除此之外，特別要強調的是，詞頻和詞類之間的相互作用。在設計閱讀教材時，可透過慎選高頻的關鍵詞，藉此來增加理解的程度和強化學習者的語言能力。

 

Learning a second language has gained more attention in the trend of globalization. Words are the fundamental part of a text and word acquisition plays an essential role in second language learning. This study examined the roles of word frequency and parts of speech in the sentence reading process through a corpus-based analysis and an eye-movement experiment. The goal was to improve our understanding of the cognition and process of a foreign language in word learning by Taiwanese learners of Spanish. The corpus analysis was based on the word frequency determined by the search results using a frequency dictionary and a Spanish corpus. The data was further classified in terms of the parts of speech, including verbs, nouns, and adjectives. The results of the eye-movement experiment in sentence reading showed that participants were more sensitive to high-frequency verbs than to high-frequency adjectives. Thus, they showed a higher accuracy rate of verb comprehension than that of adjective comprehension. When comparing high- and low-frequency words within the same part of speech, the results showed that participants were more sensitive to high-frequency adjectives. Thus, their comprehension of high-frequency adjectives was more accurate than that of low-frequency adjectives. The findings suggest the importance of primary attention to high-frequency verbs in sentence reading. In comparison to adjectives, verbs often play a vital role in defining the meaning of a sentence. Thus, learners’ attention needs to be directed to the verb, which would lead to better sentence comprehension. Besides, in the design and development of reading materials, keyword selection is crucial, particularly the verbs and adjectives among frequently used words, which would lead to increased comprehension and proficiency in the long run.