The Effects of Syntactic Knowledge and Extra-Grammatical Factors on Sentence Acceptability Judgment: An Empirical Study on Chinese Topic Constructions

句法知識與文法之外的因素對句子之合理性判斷的影響：中文主題句型的實證研究

在這個研究中，我們探討句法知識和言談語境是否在句子之合理性判斷表現中互相影響。我們檢驗中文主題句型在不同語境中的合理性判斷的結果，並且檢測不同類型的主題名詞如何影響判斷的結果。我們發現不論在無語境或相關語境中，遵守孤島限制的主題句型都比違反孤島限制的主題句型被判斷為較合理。這樣的對比顯示句法知識和言談語境在句子之合理判斷表現中並不互相影響，並支持文法的絕對分類性。此外，我們也發現以限定名詞為主題詞的句子比以無修飾名詞當主題詞的句子被判斷為較合理，而做為基準線的一般句型也比合文法的主題句型被判斷為較合理。這些結果顯示句子合理性的判斷會因句子的歧意、頻率、及處理上的複雜度影響而產生許多的變化，因而表現是為連續性的。總括而言，我們的研究支持傳統上以合理性判斷所得的語料因為句法知識掌控了句子之合理性判斷的表現，但是我們也同提出文法之外的因素會對句子判斷表現造成影響，故而這些因素在收集判斷的語料時須納入考量。

In this study, we explore how different components like syntactic knowledge and discourse context may interact with each other in sentence acceptability judgment performance. We examined the acceptability judgment patterns on Chinese topic constructions in different contexts and we also looked at how different types of topic NPs (definite topic NPs vs. bare topic NPs) may affect the judgment patterns. Our findings show that island-obeying topic sentences were consistently judged better than their island-violating counterparts, whether presented in a null context or in a relevant context. This contrast suggests that discourse context and syntactic knowledge do not interact in sentence acceptability judgment performance, and favors a categorical approach to grammar. In addition, our findings also show that topic sentences with a definite topic NP were consistently rated better than those with a bare topic NP, and that canonical sentences which served as the baseline were also consistently judged to be better than grammatical topic sentences. These patterns suggest that acceptability judgment is continuous with a wider range of variations due to the ambiguity, frequency, and processing complexity involved in the given sentences. Overall, our study not only suggests that the traditional acceptability judgment task can elicit good data about grammaticality, but it also recognizes that extra-grammatical factors can affect acceptability judgment performance and should therefore be taken into consideration to ensure the quality of the collected data.