英、汉语句子理解过程中的线索竞争

Word order and animacy as sentence processing cues for Chinese-English bilinguals

本文以Bates & Mac Whinney (1989)的句子理解竞争模型为理论基础,考察不同英语水平的英、汉双语者在理解汉语和英语句子时如何使用词序和生命性这两条线索。实验结果表明:对于英、汉双语者而言,生命性和词序都是理解两种语言的重要线索,但生命性的作用更大,解释力更强;词序作用有随着双语者英语水平的提高而增强的趋势,但这种趋势还不够稳定,高级双语组依赖词序的程度有所减弱;在生命性维持不变从而不能决定句子的理解时,双语者使用了更为普遍的语义线索。

This study investigates how Chinese-English bilinguals (beginner, intermediate and advanced bilinguals) use the cues of word order and animacy to interpret Chinese and English sentences. The experiment results indicate that in both English and Chinese sentence processing, animacy and word order were important cues for all levels of bilinguals, but animacy was generally stronger than word order. However, with the development of L2, word order tended to produce stronger effect on sentence interpretation. The one exception to that tendency is the performance of the advanced group who were less influenced by word order than the intermediate group. When animacy was held constant, relative animacy or potency—a semantic cue more universal than animacy —exerted greater effect than word order.