关系从句加工难度分析

The Analysis of the Processing Difficulty of Relative Clauses

回顾了与关系从句加工难度相关的研究,认为以下四个因素对关系从句加工难度的影响不容忽视:1)关系从句结构的复杂性;2)人类工作记忆能力的局限性;3)典型的SVC词序在句子理解过程中的重要作用;4)句子中新旧信息的分布规律。而且,这四个因素的制约作用大小不同,甚至互相竞争。

This article, based on a review of previous research relevant to the processing difficulty of relative clauses, argued that the following factors is not negligible with respect to their influence on the processing difficulty of RCs： 1） Structural complexity of a relative clause; 2） human working memory limitation; 3） the important part played by the classical SVC word order in the process of sentence comprehension; 4） the distribution of old and new information in a sentence. Additionally, constraining effects of the four factors may not necessarily be in the same level, or even in a competitive relationship with each other.