心理语言学研究中的过去时之争

The Past Tense Debate in Psycholinguistic Studies

关于动词过去时的规则形式和不规则形式习得、表征和处理过程的争论持续了20多年,并且吸引了语言学家、心理学家、神经科学家、计算机学家等的关注。本文回顾了双方争论的来龙去脉,讨论了双方争论的三大焦点问题,即语言处理需要规则还是联结,规则形式和不规则形式的处理是由相同的心理机制还是两个不同的心理机制来完成的,究竟应该将大脑视为模块的符号处理系统还是多元的人工神经网络。这场争论的意义在于通过对过去时表征和加工过程的研究来发现语言甚至心智的运作过程,检验认知科学中传统的符号主义和新兴的联结主义。

The debate on the acquisition, representation and processing of regular and irregular past tense has been under way for over 20 years and attracted the attention of linguists, psychologists and experts in neurology and computer science. This article will review this debate and discuss three major points： rules or connections in language processing; single mechanism or double mechanisms; the brain as modular symbol processing system or multiple artificial neural networks. The significance of this debate lies in uncovering the mental mechanism underlying language processing or even cognitive processing and testing the two schools in cognitive science -traditional symbolism and the newly emerging connectionism.