格赖斯的量准则在二语加工中的心理现实性

The Psychological Reality of Gricean Maxim of Quantity in L2 Processing

格赖斯的量准则提出,语言使用者在会话中必须做到"信息量最优",信息不足和信息过量都会造成理解困难。然而,在第二语言加工中,量准则是否具有心理现实性仍然存在争议。本研究使用移动窗口技术,连续开展两个实验,检测量准则的违背(即信息不足和信息过量)对中国学习者英语句子在线加工的影响,从而检验其心理现实性。结果发现:1)被试对信息过量非常敏感,在阅读受形容词修饰的无歧义指称表达时显著更慢;2)被试对信息不足则并不敏感,在阅读具有歧义的空白名词时不受任何影响。这说明二语加工只是部分地受到量准则的影响。

According to Gricean Maxim of Quantity, language users should be optimally informative in their utterances, i.e., utterances that are overor under-informative would cause comprehension problems in conversation. However, whether Gricean Maxim of Quantity is psychologically real in L2 processing remains controversial. To address this issue, the present study conducted two consecutive experiments using moving window techniques to examine how Chinese EFL learners were affected by the violation of Gricean Maxim of Quantity （operationalized as under-specification or over-specification of the target referential expressions） in real-time processing of English sentences. It turned out that participants were sensitive to over-specification but not to under-specification. That is, they were significantly slower in reading the modified referential expressions in the one-referent context, but not affected in reading the bare nouns in the tworeferent context. These results indicated that Gricean Maxim of Quantity is only partially valid in predicting L2 speakers＇ online processing.