关联词“虽然”的位置变化对转折复句加工的影响

The Processing of Chinese Concessive Complex Clauses Modulated by the Position of Conjunction Suiran

在现代汉语里,“虽然”是转折复句的关联词,可以位于从句句首,也可以位于从句主语之后(包括主语-状语之间和状语-动词之间两种情况)。通过自定步速阅读实验考察了“虽然”的位置变化对三类转折复句的加工影响。实验结果表明关联词位居从句动词之前的句子加工最难(句式C),关联词位居首名词之后的句子加工最容易(句式B),关联词位居从句之首的句子加工难度居中(句式A)。引发加工难度等级(C>A>B)的原因包括句法预期、附加语同现、句式频率和“虽然”的句法节点改变等方面。首次从语言学和认知加工视角探讨了关联词位置变化对转折复句理解的影响,同时也为Pan和Paul(2018)理论假设的心理现实性提供了初步的实证支持。

In Mandarin Chinese,suiran is a typical conjunction in concessive complex clauses,either located at the initial position of a subordinate clause or after the initial subject noun of the clause(between the subject and the adverbial or between the adverbial and the verb).This paper adopts a self-paced reading experiment to investigate how suiran’s position affects the processing of its three corresponding sub-types of Chinese concessive complex clauses.The results show that the clause with suiran preceding the clausal verb(Type C)is the most difficult in processing,followed in turn by the clause with suiran at the initial position of the clause(Type A)and the clause with suiran immediately after the clausal initial NP(Type B).The processing difficulty hierarchy(C>A>B)is due to multiple factors like syntactic expectation,co-occurrence of adjuncts,frequency of different sentence configurations and suiran’s change in syntactic nodes.It is the first attempt to explore the impact of suiran’s position on the processing of Chinese concessive complex clauses from the perspective of linguistics and cognitive psychology,providing a preliminary empirical evidence for the psychological reality of Pan and Paul’s(2018)theoretical hypothesis in the meanwhile.