记叙文语篇结构与英语过渡语中一般过去时变异的关系——对语篇假设的检验

The Relationship Between Narrative Structure and the Simple Past Variation in English Interlanguage—A Test of the Discourse Hypothesis

本文研究记叙文语篇结构和中国学生英语过渡语中一般过去时变异的关系。记叙文语篇结构分为前景部分和背景部分;一般过去时变异包括在一般过去时的必要语境中出现的各种时体形式,主要有一般过去时形式和一般现在时形式等。使用的语料是从国内四所大学120名非英语专业二年级学生中收集的120篇书面记叙文。研究发现,记叙文语篇结构和一般过去时变异有显著密切的联系。在记叙文语篇结构的不同部分,两种主要变体的分布有显著差别。一般过去时形式出现在前景部分的比例显著高于背景部分,而一般现在时形式出现在背景部分的比例显著高于前景部分。本文的研究结果总体上支持语篇假设;但同时发现,在中级阶段的英语过渡语中语篇假设是以概率形式存在的。笔者从认知心理学的角度,用图形/后境和三条格式塔原则对结果做了深入解释,认为语篇假设是这些认知动因在语言层面的反映。

Previous SLA studies examined the relationship between narrative structure and tense/aspect forms, but obtained conflicting findings. Based on her research findings, Bardovi-Harlig (1994: 43) proposed the discourse hypothesis to predict their relationship in interlanguage. This hypothesis, however, calls for more empirical studies with diverse first languages. Therefore, it is significant to test whether this hypothesis holds true in the English interlanguage of Chinese-speaking learners. This study investigates the relationship between narrative structure and simple past variation in the Chinese-English interlanguage in order to test the discourse hypothesis. Narrative structure is divided into foreground and background. And the simple past variation comprises several tense/aspect forms in the obligatory contexts for English simple past, among which simple past forms and simple present forms are most frequently used. The current database consists of 120 written narrative texts collected from the second year students of four universities in P. R. China. Narrative structure is found to be significantly associated with the simple past variation. In the different parts of narrative structure, the simple past forms and the simple present forms are distributed significantly differently. The simple past forms are significantly more frequently used in foreground, but the simple present forms are significantly more frequently used in background. Hence, the discourse hypothesis is supported as the subjects tend to use different tense/aspect forms in different parts of narrative structure. But it should be noted that this hypothesis does not absolutely functions at the intermediate stage of English inerlanguage but in a probabilistic way, for one tense/aspect form outweighs another in percentage. Finally, the author provides a cognitive explanation for the findings using figure-ground theory and three gestalt principles (principle of good continuation, principle of area, and principle of closure). It is believed that the discourse hypothesis is a linguistic reflection of these cognitive motivations.