以閱讀困難觀點探討漢、英語科學論述之語意差異－以觀念物理文本為例

Exploring the Semantic Difference of Mandarin and English Discourses of the Law of Inertia in the Perspective of Reading Difficulty

楊文金(Wen-Gin Yang) ； 陳世文(Shih-Wen Chen) ； 李哲迪(Che-Di Lee) ； 任宗浩(Tsung-Hau Jen) ； 古智雄(Chih-Hsiung Ku)

《科學教育學刊》 16卷2期 (2008/04) Pp. 193-214

https://doi.org/10.6173/CJSE.2008.1602.04

摘要

以漢語談科學起自二十世初，此後「漢語是否為一種可以描述科學的語言」便成為心理學者、語言學者以及科學教育學者所感興趣的一個問題。本文藉由分析讀者在閱讀物理文本時所遭遇的困難，在系統功能語言學的視角之下，比較漢、英版本科學文本的特性。漢、英版本「觀念物理」關於「牛頓第一運動定律」的論述被選為比較的標的文本；該文本共由362個文本句所組成。二十九位具物理背景的讀者參與此研究，他們被要求仔細閱讀漢語版的文本，將困擾他們的句子挑選出來，並在非強制的條件之下，寫下他們的理由。平均每一個人遭遇到17個閱讀困難（一共490個閱讀困難），這些困難可能發生在單詞、名詞組、小句內、小句間、或文本句的層次之上。本文比較了英語中之”force”及漢語之「力」的衍生詞的語義差異。「什麼產生加速度」和「慣性的論述」是兩個令讀者感到困難的主題，對此則以「技術性建構」(technicality construction)的方式分析這些論述的本質。最後，所有讀者均接受「牛頓重」為正確論述，說明了在漢語世界中對詞彙誤譯與未予適當分化的現象。然而，所有的閱讀困難並非不可避免的。若能更精確地使用，則漢語仍有可能合適地表達科學論述。

關鍵字

科學文本 ； 科學漢語 ； 閱讀困難 ； 系統功能語言

並列摘要

Since the beginning of the 20(superscript th) century, the topic of whether ”Mandarin is a language that can describe science” has attracted the interests of pychologists, linguists, and science educators. This paper compared the features of Mandarin and English science texts by analyzing the reading difficulties encountered by 'experts' in science under the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics. Mandarin and English versions of the texts on 'Newton's First Law of Motion' of Conceptual Physics were selected as target texts. The text was composed of 362 sentences. Twenty-nine 'experts' in physics were asked to read the Mandarin version of the text, and pick out whatever statements troubled them, and note the reasons if possible. On average, each reader produced about 17 (total 490) reading difficulties, which occurred at the level of single word, nominal group, clause and clauses, sentence, and above. The derivatives of 'force' in English and '力(li)' (force) in Mandarin were compared to elaborate their semantic differences. 'What causes the acceleration of an object' a the discourses of 'inertia' were the two topics that troubled most readers; the nature of the difficulties were analyzed and interpreted in the light of 'technicality construction'. Lastly, 'Newton weight' was accepted by all readers as a proper term to describe the phenomenon. The result reflected mistranslation and undifferentiated use of scientific terms in the Mandarin world. However, not all reading difficulties are inevitable; if used carefully and skillfully, Mandarin could be suitable for describing science discourses.

並列關鍵字

Science Text ； Science Mandarin ； Reading Difficulties ； Systemic Functional Linguistics

參考文獻

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