Word Order Effect in Children's Garden Path of Relative Clauses

詞序效應對兒童中文關係子句理解的影響

蘇宜青(Yi-Ching Su)

《Concentric： Studies in Linguistics》 32卷2期 (2006/07) Pp. 33-57

https://doi.org/10.6241/concentric.ling.200607_32(2).0002

摘要

This study examines whether Chinese-speaking children use the NVN word order strategy to comprehend OO relative clauses. The results of a truth value judgment test showed that children in the older group (mean age 5;11) interpreted the test sentences correctly 93% of the time, but children in the younger group (mean age 4;9) wrongly considered the subject NP of the relative clause as the object of the main verb 46% of the time. The difference between the two age groups was significant (t(29)=2.685, p＜0.02). Since Chinese-speaking children by 3 to 4 years old can produce relative clauses accurately (Su 2004), the comprehension errors from the younger children here are taken to reflect the difficulty of reanalyzing the sentences when they are led into a garden path, similar to the patterns found from adults in on-line sentence processing experiments.

關鍵字

國語 ； 關係子句 ； 理解 ； 母語習得

並列摘要

This study examines whether Chinese-speaking children use the NVN word order strategy to comprehend OO relative clauses. The results of a truth value judgment test showed that children in the older group (mean age 5;11) interpreted the test sentences correctly 93% of the time, but children in the younger group (mean age 4;9) wrongly considered the subject NP of the relative clause as the object of the main verb 46% of the time. The difference between the two age groups was significant (t(29)=2.685, p＜0.02). Since Chinese-speaking children by 3 to 4 years old can produce relative clauses accurately (Su 2004), the comprehension errors from the younger children here are taken to reflect the difficulty of reanalyzing the sentences when they are led into a garden path, similar to the patterns found from adults in on-line sentence processing experiments.

並列關鍵字

Mandarin Chinese ； Relative Clauses ； Comprehension ； First Language Acquisition

參考文獻

Bever, Thomas G.,J. R. Hayes (ed.)(1970).Cognition and the Development of Language.New York, NY:Wiley.

Chang, Hsing-Wu.(1984).The comprehension of complex Chinese sentences by children: Relative clause.Chinese Journal of Psychology.26,57-66.

Cheng, Sherry Ya-Yin.(1995).The Acquisition of Relative Clauses in Chinese.Unpublished MA thesis, National Taiwan Normal University.

Chiu, Bonnie.(1996).The Nature of Relative Clauses in Chinese-speaking Children.(NSC research report).

Chomsky, Carol S.(1969).The Acquisition of Syntax in Children from 5 to 10.Cambridge, MA:MIT Press.