AN ASMMETRY IN THE ACQUISITION OF ENGLISH DEFINITE AND INDEFINITE ARTICLES BY CHINESE SPEAKERS OF L2 ENGLISH

二語英語之漢語母語者之英語定冠詞和不定冠詞習得的不對稱性

江丕賢(Stano Kong)

《Taiwan Journal of Linguistics》 20卷2期 (2022/07) Pp. 51-89

https://doi.org/10.6519/TJL.202207_20(2).0002

摘要

This study investigates the acquisition of L2 English articles in relation to two hypotheses, namely the Full Transfer/Full Access (FT/FA) Hypothesis (Schwartz and Sprouse 1994, 1996) and the Interpretability Hypothesis (Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou, 2007). Eighty-eight adult L1 speakers of Chinese (a language that lacks articles) of different English proficiency levels were asked to interpret articles in various contexts in two elicitation tasks. Their responses were compared with those of fifteen native English speakers. Contrary to predictions made by the FT/FA Hypothesis, which stipulates that learners have access to UG and will converge to the target grammatical representations, the non-native speakers in the current study overwhelming preferred the definite article in all contexts, including in the indefinite contexts. It is argued that the asymmetrical treatment of definite and indefinite articles in learners' interlanguage can be accounted for following the Interpretability Hypothesis. In particular, we propose that the observed L2 behaviour results from an inaccessibility of an uninterpretable syntactic [u-Num] feature, which is subject to a critical period. The L2 interlanguage grammar involves the use of alternative resources made available by UG.

關鍵字

Definite ； Indefinite ； uninterpretable features ； L1 transfer

並列摘要

本文探究二語英語冠詞習得知兩個相關之假設，即the Full Transfer/Full Access（FT/FA）Hypothesis（Schwartz and Sprouse 1994, 1996）與the Interpretability Hypothesis（TsimpliandDimitrakopoulou2007）。88位不同英語水平之漢語成年母語者（漢語缺乏冠詞）於兩個誘發性測驗中被要求解釋不同語境的冠詞。他們的解釋結果與15位英語母語者的進行比較。根據the FT/FA Hypothesis的預測，L1少冠詞者透過UG可以達至目標語法呈現，然而結果異於該假設，本研究的學習者在任何語境過度偏愛定冠詞，包含在非限定語境。有人認為，the Interpretability Hypothesis可以解釋學習者在中介語對定冠詞和不定冠詞之不對稱處理。尤其是，我們提出已觀察到之L2行乃因無法解釋性之句法特徵［u-Num］的不可達到性所導致，即受制於關鍵期（critical period）。L2之中介語語法涉及UG所提供之替代資源之用。

並列關鍵字

限定 ； 非限定 ； 不可解釋性特徵 ； 母語遷移

參考文獻

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