頻率與中文成語認知之行為實驗研究

The Role of Frequency in Chinese Idiom Processing

蘇芃聿(Peng-Yu Su)

指導教授 ： 劉德馨

國立臺灣大學/文學院/華語教學碩士學位學程/碩士(2017年)

https://doi.org/10.6342/NTU201702439

摘要

近年來，隨著華語教學的發展，高級華語教學的需求量逐漸增加，關於對外成語教學的研究也開始發展。本研究旨在透過行為實驗，觀察、比較母語人士認知成語及短語的歷程，期望成為對外成語教學研究的基石，並做為對外成語教學設計的理論基礎。
　　目前中文成語的認知研究並不完備，但印歐語系慣用語的認知研究已經發展了數十年。諸多學者提出了可能影響慣用語的因素，包括慣用語的使用頻率和其是否可分解。本研究便藉由行為實驗，檢視這些因素是否會影響中文母語人士理解、認知成語所需的時間。
　　為了同時檢視使用頻率和語意透明度對於認知速度的影響，本實驗的刺激共有三類：常見短語、成語以及一般短語。常見短語和一般短語皆為不具隱喻意義的四字格短語，兩者的差別在於常見短語的使用頻率較實驗中的成語高，而一般短語的使用頻率則較實驗中的成語低。實驗中的成語刺激，亦可依照其語意透明度與頻率，分為高、低語意透明度成語，以及高、低頻率成語。
　　透過比較母語人士閱讀、理解不同種類短語和成語的反應時間，筆者發現影響反應時間的最主要因素為使用頻率。無論是成語或是短語，使用頻率越高，反應時間越快。這樣的實驗結果顯示，影響對於母語人士來說，認知四字格慣用語的最大因素，並非是語意透明度，而是語言單位被使用的頻率。

關鍵字

中文成語 ； 行為實驗 ； 認知語言學 ； 語意透明度 ； 使用頻率

並列摘要

The demand of advanced Chinese pedagogy has increased along the development of Chinese language education in recent years, and the research regarding Chinese idiom pedagogy has also spouted. This paper aims to be a footstone of such research by observing native speakers’ cognitive process of Chinese idioms and phrases on the basis of a behavioral experiment.
Research regarding the cognitive process of Chinese idioms is yet to be sufficient, but studies regarding idioms of European languages have been carried on for decades. Researchers have proposed different theories about how idioms are recognized. Factors that may influence the recognition of idioms include their frequency and compositionality of idioms. Therefore, the present study examined whether these factors would affect the time required by Chinese native speakers to recognize Chinese idioms.
In order to view all three factors mentioned above on the same scale, three types of stimuli were designed in this experiment—clichés, idioms and phrases. Clichés and phrases were all phrases whose meaning can be deduced from the individual meaning of their constituents. The difference between clichés and phrases lied in their frequency—clichés had higher frequency than idioms while phrases had lower frequency than idioms. The idioms used in this experiment were divided into semantically transparent idioms and semantically opaque ones, as well as high frequency idioms and low frequency ones.
Through the difference among the three types of stimuli, the experiment showed that the main factor that influenced the reaction time was the frequency of the stimuli—the higher the frequency of stimuli was, the shorter the reaction time would be despite of the type of the stimuli. This indicated that the frequency of a linguistic unit played a more important role on the cognitive process compared with semantic transparency among native speakers.

並列關鍵字

Chinese idioms ； Behavioral experiment ； Cognitive linguistics ； Semantic transparency ； Frequency

參考文獻

張玳維，〈中文成語難度排序──以臺灣華語文教材為本〉，臺灣大學華語教學碩士學位學程學位論文（2015），頁1-116。

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