從言談訊息談漢語兒童「的」語句之使用

The Use of DE-marked Expressions in Child Mandarin-A Study Based on Information Flow

程涂媛(Tuyuan Cheng)

指導教授 ： 張顯達

國立臺灣大學/文學院/語言學研究所/博士(2011年)

https://doi.org/10.6342/NTU.2011.02307

摘要

本研究探討漢語兒童在自發性表達情境中對於漢語「的」標記語句之使用。其中關係子句(relative clause)為本研究關切之重點。本研究採類實驗研究法，以三個不同言談作業(task):青蛙故事、梨子影片、樂高積木遊戲誘發兒童說出「的」標記語句。研究的立論基礎源於言談訊息(information flow)理論之主張：認為談話者於言談溝通過程中能持續對聽者談話當時之知識與認知狀態有一前提假設，談話者並根據此假設，適切選擇合於聽者認知狀態情境之語法結構。

為檢視言談訊息在溝通過程中之運作是否能適切解釋漢語兒童「的」標記語句之語法表現，本研究將三個對話作業依其訊息狀態分為(1)僅有語言訊息(2)語言訊息與視覺情境訊息並存。觀察在不同訊息狀態下之三項言談作業中，漢語兒童「的」標記語句之選用情況。

本研究探討文獻中提及的七個言談訊息層面如何在言談情境中運作。七個層面分別為:談話訊息焦點事物之訊息狀態、前後問答句其指涉事物之焦點結構、指涉事物有無人物特性、溝通行為、鋪墊機制、「的」標記語句之句法類型與功能。文獻研究顯示:語句之選用受溝通及語用因素激發影響。本研究亦顯示:「的」標記語句及關係子句得在多元功能及情境交互運作下使用。經分析語料，本研究歸納，足以影響漢語兒童與成人對話言談中使用「的」標記語句及關係子句之五項因素如下:(1)焦點事物之訊息狀態(2)溝通行為及成人與小孩間之互動(3)指涉事物之特性及與鋪墊機制之連結(4)指涉事物有無人物特性(5)成人誘發問題與兒童回答句之間的焦點結構。

言談溝通訊息分析有助於釐清為何文獻研究中自發性語料及實驗法所採集之語料，[的]標記語句之使用多呈偏態分佈。此外，以言談溝通訊息分析架構重新分析許等人(2009)誘發語句實驗之結果，亦佐證了本研究結果所觀察之現象:「成人誘發問題與兒童回答互動能激發兒童『的』標記語句及關係子句之使用」。依循Diessel 及Tomasello (2000) 之觀察，語言形式之可及、可用性，並非單獨由內在結構複雜度決定。應該也受言談中多重功能特性，以及言談情境中，溝通與互動因素影響。這些因素之探究可以從兒童與成人言談互動之過程一窺其貌。

關鍵字

言談訊息 ； 關係子句 ； 漢語關係子句 ； 言談中關係子句 ； 兒童漢語

並列摘要

This dissertation investigates the use of DE-marked expressions in Mandarin-speaking children’s spontaneous production, with relative clauses (RC) of particular concern. A quasi-experimental design is adopted to elicit children’s DE-marked constructions in three task-oriented discourses: story telling on Frog Story, recounting the Pear Film, and conversation in Lego construction. The assumption underlying the current study is that grammatical choices are made in the process of communicating by interlocutors on the basis of their presupposition regarding addressee’s state of knowledge and the information flow in the context.

By setting the general discourse situations in the three tasks as being of the information status either with only linguistic information (ET: evoked textually) or plus situational/perceptual information (ES: evoked situationally), we show that the grammatical use and choice of DE-marked expressions (in particular, RC) in these differing discourse situations can be appropriately explained with the information-flow factors.

Seven aspects of information flow were examined in these observational settings. They are information status of the referent in focus, focus structure of the referent in the adjacent pair of utterances, humanness of the referent, communicative acts, grounding device, syntactic types and function of DE-marked expressions/RC. As previous studies have shown that grammatical options can be motivated by communicative and pragmatic factors, the current quasi-experimental design shows that the elicitation of the target DE-marked expressions/RC can be achieved if the communicative condition fits the plurifunctional properties of DE-marked expressions/RC. Five major factors are considered that might contribute to children’s use of DE-marked expressions/RC in their discourses with adults: (1) the information status of the referents in focus (2) the communicative acts associated with the interactive behaviors between child and adult (3) the entity property associated with the grounding device (4) humanness of the entity, and (5) the focus structure in the prompting question-answer pairs between adult and child.

This communicative-discourse account also helps elucidate the skewed distribution of DE-marked expressions/RC in discourse and previous experimental tasks. The discourse analyses based on children’s production from Hsu et al.’s (2009) elicitation study are used as a subsidiary support to our argumentation that children’s use of DE-marked expressions/RC might be motivated by the lead-in and interaction from adults. Following Diessel and Tomasello’s (2000) observation, we suggest that the accessibility of a linguistic form is not solely determined by the internal structural complexity as proposed by previous structure-based account. Rather, it might associate with the multifunctional features in discourse and be affected by the communicative and interactional factors in discourse situations. All this can be evidenced by production data collected in child’s discourse in the process of communicating with adults.

並列關鍵字

information flow ； relative clause ； Mandarin relative clause ； relative clause in discourse ； child Mandarin

參考文獻

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