英文能力、詞頻及鄰項密度效應對第二語言學習者之音韻感知影響

English Proficiency, Word Frequency and Neighborhood Density Effects on Phonological Awareness of Second Language Learners

陳名崴(Ming-Wei Chen)

指導教授 ： 何德華

國立中正大學/文學院/語言學研究所/碩士(2015年)

摘要

許多文獻曾探討詞頻和鄰項密度對孩童音韻習得的影響，結果顯示比起較少聽到的，孩童較易且較快習得經常在周圍聽到的大人語言，孩童也能對鄰項密度高的詞做出較正確的反應，但也有其他學者提出提高鄰項密度會使反應時間變長，因為有大量鄰項的詞會阻擋該詞的喚回，因此鄰項密度較大的詞反應時間會比鄰項密度較少的詞來得慢。此外，少有文獻探討詞頻和鄰項密度對第二語言學習者音韻感知的影響；在本論文中，旨將藉由音韻感知實驗(單詞覆誦不包含雜音、單詞覆誦包含雜音、首音區隔、首音刪除、假字覆誦)來探討詞頻以及鄰項密度對第二語言習得者音韻感知所產生的影響，並回答是否不同程度的詞頻與鄰項密度影響第二語言學習者實驗的表現，以及第二語言學習者的第二語言程度是否也影響實驗的表現。結果顯示：一、英語語言程度較高的受試者在音韻感知實驗中確實表現得比語言承度較低的受試者來得好；二、不同語言程度、詞頻，以及鄰項密度對受試者在單詞覆誦不包含雜音和首音區隔中產生影響，但其中鄰項密度在單詞覆誦包含雜音和首音刪除並沒有產生效果；另外，語言程度和詞頻的影響效果大於鄰項密度；三、在單詞覆誦不包含雜音中，當詞的組成是高詞頻和低鄰項密度時，受試者表現好，但在單詞覆誦包含雜音中，受試者只有在高詞頻時表現好，鄰項密度高低沒有差別；在首音區隔中，當詞的組成是高詞頻和高鄰項密度時，受試者表現好，但在首音刪除中，受試者只有在高詞頻時表現好，鄰項密度高低沒有差別。造成這三個結果的原因是：一、語言程度較高的受試者單字量也較大，因此，他們懂得更多單字細部結構，並能重組單字，所以音韻感知表現較好；二、單詞覆誦包含雜音和首音刪除兩個測試對受試者較難，因為雜音影響了單詞的覆誦，以及首音刪除涵蓋了許多處理單詞的過程；三、高鄰項密度在單詞覆誦不包含雜音中有阻攔效果；相反地，在首音區隔中卻有幫助效果。本文的結果提供了詞頻和鄰項密度對第二語言學習者音韻感知的影響，並且英語學習者可以透過訓練音韻感知技巧來提升英文閱讀能力。

關鍵字

音韻感知 ； 詞頻 ； 鄰項密度

並列摘要

A number of previous studies have been conducted to investigate children’s reactions to word frequency and neighborhood density and the results suggested that children could acquire sounds frequently heard in the ambient adult language more easily and earlier than those sounds heard infrequently. Children could also react more correctly to those words in dense neighborhoods. However, some studies claimed that increasing neighborhood density could lengthen the response time because larger number of neighbors caused the retrieval of words slower than smaller number of neighbors. In addition, few studies have tested the two effects, word frequency and neighborhood density, on adult second language learners. In the present study, word recognition tasks and phonological awareness tasks were conducted to test word frequency and neighborhood density on adult second language learners in order to uncover the adult participants’ reactions to word frequency effects and neighborhood density effects. The tasks were also conducted to explore whether different levels of English proficiency, neighborhood density, and high word frequency would influence the participants’ performances on different tasks. The results showed that 1) the participants with higher English proficiency performed better than those with lower English proficiency on phonological tasks, 2) English proficiency, word frequency, and neighborhood density showed effects on the word repetition task and the initial phoneme isolation task, but neighborhood density did not show effects on the word repetition with noise task and the initial phoneme isolation task; the effects of English proficiency and word frequencies were larger than that of neighborhood density, and 3) the participants performed better on words with high frequency in sparse neighborhoods in the word repetition task, but only better on words with high frequency in the word repetition with noise task. They also performed better on words with high frequency in dense neighborhoods in the initial phoneme isolation task, but only better on words with high frequency in the initial phoneme deletion task. The reasons for the results are 1) the participants with higher English proficiency had a bigger vocabulary size; they could restructure words more segmentally, so they could perform better on phonological tasks, 2) the word repetition with noise task and the initial phoneme deletion task were too difficult because of the noise added and the lexical items processing, and 3) dense neighborhoods caused inhibitory effects in the word repetition task, but facilitative effects in the initial phoneme isolation task. The results of the present study attribute to the effects of word frequency and neighborhood density on second language learners.

並列關鍵字

word recognition ； word frequency ； neighborhood density ； English proficiency ； phonological awareness

參考文獻

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