論以中文為母語之英語學習者對補語引詞後接空位之知識

On the Knowledge of that-trace Effect in Chinese Learners of English

莊偉強(Wei-Chiang Chuang)

指導教授 ： 麥傑

國立中正大學/文學院/語言學研究所/碩士(2014年)

並列摘要

This study aims to provide an empirical investigation on the effect of that-trace in Chinese learners of English. This study intends to examine the role Universal Grammar (UG) plays in the process of second language acquisition (SLA). It is known that Chinese is a wh-in-situ language; the movement of wh-phrase in interrogative structure is not obligatory. It is questionable whether Chinese learners of English can recognize violations which result from the inappropriate movement of wh-phrase. In other words, is there a difference between the acceptability judgment if a UG-based constraint and a language-specific phenomenon? This study tests the acceptability judgment of wh-island violation and that-trace effect violation thoughthere is no overt complmentizer which introduces complementizer clause in Chinese and that-trace effect is usually regarded as absent in Chinese. In addition to examining the acceptability judgment of that-trace effect, I also examine the prosodic structure of that-trace by Chinese learners of English. In some recent study on that-trace effect, it is taken as a PF-based phenomenon, rather than merely narrow syntactic phenomenon (Kandybowicz, 2006, Sato and Dobashi, 2012). Based on this hypothesis, we expect there would be a correlation between the judgments and prosodic manifestation of that-trace in Chinese learners of English. The aim is to see whether prosodic knowledge of English of Chinese learners of English help distinguishes that-trace violations.
Three experiments are conducted in this thesis. Experiment 1 tests the wh-island violation and that-trace effect, to see whether Chinese learners can recognize these two violations. The results show that Chinese learners can recognize wh-island violation, but they fail to distinguish the violation which was resulted from that-trace effect.
In Experiment 2, I focus on that-trace effect, in order to make sure the result in Experiment 1 not just because of the structural difference between wh-island and that-trace effect. I try to see whether the asymmetry between object extraction and subject extraction in the embedded that-clause was distinguishable by Chinese learners of English. This experiment follows Cowart’s (1997) method of testing that-trace effect on English native speakers. Cowart’s (1997) result shows that English native speakers tend to reject subject extraction from an embedded that-clause. Our result shows that Chinese learners of English show no difference in the acceptability of subject extraction and object extraction. In other words, that-trace effect is not recognized. I attribute the result to that Chinese learners of English can recognize violation of wh-island constraint to the indirect access of UG.
Both Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 show similar results on the acceptability judgment of that-trace effect. Experiment 3 examines the prosodic manifestation of complementizer that-trace. In Hsin and Wu (2006), they examine whether Chinese learners of English pause appropriately when reading that-clause. They provide the evidence that Chinese learners of English do not have a fixed pattern in pausing before that or after that, they also show that Chinese learners of English tend to pause longer at the post-that position, which is contrary to English speakers. In Experiment 3, I measure the pause duration of pre-that position and post-that position and conduct a correlation analysis between the results of the acceptability judgment and prosodic manifestation. The result of experiment shows that there is no correlation between the acceptability judgment of that-trace effect and the prosodic manifestation of that-trace.
From the results of the three experiments in this thesis, we claim that Chinese learners of English are not aware of that-trace effect because they can’t find similar linguistic feature in their L1. I conclude that UG is indirectly accessing in the course of L2 acquisition. Without the access to L1 knowledge, it is possible that Chinese of English are not able to acquire certain language-specific feature. In other words, the claim that UG directly interfere during L2 acquisition is rejected. Facilitation of L2 acquisition relies on UG access but is not restricted solely by L1.

並列關鍵字

that-trace effect ； Chinese learners of English ； acceptability judgment ； UG

參考文獻

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