中国学习者对英语关系从句挂靠的歧义消解

Ambiguity Resolution of English Relative Clause Attachment by Chinese Learners

  • 摘要: 为深入了解中国学习者对英语作为二语的关系从句挂靠歧义(如Someone shotthe servantNP1 ofthe actressNP2who was standing on the balconyRC)的消解策略,本研究对27名中国大学一年级学生实行了三项实验。实验一和实验二分别采用自定步速阅读法和问卷法调查了受试对英语关系从句挂靠歧义的在线和离线加工策略;实验三通过修改实验二的问卷,强化了实验材料中各句的复合名词的语义-语用特征,进一步调查后句法因素对关系从句挂靠歧义消解的影响。自定步速阅读的结果表明,受试显著倾向于关系从句挂靠NP1,可见句法因素在关系从句挂靠的歧义消解中发生显著的作用;两个问卷调查的结果显示,在词汇类型、语义-语用等后句法因素的作用下,受试对关系从句挂靠的偏向发生显著变化,因此它们也对关系从句挂靠的歧义消解产生显著的影响;此外,中国学习者对英语关系从句挂靠的加工策略还受自身学习经验和句法能力的制约。

     

    Abstract: The present study aims to determine Chinese learners' ambiguity resolution strategies of English relative clause (RC) attachment (e.g.Someone shotthe servantNP1 ofthe actressNP2who was standing on the balconyRC) by conducting three experiments with 27 ESL learners at a Chinese university.Experiments One and Two examine the learners' strategies of RC disambiguation on-line and off-line by a self-paced reading technique and a questionnaire respectively.Experiment Three further explores the effects of post-syntactic features on the learners' RC ambiguity resolution by highlighting semantic-pragmatic features of the complex noun phrases of Materials in the Experiment Two.The results of self-paced reading technique show that the learners prefer to attach RC to NP1,indicating that syntactic features play a significant role in RC ambiguity resolution.Findings from the two questionnaires reveal that post-syntactic features such as lexical type and semantic-pragmatic cues also play a substantial role in the disambiguation due to the fact that the learners' RC attachment preference vary markedly under the impact of these factors.Besides,RC processing strategies of Chinese learners are constrained by their learning experience as well as syntactic competence.

     

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