Apparent target-like Performance VS Underlying Grammatical Representations of Native Speakers: On the Interpretation of count-mass L2 Chinese Classifiers

外顯性類目標語表現和母語使用者隱含的語法表態之對比：第二語中文可數不可數單位詞闡述

10.29737/SJFLL.201103.0001

江丕賢(Stano Kong)

單位詞 ； 可數 ； 不可數 ； 關鍵期 ； classifiers ； count ； mass ； critical period

東吳外語學報

32期（2011 / 03 / 01）

1 - 24

英文

本文發表一針對兩組成人英文使用者對第二語中文可數不可數單位詞之理解的實驗性研究。在英文中，名詞的可數和不可數可區別於名詞層面，然而，中文中卻被定義在單位詞中(Cheng and Sybesma, 1998)。本研究結果顯示，在初期習得階段中，成人英語使用者對於可數不可數之區別和第一語言習得一致；他們認為普遍性單位詞「個」，並不需要定義於某一特定類型的名詞。實驗中出現一些習得發展的差異可能原因於對詞素的學習差異，這些研究發現和第二語言習得中的參數重設理論有關並加以探討。

In this article, adult English speakers' comprehension of count mass classifiers in L2 Chinese is reported. Both English and Chinese have a conceptual way in which count-mass distinction is made. In English, count-mass distinction is reflected at the level of the noun, whereas in Chinese it is defined according to classifiers (Cheng and Sybesma 1998). The results of the empirical study show that the count-mass distinction is honoured in early stages of L2 acquisition, supporting a theory held by Soja, Carey, and Spelke (1991) that count-mass distinction is available in early grammars. They also suggest that the predominant use of the general classifier ge does not require it to be denoted to a particular type of nouns. There are developmental differences in the interpretation of correct classifier use which is probably due to lexical learning. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the parameter-resetting theories in SLA. They caution that the target-like performance and the assumed underlying target grammars are not necessarily equivalent, a theory in SLA development proposed by Myles (2004) and Hawkins and Hattori (2006).

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