台灣留學生出席國際會議補助

2009年7月21日 星期二

The Earlier the Better? Disparate Age Effects on Second Language Phonology and Morphosyntax

論文發表人: 黃萱樺 (加州大學洛杉磯分校教育心理學博士)

 

http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~springsym/index.html

 

本研究計畫的研究重點包含釐清關鍵期的機制,考驗關鍵期對語言不同面向的影響,以及了解影響語音及語法學習成就的變因。研究樣本包含118位以中文為母語的華人移民以及24位英語母語人士。所有受試者都接受語音及語法測驗,而中文母語組自填一份背景問卷。語音測驗的程序為讓所有受試者朗誦一篇英文短文,然後再請五位英文母語人士評斷所有受試者的發音。語法測驗包含112個英語句子,受試者在閱讀每一個句子後必須決定句子語法是否正確。

此研究計畫的結果並不支持傳統的關鍵期概念。學習起點年紀對第二語言學習成就的影響並非絕對,而是呈現緩慢遞減的負相關曲線。起點年紀影響語音大於語法。在118移民中,共有22位的語法成就和英語母語人士相當,而其中一位更是在青春期後才移民來美。但在語音面向只有兩位移民的發音被評斷為與母語人士相當,且這兩位皆在五歲時移民來美。另外,迴歸分析法顯示在排除其他變因後,移民年紀對英語語音成就還是有顯著的影響,但是其他變因如語言環境,在美受教育年限,學習天賦及文化認同亦對發音有顯著的影響。在語法面向,移民年紀只對某些特定的規則有顯著影響,而且其他變因如語言環境,學習天賦以及文化認同亦對語法學習有顯著的影響。

 

 

The research objectives of the current study were threefold. It aimed to test the validity of the critical period hypothesis (CPH) in second language (L2) acquisition and to examine the age effect across two linguistic dimensions (i.e., phonology and morphosyntax) as well as across different structures within the same dimension. Additionally, the presented study investigated the predictors of the ultimate L2 outcomes in the two linguistic dimensions.

Participants included 118 Mandarin-speaking immigrants in the United States (Age of Arrival = 5-27) and a group of 24 English native speakers as the control participants. All participants read and recorded a standard paragraph taken from the Speech Accent Archive website, and their speech production was then rated for the degree of foreign accent by another group of English native speakers. Morphosyntax knowledge was measured by a 112-item grammaticality judgment test, which included 84 sentences from Johnson & Newport (1989) and 28 sentences from White & Genesse (1996). The selected 84 sentences from the Johnson & Newport study assessed ten standard English morphosyntactic structures whereas the other 28 sentences targeted at universal grammar structures.

Current findings failed to support the CPH in the traditional sense with a specific window of time for L2 learning that closes at puberty. The strength of the age effect was found to vary depending on the particular linguistic dimension and structure under study. Specifically, the phonology dimension was found to be more strongly constrained by the age of arrival variable than the morphosyntax dimension. There were also discrepant degrees of the age effect on different structures within each linguistic dimension. Finally, the predictors for the ultimate outcomes differed for the two linguistic dimensions. Age of arrival, language exposure as well as language learning aptitude contributed to the phonology outcome. In contrast, age of arrival was not a significant predictor for the morphosyntax outcome. The ultimate morphosyntactic attainment was predicted by language exposure and language learning aptitude.