中英文可數與不可數對比

Count-mass Distinctions in Chinese and English

This paper reports on an empirical study of the comprehension of count mass classifiers in L2 Chinese by two groups of adult English speakers. 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 study cohere with studies in L1 acquisition that the count mass distinction is honoured in early stages of acquisition. They also suggest that the predominant use of the general classifiers 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.這份科學化的研究報導了兩組以英文為母語的成人中文學習者，關於計量和群集式的類詞的理解。Cheng和Sybesma在1998年的研究中指出：在英文中，計量和群集的概念可依名詞屬性來區辨。然而，中文則需要借由類詞來註記。眾多研究結果顯示這和早期的第一語言習得發展有關。他們也指出，早期過度不當使用普遍性適用的類詞”個”在不需要的情況下，會衍生出一特定類型的名詞。更甚的是，發展差異的存在對於正確的類詞使用解讀很有可能導因於詞彙的學習。這些研究發現的指涉將被放在第二語言習得的參數重設理論中進ㄧ步探討。