動詞刪除句在心理上的真實性

Abstract

This essay aims to discuss whether VP (verb phrase) ellipsis is psychologically real and what kinds of sentences where VP ellipsis occurs are the most acceptable by English speakers. Also known as “VPE”, VP ellipsis is an elliptical construction in which a non-finite verb phrase has been elided, e.g. “Marry smiled. Tina did [ ] too.” In the linguistics literature, VP ellipsis has been studied extensively and two sharply contrasting approaches to VP ellipsis phenomena exist. One approach is syntactic, and the other is semantic. This paper looks into verb phrase ellipsis by comparing two papers: “On-Line Comprehension of VP-Ellipsis: Syntactic Reconstruction and Semantic Influence” and “Processing elided verb phrases with flawed antecedents: The recycling hypothesis.” This comparison helps people know the psychological reality of VP ellipsis and also understand English speakers’ acceptability when VP ellipsis occurs in different sentence forms.

本文旨在探討動詞刪除句在心理上的真實性，此外，在探討分析動詞刪除句的同時，將進一步了解動詞刪除句出現在何種句型，較能夠被英語為母語人士所接受。本文共分成六個段落，第一段將回顧文獻，簡略了解動詞刪除句在語言學中被探討的情形與方向；第二段則簡述本文寫作的原因及內文大綱；第三與四段將依序概述兩篇文章:＜動詞刪除句的在線理解：句法重構與語義影響＞(“On-Line Comprehension of VP-Ellipsis: Syntactic Reconstruction and Semantic Influence”)與＜處理帶有缺陷又省略動詞片語的先行詞：循環假設＞(“Processing elided verb phrases with flawed antecedents: The recycling hypothesis.”)；第五段則透過比較這兩篇文章，證實動詞刪除句在心理上的真實性，並論述母語人士接受不同動詞刪除句的程度；最後一段將總結此篇文章。