日本人英語学習者による主語WH疑問文と目的語WH疑問文の理解

概要

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A variety of studies report that native speakers of English and learners of English as a second/foreign language find object wh-questions easier to parse, process, and judge as grammatically correct than subject wh-questions. However, this finding does not correspond to that of studies on relative clauses similar to wh-questions in terms of so-called filler-gap dependencies. This is because it is often noted that subject relative clauses are easier to parse, process, comprehend and produce than object relative clauses. The present paper investigated which type of wh-questions is more difficult in listening comprehension and examined the possibility of applying relative clause theories such as the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy for predicting the difficulty of wh-questions. The results of the listening comprehension test conducted with 38 Japanese learners of English as a foreign language pointed toward a statistically significant preference for subject wh-questions rather than object wh-questions. Additionally, performing correctly on object wh-questions might guarantee correct performance on the subject wh-questions, and not vice versa. Directions for further research and the need of interfaces between research on wh-questions and on relative clauses are also discussed.
2013-10-31