英語名詞短語中心成分的認知入場研究的中期報告Abstract摘要Thismid-termreportpresentsthecurrentprogressofaresearchprojectaimingtoinvestigatethecognitiveprocessesinvolvedinidentifyingthecenterconstituentsofEnglishnounphrases.Thestudyuseseye-trackingtechnologytomeasuretheprocessingtimeandfixationdurationonvariouspartsofatargetsentence,aswellasquestionnairesandinterviewstocollectparticipants’understandingandjudgmentsaboutthesentencestructureandmeaning.Thepreliminaryanalysisofdatasuggeststhattheidentificationofthecenterconstituentsinnounphrasesinvolvesbothtop-downandbottom-upprocessing,andthatthevariabilityincenterconstituentidentificationisinfluencedbydifferentfactors,suchassyntacticcomplexityandsemanticambiguity.Furtheranalysisandexperimentsareplannedtogainamorecomprehensiveunderstandingofthisphenomenon.本中期報告介紹了一個研究項目的當前進展，旨在探究英語名詞短語中心要素識別涉及的認知過程。該研究使用眼動技術來測量目標句子不同部分的處理時間和注視持續(xù)時間，以及問卷和訪談來收集參與者對句子結構和含義的理解和判斷。初步的數據分析表明，名詞短語中心要素的識別涉及自上而下和自下而上的加工，而中心要素識別的變異性受到不同因素的影響，如語法復雜性和語義歧義性。進一步的分析和實驗計劃獲得更全面的了解這一現(xiàn)象。Introduction引言Nounphrases(NPs)arecommonsentenceconstituentsinEnglishsentences,consistingofanounastheheadwordandvariousmodifiersthathelptospecifythemeaningofthenoun.TheidentificationofthecenterconstituentinaNPiscrucialforunderstandingthemeaningofasentence,asitreflectsthemostimportantinformationconveyedbythesentence.However,identifyingthecenterconstituentsinNPscanbechallengingforbothnativespeakersandforeignlanguagelearnersduetothegrammaticalcomplexityandsyntacticambiguityofthelanguage(GómezGonzález,2013;Cook,2015).Inthisproject,weaimtoinvestigatethecognitiveprocessesinvolvedinidentifyingthecenterconstituentsofEnglishNPs,particularlyfocusingontheroleoftop-downandbottom-upprocessinginthistask.Top-downprocessingreferstotheuseofpriorknowledgeandexpectationstointerpretincominginformation,whilebottom-upprocessingreferstotheanalysisofindividualfeaturesandpropertiesofincominginformationtoconstructacoherentperceptualexperience(Clark,2016).WehypothesizethattheidentificationofcenterconstituentsinNPsinvolvesbothtop-downandbottom-upprocessing,andthattherelativeimportanceofthesetwoprocessesvariesdependingondifferentcontextualandlinguisticfactors.Totestourhypothesis,weuseeye-trackingtechnologytomeasureparticipants’processingtimeandfixationdurationondifferentpartsofatargetsentence,aswellasquestionnairesandinterviewstocollecttheirunderstandingandjudgmentsaboutthesentencestructureandmeaning.Eye-trackingtechnologyhasbeenwidelyusedinpreviousstudiestoinvestigatelanguageprocessingbecauseitprovidesapreciseandobjectivemeasureofcognitiveactivityduringreadingorlisteningtasks(Rayner,2009).Methodology方法ParticipantsThestudyrecruited40nativespeakersofEnglishand40ChineselearnersofEnglishasaforeignlanguage.ThenativespeakerswereundergraduatestudentsfromaBritishuniversity,andtheforeignlanguagelearnerswereundergraduatestudentsfromaChineseuniversitymajoringinEnglish.MaterialsWecreated40experimentalsentencesthatvariedinsyntacticcomplexityandsemanticambiguity.EachsentenceincludedaNPstructureandaquestionaskedaboutthesentencemeaningtoensurethatparticipantspaidattentiontothesentence.ThecenterconstituentsintheNPweremanipulatedtobeeithertheheadnoun,thefirstmodifier,thelastmodifier,oracombinationofthefirstandlastmodifiers(seeFigure1foranexample).ProcedureParticipantswereseatedinfrontofacomputerscreenandwereinstructedtoreadeachsentencepresentedonthescreenasaccuratelyandquicklyaspossiblewhiletheireyemovementswererecordedusinganeye-tracker.Afterreadingeachsentence,participantsansweredacomprehensionquestionaboutthesentencemeaning.Aftercompletingallexperimentalsentences,participantswereaskedtofilloutaquestionnaireandparticipateinasemi-structuredinterviewtoexplaintheirunderstandingandjudgmentsaboutthesentencestructures.DataanalysisTheeye-trackingdatawereanalyzedintermsofthefixationdurationondifferentpartsofthesentences,includingthebeginningofthesentence,theNPstructure,andthecenterconstituentoftheNP.Thecomprehensionquestionnaireandinterviewswereanalyzedqualitativelytoidentifyparticipants’understandingandjudgmentsofthesentencestructuresandmeanings.Results結果ThepreliminaryanalysisofdatasuggeststhattherecognitionofcenterconstituentsinNPsinvolvesbothtop-downandbottom-upprocessing.Specifically,participantstendtofocustheirattentionoverwhelminglyontheNPstructurewhenidentifyingthecenterconstituent,suggestingthattheyrelyheavilyontop-downprocessingandusetheirexpectationsaboutthesentencestructuretoguidetheirinterpretation.However,thefixationdurationsondifferentpartsoftheNPsalsovarydependingonthepositionandroleofthecenterconstituentinthesentence,indicatingtheinvolvementofbottom-upprocessingaswell.Thesyntacticcomplexityandsemanticambiguityofthesentencealsoinfluencetheprocessingtimeandfixationdurationofparticipants.Ingeneral,morecomplexandambiguoussentencestakelongertoprocessandrequiremorefixationsondifferentpartsofthesentencetoarriveatacorrectinterpretation.Thequestionnaireandinterviewdataprovideadditionalinsightintothefactorsthatinfluenceparticipants’understandingandjudgmentsofthesentencestructureandmeaning.Participants’priorknowledgeofthetopic,theirfamiliaritywiththegrammarrules,andtheirinterpretationofthemodifiersalsopla