雙賓動詞的句子結構長久以來都是語言學界關心的焦點。本文研究焦點特別
著重於影響雙賓動詞句子結構的重量問題。根據Quirk et al. (1972)的研究指
出，通常越重的結構越會放在句子的後面。然而對於如何定義結構重量至今在學
界尚未有一個明確的定義。因此，本研究試著釐清所謂的重量是如何定義出來的。
此外，根據張蘭心(2001)的研究指出，回聲效應對於雙賓動詞的句型選擇上
也有影響。在受試者回答問題時，受試者傾向於重複之前所聽到問句的句型結
構。因此，本研究也探討當回聲效應以及結構重量問題都出現時，受試者將會如
何的做出選擇。
本文採用問卷研究以及語料庫蒐集的方式進行研究。問卷包含句子喜好程度
測試以及情境問題選項。研究結果指出影響句子結構重量的問題有包含句子結構
的複雜度以及句子本身字數的多寡，同時回聲效應也是影響雙賓動詞的因素之
ㄧ。除此之外，影響雙賓動詞的因素還包含了另外許多的其他因素，不可光從句
子的重量問題來探討。

The issue of dative alternation construction has long been a debated topic in the linguistics field. This thesis especially focuses on the grammatical weight interpretation. Quirk et al. (1972) stated the end-weight rule, which predicted that people tended to put the NP which is heavier at the final position of a sentence. However, how to define the heaviness of NP is still in debate. Ross (1967) claimed that an NP is heavy if it dominates “a sentence”. Emonds (1976: 112) argued that an NP is called as heavy in the complex NP shift is that the NP dominates an S or PP. On the other hand, Hawkins (1990, 1994) proposed the idea that the heaviness is determined by the number of words dominated by a NP. Therefore, this thesis tries to shed some light on the precise definition of grammatical weight for Chinese native speakers. Secondly, Chang (2001) argued that the echo effect was prominent for Chinese native speakers to determing the dative word order variation. The subjects tended to echo the question pattern when they responded to that question. Hence, this thesis also tries to investigate the phenomenon when the echo effect issue meets with the grammatical weight interpretation. Judgment task, contextual questions task and corpus analysis are adopted in this study. Contextual questions task tries to investigate the subjects’ response to a contextual question which contains dative verbs. The purpose of this contextual questions task is to know when the complexity effect meets with the echo effect, what is more determining. The judgment task tests the participants’ judgment on the grammaticality of sentences which contains dative alternation. The purpose of this questionnaire is to see if the complexity of a NP contributes to the determining of a dative alternation construction. The corpus used is Chinese Word Sketch corpus developed by Academia Sinica. There are 253 sentences in total. I try to consider the length of the constituents and the complexity of constituents in dative alternation.
In the first section of the questionnaire, the result shows that the Chinese native speakers are both sensitive to the echo effect and the complexity effect. Besides, the preference for the dative sentence type is also found based on the result. In the second section of the questionnaire, the result indicates that the Chinese native speakers are indeed sensitive to the complexity of a NP. The subjects tend to rate the sentences which contains a more complex NP at the final position of a sentence more acceptable than that at the middle of a sentence. In addition, the preference of the dative sentence type is also found in the result. In the corpus study, the results show that subjects are both sensitive to the complexity of constituents and length of constituents. In conclusion, the Chinese native speakers in this study shows sensitivity to both the complexity effect, length effect and echo effect. Furthermore, in both questionnaires, the preference for the dative sentence type is identified. This preference can be explained through the unmarked property of the dative sentence type in Chinese.

ABSTRACT ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v
LIST OF TABLES viii
LIST OF FUGURES ix
Chapter One Introduction 1
1.1 Introduction and Motivation 1
1.2 Rationale for This Study 2
1.3 Overview of Chapters 3
1.4 Definition of Key Terms 3
Chapter Two Literature Review 6
2.1 Dative Constructions in Chinese 6
2.1.1 Different Accounts of Dative Constructions in Chinese 6
2.1.2 The Interpretation of Gei 10
2.1.3 The Properties of Double Object Construction 15
2.2 Dative Alternations in English 17
2.3 Possessor Effect 18
2.4 Function of Grammatical Weight Interpretation 21
2.5 The role of grammatical weight 24
2.6 Syntactic priming effects 32
Chapter Three Methodology 36
3.1 Part A of the Questionnaire: Preference judgment task 36
3.1.1 Material 38
3.1.2 Subject 41
3.1.3 Data collection 41
3.2 Part B of the Questionnaire: Contextual questions 42
3.2.1 Material 50
3.2.2 Procedure 50
3.2.3 Subjects 51
3.2.4 Data collection 51
3.3 Corpus Analysis 51
3.3.1 Material 52
Chapter Four Results and Discussion 53
4.1 Part A of the Questionnaire: Preference judgment test 53
4.1.1 Discussion 54
4.1.1.1 Preference for dative sentence type 56
4.1.1.2 Ambiguity avoidance 57
4.2 Part B of the Questionnaire: Contextual questions 58
4.2.1 Discussions 60
4.2.1.1 Preference for dative sentence type 61
4.2.1.2 Influence from the context 62
4.3 Corpus analysis 64
4.3.1 Information status 69
4.3.2 Discussions 72
Chapter Five Conclusion, Limitations, and Suggestions 74
5.1 General conclusion 74
5.2 Limitations of the study 76
5.3 Suggestions for further study 76
REFERENCES 77
APPENDIX A QUESTIONNAIRE PART A 81
APPENDIX B QUESTIONNAIRE PART B 82
APPENDIX C CORPUS DATA 91

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