本文主旨在應用「第二語言習得」 (second language acquisition) 理論，探討外籍學生中文疑問詞問句中兩項參數：承接條件（Subjacency）及空號原則（the Empty Category Principle）的習得情形。針對以上兩參數之特性（如：優先作用（superiority effects），「補語連詞＋痕跡」作用（that-trace effects），主謂語不對稱作用（subject/object asymmetries），疑問詞島嶼限制（wh-island constraints），複合名詞組限制（complex NP constraints），子句主語限制（sentential subject constraints））本實驗共設計兩組題型（理解題和製造題）測驗就讀於國立台灣師大國語中心的20名以英語為母語和20名以日語為母語的外籍學生，以及20名以中文為母語的中國人。
實驗結果顯示，除英語組在優先作用上仍然有些許母語轉換 (L1 transfer)的現象外，英語組與日語組都正確地將母語設定值轉換為所學習語言的設定值，證實了普遍語法在第二外語習得中的確扮演了重要的角色。此外，本實驗發現不同的測驗題型對這三組人士理解「空號原則」和「承接條件」兩個參數並沒有不同的影響，兩組測驗題型的結果大致吻合。而且，三組實驗對象都在「無優先作用」的題目上表現較弱，日語組的表現並沒有明顯地比英語組來得好。最後，本實驗亦發現「空號原則」並沒有比「承接條件」難習得。

This thesis aims to examine English- and Japanese-speaking adult learners' acquisition of Subjacency and the Empty Category Principle (ECP) (Chomsky 1981, 1986) in Chinese. The subjects were forty intermediate foreign students of the Mandarin Training Center of National Taiwan Normal University: half were English and half Japanese. In addition, there were twenty native speakers of Chinese in the present study. Two tasks (i.e. a preference task and an ordering task) were designed on the basis of the following phenomena concerning Subjacency and the ECP: wh-island constraints, complex NP constraints, sentential subject constraints, superiority effects, that-trace effects, and subject/object asymmetries.
The results show that, except for the superiority effect, both groups of L2 learners were not significantly influenced by their L1, suggesting that L1 does not play an important role in L2 acquisition. Furthermore, it was found that most of our subjects have reset their L1 to proper L2 values, indicating that Universal Grammar is still available. The results also show that Japanese speakers did not perform significantly better than the English subjects, though Japanese is more similar to Chinese with respect to Subjacency and the ECP. Moreover, it was found that results of the two tasks match quite well; there was no methodology effect. In addition, among those features, our subjects did more poorly on non-superiority, and the native controls rejected island violations more strongly than both groups of the L2 subjects. Finally, it was found that Subjacency is not acquired earlier or latter than the ECP, suggesting that the ECP is equally easy or difficult as Subjacency.

Bennett, S. (1994) "Interpretation of English Reflexives by Adolescent Speakers of Serb-Crotian," Second Language Research 10.2:125-156.
Bley-Vroman, R. W. (1989) "What Is the Logical Proman of Foreign Language Learning?" in J. Schachter & S. Gass eds. Linguistic Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bley-Vroman, R. W., S. W. Felix & G. L. Ioup. (1988) "The Accessibility of Universal Grammar in Adult Language Learning," SLR 4.1: 1-32.
Chen, C.-Y. Doris. (1991) Reindexing and Some Asymmetries in Universal Grammar, Ph. D. Dissertation, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Chen, J. (1986) An Investigation of the Patterns of Learning English Interrogative Structures by EFL Learners in China, MA Thesis, the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Cheng, L. R. (1994) "'Say' and 'See' as Complementizers in Taiwanese and Taiwan Mandarin," Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Mandarin Teaching, pp. 49-72.
Chomsky, N. (1973) "Conditions on Transformations," in S. Anderson and P. Kiparsky (eds), Festschrift for Morris Halle, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, pp. 232-86.
Chomsky, N. (1980) Rules and Representations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Chomsky, N. (1981) Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.
Chomsky, N. (1986) Barriers. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Clahsen, H. (1988) "Parameterized Grammatical Theory and Language Acquisition: A Study of the Acquisition of Verb Placement and Inflection by Children and Adults," in S. Flynn, and W. O'Neil (eds), Linguistic Theory in Second Language Acquisition. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Clahsen, H. & P. Muysken. (1986) "The Availability of Universal Grammar to Adult and Child Learner: A Study of the Acquisition of German word order," Second Language Research 2: 93-119.
Cole, P., G. Hermon & L. M. Sung. (1990) "Principles and Parameters of Long-Distance Reflexives," Linguistic Inquiry 21.1: 1-22.
Cook, V. (1985) "Chomsky's Universal Grammar and Second Language Acquisition," Applied Linguistics 6.1: 2-18.
Cook, V. (1993) Linguistic and Second Language Acquisition. London: the Macmillan Press Ltd.
Coppieters, R. (1987) "Competence differences Between Native and Nonnative Speakers," Languages 63: 544-573.
Culicover, Peter W. (1997) Principles and Parameters. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dulaly, H. and M. Burt. (1974) "A New Perspective on the Creative Construction Processes in Child Second Language Acquisition," Language Learning 24: 253-258.
Epstein, S., S. Flynn & G. Martohardjono. (1996) "Explanation in Theories of Second Language Acquisition," Behavioral and Brain Science 19.4: 677-758.
Felix, S. W. (1988) "UG-generated Knowledge in Adult Second Language Acquisition," in S. Flynn & W. O'Neil (eds.), Linguistic Theory in Second Language Acquisition, pp.277-294. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Flynn, S. (1987) A Parameter-Setting Model of L2 Acquisition. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
Gass, S. and L. Selinker. (1992) Language Transfer in Language Learning. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Goodluck, H. (1986) "Language Acquisition and linguistic Theory," in P. Fletcher and M. Garman (eds.), Language Acquisition (2nd edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Haegeman, L. (1991) Introduction to Government & Binding Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Huang, C.-T. James. (1982) Logical Relations in Chinese and the Theory of Grammar, Ph. D. Dissertation, MIT.
Huang, C.-T. James. (1984a) "On the Distribution and Reference of Empty Pronouns," Linguistic Inquiry 15: 531-574.
Huang, C.-T. James. (1984b) "On the Typology of Zero Anaphora," Language Research 20: 85-105.
Johnson, J. & E. Newport. (1989) "Critical Period Effects in Second Language Learning: the Influence of Maturational State on the Acquisition of English as a Second Language," Cognitive Psychology 21: 60-99.
Johnson, J. & E. Newport. (1991) "Critical Period Effects on Universal Properties of Language: The Status of Subjacency in the Acquisition of a Second Language," Cognition 39: 215-258.
Katada, F. (1991) "The LF Representation of Anaphors," Linguistic Inquiry 22.2: 287-313.
Kim, S. (1996) The Acquisition of Wh-Questions in English and Korean, Ph. D. Dissertation, Univ. of Hawaii.
Lasnik, H. & M. Saito. (1984) "On the Nature of Proper Government," Linguistic Inquiry 5: 235-89
Lasnik, H. & J. Uriagereka. (1988) A Course in GB Syntax-Lectures on Binding and Empty Categories. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Liceras, J. (1985) "The Role of Intake in the Determination of Learners' Competence," in S. Gass and C. madden (eds.), Input in Second Language Acquisition. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Li, C. N. & S. A. Thompson. (1976) "Subject and Topic: A New Typology," in C. N. Li (Ed.), Subject and Topic, pp. 457-489. New York: Academic Press.
Li, C. N. & S. A. Thompson. (1981) Mandarin Chinese: a Functional Reference Grammar. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Li, X. (1998) "Adult L2 Accessibility to UG: an Issue Revisited," in S. Flynne, G. Martohardjono & W. O'Neil (eds.), The Generative Study of Second Language Acquisition, Ch.6. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Liu, M.-Y. (1999) An Experimental Study of English Relative Clauses by Chinese Junior High School Students in Taiwan, M.A. Thesis, NTNU.
Martohardjono, G. (1993) Wh-Movement in the Acquisition of a Second Language: A Cross-Linguistic Study of Three Languages with and without Syntactic Movement, unpublished Ph. D. Dissertation, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
Martohardjono, G. (1998) "Measuring Competence in L2 Acquisition: Commentary on Part II," in S. Flynne, G. Martohardjono, & W. O'Neil (eds.), The Generative Study of Second Language Acquisition, Ch.9. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Matsumura, M. (1994) "Japanese Learners' Acquisition of the Locality Requirement of English: Evidence for Retreat from Overgeneralization," Studies on Second Language Acquisition 16.1: 19-40.
Mazurkewich, I. (1984a) "The Acquisition of the Dative Alternation by Second Language Learners and Linguistic Theory," Language Learning 34: 91-109.
Mazurkewich, I. (1984b) "Dative Questions and Markedness," in F. Eckman, L. Bell and D. Nelson (eds.), Universals of Second Language Acquisition. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
O'Grady, W. and M. Dobrovolsky. (eds.) (1987) Contemporary Linguistic Analysis: An Introduction. Taipei: The Crane Publishing Co,. Ltd.
O'Grady, W. and M. Dobrovolsky. (3rd eds.) (1996) Contemporary Linguistic Analysis: An Introduction. Toronto: Copp Clark Ltd.
Otsu, Y. (1981) Universal Grammar and Syntactic Development in Children: toward a Theory of Syntactic Development, Ph. D. Dissertation, MIT.
Ou, Rosanna H.-C. (1998) An Experimental Study of the Pro-drop Parameter in Adult Second Language Acquisition, M.A. Thesis, NTNU.
Oyama, S. (1978) "The Sensitive Period and Comprehension of Speech," Working Papers on Bilingualism 16: 1-17.
Patkowski, M. (1980) "The Sensitive Period for the acquisition of Syntax in a Second Language," Language Learning 30: 449-472.
Phinney, M. (1987) "The Pro-drop Parameter in Second Language Acquisition," in T. Roeper and E. Williams (eds), Parameter Setting. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Pinker, S. (1984) Language Learnability and Language Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Radford, A. (1988) Transformational Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ritchie, W. (1978) "The Right Roof Constraint in Adult-acquired Language," in W. Ritchie (ed.), Second Language Acquisition Research: Issues and Implications. New York: Academic Press.
Ross, J. R. (1967) Constraints on Variables in Syntax, Ph. D. Dissertation, MIT.
Saito, M. (1985) Some Asymmetries in Japanese and their Theoretical Implications, Ph. D. Dissertation, MIT.
Sarma, J. (1992) The Acquisition of Wh-Questions in English, Ph. D. Dissertation, Univ. of Connecticut.
Schachter, J. (1988) "Second Language Acquisition and its Relationship to Universal Grammar," Applied Linguistics 9: 219-236.
Schachter, J. (1989) "Testing a Proposed Universal," in Gass, S. M. and Schachter, J. (eds.), Linguistic perspectives on Second Language Acquisition, Chapter 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schachter, J., & V. Yip. (1990) "Why does Anyone Object to Subject Extraction?" Studies in Second Language Acquisition 12: 379-392.
Strozer, J. (1991) "Non-native Language Acquisition from a Principles and Parameters Perspective," in H. Campos & F. Martnez-Gil (eds.), Current Studies in Spanish Linguistics. Georgetown University Press.
Uziel, S. (1993) "Resetting Universal Grammar Parameters: Evidence from Second Language Acquisition of Subjacency and the Empty Category Principle," SLR 9.1: 49-83.
Vainikka, A & M. Young-Scholten. (1991) "Verb Raising in Second Language Acquisition: The Early Stages," in Theorie des Lexikons: Nr.4. Universal Grammar in Second-Language Acquisition. Universitat Dusseldorf. The LEXLERN Project.
Watanabe, A. (1991) Wh-in-Situ, Subjacency, and Chain Formation, Ph. D. Dissertation, MIT.
White, L. (1988) "Island Effects in Second Language Acquisition," in S. Flynn and W. O'Neil (eds.), Linguistic Theory in Second Language Acquisition, pp. 144-172. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
White, L. (1989) Universal Grammar and Second Language Acquisition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
White, L. (1992) "Subjacency Violation and Empty Categories in L2 Acquisition," in H. Goodluck & M. Rochemont (eds.), Island Constraints, pp. 445-464. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
White, L. & F. Genesee. (1996) "How Native is Near-Native? The Issue of Ultimate Attainment in Adult Language Acquisition," Second Language Research 11: 233-265.
White, L. & A. Juffs. (1998) "Constraints on Wh-Movement in Two Different Contexts of Nonnative Language Acquisition: Competence and Processing," in S. Flynne, G. Martohardjono, & W. O'Neil (eds.), The Generative Study of Second Language Acquisition, Ch.7. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Yoshinaga, N. (1997) Wh-Questions: A Comparative Study of Their Form and Acquisition in English and Japanese, Ph. D. Dissertation, Univ. of Hawaii.
Yuan, B. (1995) "Acquisition of Base-Generated Topics by English-Speaking Learners of Chinese," Language Learning 45.4: 567-603.
湯廷池 (1976) <<「國語變形語法研究」第一集：移位變形>> 臺北：學生書局