學習者對英語韻律的敏感度會影響其學習英語的成果，以英語名/動相對詞REcord 與reCORD為例，決定名/動相對詞詞類的關鍵在於其重音的分配。若學習者能辨別重音與詞類的關係，便能用其對語言韻律敏感度協助同類型的新字學習。本研究以英語名/動相對詞與重音之間的相關性，探討台灣英語學習者是否能不透過直接教學，利用語料中的重音線索將新詞分配至適當的詞類，是否也能利用其對重音的敏感度協助新詞的學習；同時也探討台灣英語學習者對於英語韻律的敏感度是否與其華語聲調的敏感度相關。研究對象為60名台灣六年級學童及40名大學學生。實驗包含華語聲調覺識測驗、英語單字測驗、英語名/動相對詞重音變化學習作業。英語名/動相對詞重音學習作業，以假字為語料，提供英語名/動相對詞與重音變化關係的線索，利用四次的重音學習及練習來檢驗學習者的重音敏感度。重音學習成果任務則幫助了解，學習者是否能將規則用在新學的假字上。研究結果發現，台灣的大學生具有英語名/動相對詞重音敏感度，小學六年級學童雖具有初顯的英語名/動相對詞的重音敏感度，其敏感度卻不夠強烈。而不論是大學生或小學生，都無證據顯示他們能運用其敏感度於新詞學習上。此外學習者的英語名/動相對詞的重音敏感度與其華語聲調覺識無顯著相關。因此本研究指出，台灣英語學習者在英語名/動相對詞的敏感度的發展也許是一個緩慢的過程。而這緩慢的過程也影響到台灣英語學習者運用敏感度協助新詞學習上，所以台灣英語學習者可能需要更清楚明瞭的重音規則教學，強化其英語重音敏感度，並進一步以英語重音為輔助工具來幫助學習新字。

Sensitivity to English prosody is related to English learning. For example, the grammatical category assignments of English noun-verb oppositions such as REcord and reCORD, the grammatical categories depend on the placement of stress. If English learners are sensitive to the correlation between stress patterns and grammatical categories, they may take advantage of such prosodic cues in support of new word learning. The present study investigated whether Chinese EFL learners, in the absence of ostensive instruction, were sensitive to the English noun-verb stress alternations and whether they could use noun-verb stress alternations in support of new word learning. In addition, the study also examined whether sensitivity to English noun-verb stress alternations is related to awareness of tone, a distinctive prosodic feature in the learners’ native language. The participants in the present study were 60 sixth graders and 40 college students. A Mandarin Chinese tone awareness test and an English vocabulary test were included to provide the participants’ background information. An English noun-verb stress alternation task, in which the participants were exposed to pseudowords exemplifying the alternation of stress between nouns and verbs in carrier sentences across four learning trials, examined whether the participants were sensitive to English noun-verb stress alternations and whether they could use this prosodic cues in support of new word learning. The results of the present study showed that the Chinese EFL college students can extract the noun-verb alternation in stress from the experimental input; the sixth graders demonstrated some emerging sensitivity to English noun-verb stress alternations, but their sensitivity was not robust in all analyses. In spite of their sensitivity to noun-verb stress alternations, neither the college students nor the sixth graders employed the prosodic cues in support of new word learning. In addition, there was no significant correlation between sensitivity to English noun-verb stress alternations and Mandarin Chinese tone awarenss. The findings suggest that the development of the sensitivity to noun-verb stress alternations and using this sensitivity to learn new words is a slow and protracted process and con hardly be learned in the absence of direct and explicit instruction.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS III
TABLE OF CONTENTS V
LIST OF TABLES IX
LIST OF FIGURES X
摘要 XI
ABSTRACT XIII
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 Background and Motivation 1
1.2 Purpose of the Present Study 5
1.3 Significance of the Present Study 6
1.4 Organization of the Thesis 7
2.1 What is Prosody? 10
2.1.1 Mandarin Chinese Prosody 13
2.1.2 English Prosody 13
2.2 Importance of Prosody in Processing English 17
2.2.1 Spoken Language 17
2.2.2 Written Language 18
2.3 Sensitivity to Prosodic Cues 20
2.3.1 Infants’ Sensitivity 20
2.3.2 Children’s Sensitivity 23
2.3.3 Adults’ Sensitivity 25
2.4 Cross-language Transfer 28
2.5 Summary of Chapter Two 33
CHAPTER 3 METHOD 35
3.1 Research Questions 35
3.2 Participants 35
3.3 Vocabulary Test 36
3.4 Chinese Tone Awareness Test 37
3.4.1 Materials 37
3.4.2 Procedures 38
3.5 English Noun-verb Stress Alternation Task 40
3.5.1 Warm-up Trials 41
3.5.2 Exposure Phase 42
3.5.3 Test Phase 43
3.5.4 Generalization Test 44
3.6 Summary of Chapter Three 45
CHAPTER 4 RESULTS 47
4.1 Sensitivity to English Noun-verb Stress Alternation 49
4.2 Noun-verb Stress Alternation in Word Learning 53
4.3 Correlations between Tone Awareness and Sensitivity to English Stress Patterns 55
4.4 Summary of Chapter Four 57
CHAPTER 5 DISCUSSION 59
5.1 Sensitivity to English Prosody 60
5.2 English Stress Patterns in Support of Word Learning 66
5.3 Cross-Language Transfer at the Suprasegmental Level 69
5.4 Limitations and Suggestions 72
REFERENCES 75
APPENDIX I 81
APPENDIX II 82
APPENDIX III 85

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