本文旨在探討日語及英語人士學習中文「主題顯著性」及「代名詞省略」參數時，普遍語法和母語轉換所扮演的角色及中文此二參數間的互動。
本實驗以故事重述(story-retelling)及作文(composition)的方式為主，受試者為40位就讀國立台灣師範大學國語文中心之外籍學生，以日語或英語為母語各20位，測驗時間自87年12月14日至25日。語料收集完畢後，再分別就兩參數之特性作分析，中文主題方面分為：(1)語法屬性：名詞主題(包括原位衍生名詞和移位名詞)及非名詞主題(包括時間副詞片語和介系詞片語)(2)語意屬性：指稱的及總稱的主題；代名詞省略方面分為：(1)語法位置：主詞及受詞(2)語意詮釋：有指涉及無指涉。
實驗結果顯示，母語轉換扮演著重要的角色。以英語為母語的受試者因母語轉換而較少省略代名詞及使用主題，但兩組受試者在使用主題方面有相當程度的同質性，顯示英日語在主題顯著性的差異並不如預期的大，但仍可看出普遍語法在外語習得之影響力。此外，受試學生對作文題型較故事重述題型能掌握。就使用頻率來說，非名詞主題多於名詞主題，主詞省略多於受詞省略。就兩參數的互動而言，代名

In L2 research, the availability of Universal Grammar (UG), the role of L1 has been debated for decades. This present study will argue for the existence of UG and the influence of L1 by conducting a cross-sectional experiment to examine adult Japanese and English speakers' acquisition of pro-drop and topic prominence in Chinese. The present study used two production tasks to elicit narratives in Chinese: a story-retelling task and a composition task. The two tasks were given to 20 Japanese speakers and 20 English speakers learning Chinese at the Mandarin Training Center of National Taiwan Normal University. Specific features concerning pro-drop (such as missing subjects and object, referential and nonreferential pronouns) and topics constructions (like NP and non-NP topics, definite and generic topics) were examined in this study.
The results show that L1 does play an influential role in L2 acquisition. The English-speaking subjects carried over their L1 knowledge to acquire Chinese; hence, they produced more overt pronouns and fewer topics. But it was found that the production rate of both groups of L2 subjects was quite similar with respect to topic constructions, indicating that subject-prominent and topic-prominent typological variations between English and Japanese were not as significant as we predicted. Moreover, UG is proved to be indirectly accessed because the L2 learners had not fully mastered the topic and pro-drop constructions. Also, it was found that the subjects did a better job in the composition task, suggesting that a more conscious process of language production will ensure better performance. In terms of the production rate, non-NP topics were more productive than NP topics, and missing subjects were more productive than missing objects. Finally, it was found that the acquisition of pro-drop was easier to that of topic constructions.

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