Liang Junying, Fang Yuanyuan, Lv Qianxi, Liu Haitao
Department of Linguistics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
Centre for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China.
Front Psychol. 2017 Dec 12;8:2132. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02132. eCollection 2017.
Interpreting is generally recognized as a particularly demanding language processing task for the cognitive system. Dependency distance, the linear distance between two syntactically related words in a sentence, is an index of sentence complexity and is also able to reflect the cognitive constraints during various tasks. In the current research, we examine the difference in dependency distance among three interpreting types, namely, simultaneous interpreting, consecutive interpreting and read-out translated speech based on a treebank comprising these types of interpreting output texts with dependency annotation. Results show that different interpreting renditions yield different dependency distances, and consecutive interpreting texts entail the smallest dependency distance other than those of simultaneous interpreting and read-out translated speech, suggesting that consecutive interpreting bears heavier cognitive demands than simultaneous interpreting. The current research suggests for the first time that interpreting is an extremely demanding cognitive task that can further mediate the dependency distance of output sentences. Such findings may be due to the minimization of dependency distance under cognitive constraints.
口译通常被认为是认知系统一项特别艰巨的语言处理任务。依存距离是句子中两个句法相关词之间的线性距离，是句子复杂性的一个指标，也能够反映各种任务中的认知限制。在当前的研究中，我们基于一个包含带有依存标注的这些口译类型输出文本的语料库，考察了同声传译、交替传译和读出翻译语音这三种口译类型之间的依存距离差异。结果表明，不同的口译译文会产生不同的依存距离，交替传译文本的依存距离除了比同声传译和读出翻译语音的依存距离小之外，还表明交替传译比同声传译承担着更重的认知需求。当前的研究首次表明，口译是一项极其艰巨的认知任务，它可以进一步调节输出句子的依存距离。这些发现可能是由于在认知限制下依存距离的最小化。
