台灣學生經常誤用英文連接詞 (connectives)，顯示他們無法正確掌握連接詞的用法。本文中兩項實驗目的是為了檢視中文連接詞對語句理解的影響：實驗１測試而且、所以、因此、但是四個連接詞與因果句的關係；實驗２則進一步比較副詞及連接詞的差別，同時也觀察是否連接詞但是有助於理解轉折句。我們的結果證明中文連接詞能夠幫助建構語法結構以及語意，換句話說，表示因果關係的連接詞減少了因果句的閱讀時間，表示轉折關係的連接詞也降低轉折句的閱讀時間，上述兩者連接句子的效能遠大於副詞以及語意較為模糊的連接詞而且。因此，本文中兩項實驗說明中文的連接詞的語句理解上的功能及角色。

A misuse of connectives for Chinese speakers seems to imply their ignorance on connectives. To investigate the role of Chinese connectives on sentence comprehension, two self-paced reading experiments were conducted in the present study. Experiment 1 examined causations connected with causal connectives suoyi ‘so,’ yinci ‘so,’ erqie ‘and,’ and danshi ‘but.’ Experiment 2 contrasted connectives and adverbs and further inspected the interaction between danshi ‘but’ and adversative sentences. The effect of connectives was revealed with the causal connectives decreasing the RT of causations and the adversative connective lowering that of adversative sentences. Contrary to the explicit connectives, the coordinator and adverbs seem less powerful for the former is relatively neutral and vague and the latter fails to aid predictions. Therefore, this current study pinpoints the role of Chinese connectives which shouldn’t have been underestimated.

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