中英文語言對比分析顯示英文與中文最大的差異是英文有非限定與限定動詞，而中文則只有限定動詞，換句話說，中文完全缺乏像英文有的動狀詞，即不定詞、動名詞與分詞。此一差異使得中文只有一種子句，即一般子句，不像英文可以有兩種類型的子句，即一般子句與動狀詞子句，以表達事件。像這樣，結構上缺乏變化，加上無法利用母語學習的經驗，使得中文母語使用者學習、閱讀英文的動狀詞，或翻譯英文的動狀詞，變得非常困擾。

本研究一開始就指出因為字形上類似或共用，英文限定動詞與非限定動詞的詞類很難分辨，以及這種詞類上的不對應，造成中英翻譯的困難，筆者發現只有透過了解英文母語使用者必須具備那些語言知識，才得以解決詞類判斷的瓶頸，學會精通英文動狀詞的使用。因為一般認為黑盒子內語言處理的奧秘，發覺人類讀者腦中語言知識的困難，本文使用陳教授的電腦讀者，分析各種英文文本，透過電腦閱讀所交出的閱讀報告，我們學會閱讀英文動狀詞所需的詞類判斷，向電腦學習如何使用零代詞處理的科技如何將動狀詞省略的主詞恢復，並且學會英文動狀詞使用哪些造句法以表示事件與事件之間的關係。

本研究最後具體提出這些精通英文動狀詞所需的語言知識分享，希望它們能幫助中文為母語的語言學習者學好英文動狀詞，也能改善他們的中英翻譯。

In the contrastive study between English and Chinese, the most striking difference is the typological difference in terms of finite and non-finite verbs. English has both finite and non-finite verbs whereas Chinese does not have non-finite verbs at all. In other words, verbals such as infinitives, gerunds, and participles are entirely absent in Chinese. Such an absence leaves Chinese with only one kind of clauses to express events, in contrast with English that has finite clauses and non-finite clauses to do the job. This difference brings forth a lot of trouble to ESL learning by Chinese speakers and to translation between English and Chinese. There are simply no counterparts in Chinese to English non-finite VPs and non-finite clauses. This is a serious POS mismatch between English and Chinese.

This study starts from finding out the reasons behind the POS ambiguity in English and the POS mismatch between English and Chinese with a view to understanding what sorts of language knowledge required to do POS disambiguation. The knowledge of this particular POS disambiguation for words ending with -ed or -ing and for the root forms following preposition “to” would certainly equipped non-English speakers to understand English non-finite VPs. Shian-jung Chen’s Computer reader is used to discover how non-finite clauses are used to expressing events, how zero-anaphor resolution used to restore PRO-DROP in non-finite clauses is done, and what kinds of sentence construction rules are used by English writers to express inter-event relations when non-finite clauses are used.

The study recommends a lot of suggestions for Chinese learners regarding how to master the knowledge needed to tackle the POS ambiguity in understanding English non-finite VPs and to translate English non-finite clauses into Chinese.

Alford, Dan Moonhawk. (2002). The Great Whorf Hypothesis Hoax: Sin, Suffering and Redemption in Academe. Chapter Seven from The Secret Life of Language, October 17, 2002 DRAFT.
Ansaldo, U. (2006). Serial Verb Constructions. In Encyclopedia of language and Linguistics (260-264). Retrieved from http://0-dx.doi.org.millennium.lib.ntust.edu.tw/10.1016/B0-08-044854-2/00294-7
Arnold, J. E., Wasow, T., Asudeh, A., & Alrenga, P. (2004). Avoiding attachment ambiguities: The role of constituent ordering. Journal of Memory and Language, 51(1), 55-70.
Brants, S., Dipper, S., Hansen, S., Lezius, W., & Smith, G. (2002). The TIGER Treebank. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories. Sozopol: Bulgaria
Carroll, John B. (ed.) (1997). Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Cambridge, Mass.: Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Carter, R. (2011). English grammar today: An A-Z of spoken and written grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chen, L. C. (2017). A language instructional scaffolding model to help with ESP students’ autonomous learning. Taipei, Taiwan: National Taiwan University of Science and Technology.
Chen, S. J. (1996). Analysis of Chinese for Chinese-English Machine Translation. Ph.D. diss., Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University, Washington, DC.
Chen, S. J. (2010). Linguistic Relativity Revisited. In Proceedings of International Symposium on Cross-Cultural: Integration of different disciplines and cross-cultural studies. New Taipei: Fu-jen Catholic University.
Chen, S. J. (2013). PADS restoration and its importance in reading comprehension and meaning representation. In Proceedings of the 27th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information, and Computation (PACLIC 27). Taipei: National Chengchi University
Chen, S. J. (2014). Computer reading and human reading. International Conference on Applied Linguistics & Language Teaching (ALLT). National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei.
Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mouton.
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Cook, W. A. (1989). Preface. Case Grammar Theory. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Davis, R., Shrobe, H., & Szolovits, P. (1993). What is a knowledge representation? AI magazine, 14(1), 17.
Durie, M. (1995, March). Towards a typology of verb serialization. Paper presented at Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, Australian National University, Melbourne, Vic.
Durie, M. (1997). Grammatical structures in verb serialization. In A. Alsina, J. Bresnan & P. Sells (Eds.), Complex predicates (pp. 289-354). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
Frawley, W. (1984). Prolegomenon to a theory of translation. Translation: Literary, linguistic and philosophical perspectives, 159, 175.
Fillmore, C. J. (1968) The Case for Case. In E. Bach & R. Harms (Eds.), Universals in Linguistic Theory (pp. 1-88). New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Givon, T. (1990). Verb serialization in Tok Pisin and Kalam: a comparative study of temporal packing. In J. W. M. Verhaar (Ed.), Melanesian Pidgin and Tok Pisin: proceedings of the first international conference of pidgins and creoles in Melanesia, pp. 19–55. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Haegeman, L. (1994). Introduction to government and binding theory. (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.
Haspelmath, M., König, E., Öesterreicher, W., & Raible, W. (Eds.). (2001). Language typology and language universals: an international handbook (Vol. 2). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Kong, F., & Zhou, G. (2010, October). A tree kernel-based unified framework for Chinese zero anaphora resolution. In Proceedings of the 2010 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (pp. 882-891). Association for Computational Linguistics.
Lenneberg, E. H. (1953). Cognition in ethnolinguistics. Language, 29(4), 463-471.
Loritz, D. (1992). Generalized Transition Network Parsing for Language Study: The GPARS System for English, Russian, Japanese and Chinese. In CALICO Journal, Volume 10 Number 1.
Mitkov, R. (2013). Anaphora resolution. New York, NY: Routledge.
Moravcsik, E. A. (2012). Introducing language typology. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Payne, T. (2006). Exploring language structure: a student's guide. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Payne, T. E. (1997). Describing morphosyntax: a guide for field linguists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pickering, M. J., & van Gompel, R. P. G. (2006). Syntactic parsing. In M. J. Traxler & M. A. Gernsbacher (Eds.), Handbook of psycholinguistics (2nd ed., pp. 455-504). London: Elsevier, Academic Press.
Pinker, S. (1994). The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. Perennial.
Purdue OWL. (2010, Apr 17). Infinitives. Retrieved from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/627/03/
Purdue OWL. (2011, Apr 13). Participles. Retrieved from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/627/02/
Purdue OWL. (2011, Dec 9). Gerunds. Retrieved from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/627/01/
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. & Svartvik, J. (1972). A grammar of contemporary English. Essex: Longman.
Shih, Y. J. (2016). Mismatch problems that slow down translation process. Taipei, Taiwan: National Taiwan University of Science and Technology.
Trask, R. L. (2013). A dictionary of grammatical terms in linguistics. London: Routledge.
Venuti, L. (1998). Strategies of translation. In M. Baker (Ed.), Encyclopedia of translation studies (pp. 240-244). London and New York: Routledge.
Whorf, B. L. (1940). Science and Linguistics, MIT Technology Review 42(6): 229-31, 247-8.