本文旨在探討外國學生習得漢語疑問句的差異。研究對象為八十位就讀於國立臺灣師範大學國語教學中心的外國學生，四十位以英語為母語之學生（即英語組），另四十位之母語為日語（即日語組）。兩組學生就該中心分班測驗再分成初級二十位與中級二十位。研究對象分別進行兩實驗：一是文法喜好測驗，另一是圖片描述測驗。前者檢測外國學生對漢語疑問句之理解，藉由1～5Likert等級判斷其接受度，另一測驗由受試學生根據圖片中提問。兩測驗設計之疑問句相同，均為32題，含「誰」、「什麼」及「哪一個」三個疑問詞出現於單句與複句中的主詞或受詞的位置。此外，疑問詞所提問之內容亦依其「有生命性」（animacy）設計（Yoshinage 1996）。研究結果顯示，兩測驗結果相似，疑問詞出現在單句較其出現在複句接受度高，外國學生使用單句疑問句亦較複句來得多。各疑問句中以「誰」的疑問句接受度與使用率最高，其次是「什麼」及「哪一個」。此外，疑問詞出現在主詞位置者較疑問詞出現受詞位置者一般而言容易讓外國學生接受與使用，此點證明漢詞主詞／受詞不對稱性（Huang 1989）之存在，研究發現雖不同於Stromswold（1995）的假設，但與Yoshinage（1996）與范瑞玲（2003）之研究結果相同。有「生命性」與不同的疑問詞確實有相關性，此特性在「誰」的疑問句尤為顯著。

The main purpose of this study is to examine foreign students' acquisition of wh-questions in Chinese. The subjects were eighty students of the Mandarin Training Center of National Taiwan Normal University: half were English and half Japanese. There were two levels (basic and intermediate) in each language group. Two tasks (i.e., a preference task and a picture description task) were designed, each of which consisted of 32 questions, including shei ‘who,’sheme ‘what,’ and nayige ‘which’ in single and bi-clausal constructions. Properties concerning subject/object asymmetry and animacy were also examined (Yoshinaga 1996). It was found that the two tasks yield similar results. The subjects accepted and produced wh-words in single constructions more than in biclausal constructions. Moreover, shei was found to be the most acceptable and most frequently produced, followed by sheme and nayige, Furthermore, it was found that wh-words in subject positions were more likely to be accepted and produced by our subjects, indicating that Chinese exhibited subject/object asymmetry (Huang 1989). The present result did not support Stromswold's (1995) hypothesis, but it matched the findings of Yoshinaga (1996) and Fahn (2003) in that wh-words in subject position were found easy as well. Finally, it was found that the animacy effect might correlate with wh-types, and that such correlation was especially significant in the case of shei.