A Corpus-based Typological Analysis Of The Written Errors Committed By Chinese English Majors

This thesis reports on a study that investigates the written errors committed by Chinese English majors from the perspective of the typological differences between the learners'L1– Chinese and their L2– English.Based on the studies in the field of Chinese-English contrastive studies, the thesis comes out with four pairs of typological distinctions between these two languages. They are Chinese analytic feature as opposed to English synthetic-analytic feature, Chinese dynamic property as opposed to English stative property, Chinese bamboo-like syntactic structure as opposed to English tree-like syntactic structure, and Chinese parataxis as opposed to English hypotaxis.The thesis presents the investigation according to the steps in Error Analysis proposed by Corder (1974). They are: (1) collection of learner errors; (2) identification of errors; (3) description of errors; (4) explanation of errors. All the sample errors were collected in advance from Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC) by using Wordsmith concordance.The thesis summarizes its research results from four aspects. First, the Chinese analytic feature and English synthetic-analytic feature result in learners'errors about English word class. Second, Chinese dynamic feature and English stative feature cause learners'erroneous use of English adjectives. Third, the distinction between Chinese bamboo-like syntactic structure and English tree-like syntactic structure leads to learners'errors about English relative clause. Finally, the difference between Chinese parataxis (意合) and English hypotaxis (形合) contributes to Chinese English majors'erroneous run-on sentences and non-finite forms.The results summarized from the four aspects suggest that Chinese-English typological differences are the root cause of Chinese learners'written errors. The junior and senior English majors'awareness of Chinese-English typological distinctions and their ability of using such typological distinctions are not adequate enough for them to avoid committing written errors.Three pieces of suggestions concerning language teaching and learning are offered in the thesis: first, typological parameter should be reset to accommodate new typological properties during foreign language learning; second, importance should be attached to Chinese-English contrastive studies; third, a balance should be maintained between target language forms and their functions.