A Comparative Study Of The Use Of English Relative Clauses In MA Theses Between Chinese Postgraduates Of English Major And Native Speakers

English relative clauses(RCs)are notoriously difficult for Chinese EFL learners to learn with their complex syntactic structure.This has attracted broad attention from scholars in the field of second language acquisition.At present,the research in this field mainly focuses on the acquisition of restrictive relative clauses(RRCs),whereas,less attention is paid to the acquisition of non-restrictive relative clauses(NRCs)and relative pronouns(RPs),which are also indispensable parts in L2 acquisition of English relative clauses.Additionally,concerning the research method,researchers mainly elicit data from test tasks,rarely using natural data.And finally,studies in this field are largely concerned with high school students and college students,to the exclusion of graduate students who are usually regarded as advanced English learners.Their correct use of relative clauses is an important indicator of their academic writing competence.Therefore,the relative clauses in academic papers are of great research value.Given the gaps mentioned above,the present paper makes a contrastive analysis of the use of RCs between Chinese postgraduates of English major and native speakers by corpus-based method and further explore the use of RCs by Chinese postgraduates of English major.The specific questions are as follows:(1)What are the differences and similarities in the frequency of restrictive relative clauses and non-restrictive relative clauses between Chinese advanced English learners and native speakers?(2)In the use of restrictive relative relative clauses and their relative pronouns,what are the differences and similarities in terms of frequency and type between Chinese advanced English learners and native speakers?(3)In the use of non-restrictive relative clauses and their relative pronouns,what are the differences and similarities in terms of frequency and type between Chinese advanced English learners and native speakers?The literature reviews from 20 master's theses on foreign linguistics and applied linguistics from 2006-2017,comprise the Chinese learners' corpus.They were collected from 5 key universities in China.The native speakers' corpus is also composed of the literature reviews from20 masters' theses on foreign linguistics and applied linguistics at the same period.According to the classification of relative clauses by Keenan & Comrie(1997),all relative clauses and relative pronouns in the two corpora are searched on the basis of relative pronouns.Firstly,chi-square tests are conducted to statistically analyze the similarities and differences in the use of RRCs and NRCs and RPs between Chinese advanced English learners and native speakers.Secondly,the similarities and differences in the use of these three aspects between Chinese high-level English learners and native speakers are summarized and discussed.Thirdly,the reasons for the differences are explored in this study.The results are as follows:(1)the frequency of RRCs used by Chinese learners is lower than that by native speakers,but the frequency of NRCs is slightly higher than that by native speakers;and the differences are significant;(2)as regards to the use of RRCs,the frequency order of RRCs by Chinese learners is the same as that by native speakers;but it is inconsistent with the prediction of Noun Phrase Accessibility Hypothesis(NPAH);(3)in the use of RPs in RRCs,there is only a significant difference in the position of subject(SU)between the two groups;Chinese learners use more which and native speakers use more that and who;the use of RPs in other positions(DO,OPREP and GEN)is slightly different,but the difference is not significant;(4)as regards to the use of NRCs,the frequency order of NRCs by Chinese learners is almost the same as that by native speakers;but it is inconsistent with the prediction of NPAH;(5)in the use of RPs in NRCs,there is no significant difference in their type and frequency between the two groups,but there is the difference in the semantic functions of “of which”and the difference in the use of prepositions before “which”(“prep which”);in the use of“prep which”,Chinese learners have a wider choice of preposition than native speakers;for native speakers,numerals are more likely to be used before “which” to denote the part-whole relationship,whereas for Chinese learners,besides numerals,some nouns are also used to denote the possessive relationship.As to these findings,the reasons are further probed into on the basis of traditional grammar teaching,the differences in sentence structure between English and Chinese,and the use of over-use and avoidance strategies in second language acquisition.Although the research has some limitations,it has certain significance for the NPAH and teaching.It not only enriches the the studies testifying the hypothesis,but also discusses the use order of NRCs for the first time,which will contribute to promoting the study of NRCs.In addition,the use of relative pronouns by Chinese learners is also comprehensively discussed for the first time.On the basis of these,some feasible suggestions for the teaching of RCs are provided.