Based On A Corpus Of Korean Learners Of Chinese Conjunctions

In this study, two Korean learner corpora (Spoken Chinese Corpus of Korean Learners and Written Chinese Corpus of Korean Learners and) were constructed, to contrast with a Native Corpus of spoken Chinese. Based on corpus linguistics theory and interlanguage theory, a thorough analysis was attempted to make on the usage of Chinese conjunctions by Korean learners, in order to investigate the characteristics and patterns of such usage in both oral and written production.This dissertation is composed of 9 chapters:Chapter 1: Introduction to this research, covering its objectives, significance, scope and methodology, as well as a description of the data, and a review of the theories and existing research.Chapter 2: A general description of Korean learners' usage of Chinese conjunctions and an overall analysis of usage distribution and patterns of the nine types of Chinese conjunctions.Chapter 3: An examination of the usage distribution and patterns of the four types of Chinese conjunctions that indicate a "Combined Construction", which are Coordinative Relation, Successive Relation , Progressive Relation and Alternative Relation. In each category, one conjunction with the most error usage will be picked to be analyzed in more detail.Chapter 4: An examination of the usage distribution and pattern of the remaining five types of Chinese conjugations that indicate "Modified-Head Construction", which are Adverse Relation, Causative Relation, Hypothetical Relation, Conditional Relation and Concessive Relation.Through examinations in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, it occurred that the conjunctions "haiyou", "ranhou", and "erqie" ( having a similar meaning to the "(?)" conjunction used in Korean) were the most problematic with Korean learners. Therefore the following three chapters are dedicated to these three conjunctions.Chapter 5: A more detailed examination of the "haiyou" conjunction with its usage distribution, syntactical relationship and discourse function. Finding is that Korean learners used "haiyou" much more frequently than native Chinese, especially in oral production. This is due to learner's incorrect interpretation of "haiyou" as well as the interfering influence from Korean's "(?)" conjunction.Chapter 6: A deeper analysis of the "ranhou" conjunction shows that, the "ranhou" conjunction presents a high usage frequency and complex usage pattern with the native Chinese, however in the copra of Korean learners it is used monotonously in the "xian... ranhou" patterns to indicate the temporal ordering of events.Chapter 7: An examination of the "erqie" conjunction has found that Korean learners used this conjunction more frequently in written production than in oral production. In addition this rate of usage was higher than that of native Chinese's in spoken production.Chapter 8: In conclusion, "haiyou", "ranhou", "erqie" conjunctions' share some similarities while differences are described as it is. It is the influence of Korean's "(?)" conjunction that causes errors when these three conjuctions are applied, is, namely "Negative Transfer of Native Influence" and overgeneralization in interpretation. Lack of guidance from class instruction would be another important reason; therefore, suggestions for classroom teaching are made.Chapter 9: A conclusion of this research: constraints are also pointed out.