Subordinators For Conditionals In Maritime Treaty English

This paper attempts to analyze the distribution and use of subordinators for conditionals in Maritime Treaty English in comparison with the other five corpora, namely, NEC representing Nautical English, MEE representing Marine Engineering English, LOBA and BROWNA representing press reportage English and T4 representing technical English. The chi-square tests are used to see if the difference in the distribution of subordinators for conditionals in each corpus is significant. After a series of tests, it is found that if is used the most frequently in MTE among all these subordinators for conditionals; unless and provided (that) are the next two used in MTE; on condition (that), providing (that), in the event (that), in case (that), so long as and assuming (that) are less frequently used; just so (that), supposing (that), given (that) and as long as have no occurrences in MTE.