A Comparison Between English And Chinese Relative Clauses

This dissertation takes a combined CA/CIA approach to the relative construction in English and Chinese. According to the integrated contrastive model which was first proposed by S. Granger, CA (contrastive analysis) data helps analysts to formulate predictions about interlanguage which can be checked against CIA (contrastive interlanguage analysis) data. The study highlights the value of such a combined CIA/CA perspective.Taking the existing typological studies as starting point, it argues that Chinese also hosts relative constructions, though the term "relative clause" itself is rarely discussed in traditional grammar of Chinese. A comparison between relative constructions in the two languages is then carried out, centering on the issues like branching direction, restrictive/non-restrictive distinction, relativizers and frequency. It is proposed that differences and similarities in these aspects are presented as potential sources of interference. Three hypotheses regarding features of relative clause use in Chinese EFL learners' interlanguage are formulated. Findings from the contrastive interlanguage analysis (CIA), which involves the quantitative investigation of learner data and native data and the qualitative analysis of Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC), support the predictions based on the CA observations. It is found that Chinese EFL learners tend to underuse relative clauses in their interlanguage production; the restrictive/non-restrictive contrast is apt to be blurred; the variety of relativizers will pose a difficulty to Chinese learners. The underuse and misuse of relative clauses in Chinese learners' English writing can be accounted for by differences in the relative construction of the two languages. It is suggested that besides negative L1 transfer, factors such as intralingual transfer, training transfer are worth examining in future study.