Synchronic And Diachronic Study On The Uses Of Conjunctive Adverbials

British English and American English are the two major national varieties of English today, in terms of the number of their native speakers, volumes of texts, and influences. These varieties differ on the levels of sound, vocabulary and grammar, etc.. The present research focuses on the distribution of conjunctive adverbials used in British English and American English. Based on Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman's classification, this thesis examines the frequencies of conjunctive adverbials according to their semantic, syntactic functions and positions. With the facility of computer softwares and programs (SPSS and FoxPro), several other corpora are employed (including LOB, BROWN, FLOB and FROWN) to reveal the differences on uses of conjunctive adverbials between British English and American English synchronically and diachronically, since the distinction can not be perceived without comparison. Through the comparison, it has been perceived that some similarities as well as differences exit between British English and American English.