Acorpus-based Contrastive Study Of Logical Connectors Of Researcharticles In Chinese And International English Scientific Journals

Logical connectors as a very important way to indicate logical or semantic relations between units of discourse, when they are used correctly, they are helpful for the listeners or reader to connect units of discourse together and therefore make sense of the whole discourse. However, a bulk of previous studies have revealed that language learners, in particular foreign language learners have met many problems in use of logical connectors to make their writings cohesive. Those foreign language learners lack awareness that different register and style of texts have different use of logical connectors. They also tend to under/overuse logical connectors than native speakers. However, though a large number of profound researches have conducted into the use of logical connectors at home and abroad, as far as the author knows most of which only made some contrastive study on ESL/ EFL students'writings. The researches on the logical connectors in different styles of English writings such as the English research articles (abbreviated RA) as a genre are rare, let alone, making a contrastive study of choice of logical connectors in Chinese English scientific RAs with those RAs written by native speakers. Using the framework of classification of logical connectors put forward by Halliday and Hasan (1976), the study intends to explore the use of logical connectors in Chinese English scientific journals (abbreviate CESJs) through comparing with International English scientific journals (abbreviated IESJs).The author constructed two corpora in order to explore the use of logical connectors in English scientific research articles, CESJ contains RAs written by Chinese writers and IESJ corpus which included RAs written by native English speakers. They involve 489 pieces of RAs, with a total number of around 1,997,605 words. The author explores the use of logical connectors in CESJ and IESJ from the following aspects. 1) The overall frequency of different types logical connectors used in CESJ and IESJ. 2) The features of the choice of logical connectors in English scientific RAs if there exist. 3) The ten top frequently used logical connectors. 4) The logical connectors under/overused in CESJs. 5) AND in CESJ and IESJ to test whether it is used to signal the same logical semantic relation.After analyzing the use of logical connectors from the above-mentioned aspects, the results are shown as follows:(1). From the overall frequency of the logical connectors used in the two corpora, it can be found that CESJ tends to use logical connectors more frequently in contrast to logical connectors used in IESJ. But as to the distribution of four sub-categories, it is almost the same in the two corpora, that is, causal connectors are most frequently used, additive and adversative connectors are moderately used, while temporal connectors are rarely used. That means both corpora rely heavily on the same logical connectors and Chinese writers have internalized some skills of the use of logical connectors in their RAs writing.(2). As to the features of use of logical connectors in English scientific research articles, there are a large proportion of logical connectors in the semantic category of causal, it is also found that some individual logical connectors such as and, but, however, then, therefore, thus, hence, for example occur in RA writing with notable frequencies.(3). With regard to the underused and overused logical connectors in CESJs, it reveals that those informal logical connectors such as"so"and"and"are significantly overused by the Chinese writers, It indicates that Chinese writers seem to lack a stylistic and register awareness. They have insufficient understanding of the usage of logical connectors appropriately. Meanwhile, the author find that the under/overuse of certain types of logical connectors may be influenced by individual authors'preferences or Chinese writers used familiar logical connectors instead those logical connectors without confidence.(4). Although AND is frequently used in the two corpora, the logical semantic relations that AND is used to signal in the two corpora are significantly different. AND is common used to indicate progressive and causal logical semantic relation between clauses in CESJ, whereas it is frequently used to express progressive and illustrative logical semantic relations in IESJ.Using both quantitative and qualitative method, this present study provides a relatively comprehensive study of the similarities and differences of the logical connectors in English scientific journals composed by native Chinese and native English speakers. The research findings offer some good references for Chinese learners of English to organize more coherent English RAs by employing logical connectors more appropriately and to make their RAs more easily accepted by international academic community. They are also helpful for teachers of English for Specific Purposes to strengthen the students'awareness of the importance and the correct usage of logical connectors.