| Adverbs of certainty are an important means to help speakers and writers express degrees of certainty in communication. To explore the similarities and differences in the use of certainty adverbs between Chinese EFL learners and native speakers, this dissertation studies these adverbs based on two corpora: the Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen corpus (LOB) and the Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC). It carries out a comparative study of the overall frequency of certainty adverbs in these two corpora, and a detailed analysis of three high frequency adverbs of certainty, i.e. certainly, obviously and surely. It has been found that Chinese EFL learners under-use certainty adverbs in terms of overall frequency. Yet the high frequency adverbs of certainty in both corpora are nearly the same. Regarding the high frequency adverbs certainly, obviously and surely, the analysis shows there are differences in their premodifiers, positions in clauses, co-occurrences with modal auxiliaries and pronoun subjects, as well as their functions in co-text. Based on the findings, some implications of the present study for teaching and learning adverbs of certainty are put forward. |
