A Contrastive Study Of Conjunctive Adjuncts In English RAs By Native And Chinese Writers

The present study is a contrastive study of conjunctive adjuncts in English research articles (RAs) by Chinese writers and native English writers. The study is intended to explore the following questions:(1) Is there an overuse tendency in NNS corpus? What is the general tendency on the use of conjunctive adjuncts (CAs) for the Chinese EFL writers and the native English writers?(2) To be specific, what are the general frequencies on the use of CAs? How are CAs semantically distributed in both corpora? What is the positioning tendency of CAs in both corpora? What are the top ten most frequently used CAs by both groups of writers? What are the overused and underused CAs by Chinese RA writers compared with their native English counterparts? What are the differences in the selection of conjunctive themes between the two writer groups?(3) What are the possible causes that underlie the Chinese RA writers’use of English conjunctive adjuncts?In order to accomplish these, we have adopted the methodology of corpus-based analysis and compiled two corpora: a corpus of native speakers’English RAs (NS) and a corpus of Chinese non-native speakers’English RAs (NNS).We have also conducted contrastive studies from multiple perspectives on the use of conjunctive adjuncts in the research articles by NS and NNS writers.First, we selected comparable research articles from academic journals of similar subjects at home and abroad to set up the corpus of NS and NNS. Then we followed Halliday’s classification of conjunction system in English and determined the search items. Next, the corpus tool Antconc3.2.2.1was operated to examine and identify specific adjuncts in each corpus. After that, statistical results were collected and analyzed for the purposes mentioned above. At this stage, the general and specific studies of conjunctive adjuncts were presented. Meanwhile, Chi-square test was used to test the significance of probability. Finally, the statistical results were analyzed and discussed. The major findings of the thesis are summarized as follows:(1) In general, the Chinese RA writers’ use of conjunctive adjuncts in RAs does not show a significant overuse tendency compared with that of native writers.(2) Chinese writers have displayed discrepancies in the use of some specific CAs. First, Chinese writers tend to show an inclination for more frequent use of additive adjuncts and less adversative ones. The underuse of temporal CAs previously and here has also been detected. Second, they lack appropriate register awareness with the use of CAs that serve a colloquial style (e.g., besides and still) more often. Lastly, they have displayed a stronger preference for sentence initial positions and a weaker preference for medial positions in their use of CAs.(3) The Chinese RA writers’ use of CAs can be explained from the following perspectives: Chinese writers’ lack of stylistic awareness, negative transfer from their native Chinese language and their preferences for particular semantic category to develop the text.The study is intended to reveal some universal linguistic characteristics in the academic register and some gaps existing between the NS and NNS writers in the use of conjunctive adjuncts to help raise Chinese EFL learners’ and writers’ awareness of the appropriate use of conjunctive adjuncts in English academic writing. The study is also an attempt to incorporate the corpus-based approach and the theory of conjunction in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) into the contrastive studies of English academic writings.