A Study On The Realization Of Logico-semantic Relations In English As A Second Language Academic Writing

Logico-semantic relations, a type of clausal relations, refer to logical relations within various linguistic units in a discourse, the realization of which mainly relies on explicit logical connectives or semantic links within these elements. Classification of these relations differs from a scholar to another. Halliday & Hasan(1976) proposed four types of logico-semantic relations: additive, adversative, causal and temporal,with particular emphasis on internal and external relations. In 1983, Martin split up the adversative category in Halliday & Hasan’s scheme into concession and contrast;concession is then grouped with causality and contrast is related to similarity. Martin’s paradigm is thus formed: additive, comparative, temporal and consequential. In this thesis, Halliday & Hasan’s scheme is followed with subtle revision in each type accordingly.Logico-semantic relations can be realized explicitly and implicitly. Implicit relations are perceived by readers or listeners based on their understanding and grasp of discourse context together with their experience and knowledge. While, explicit relations are often marked by logical connectives. Current research in this field focuses on relationship among such factors as understanding and mental processing of logical connectives by the natives and the ESL learners, their language proficiency and reading comprehension, and also interrelation between the construing of logical relations in English writing and its quality.This thesis aims to study how logico-semantic relations are realized in the ESL academic writing(bachelor’s theses of the Chinese ESL majors) and the ENL academic writing(Applied Linguistics). In order to accomplish this aim, two corpora are established: the ESL academic corpus with 30 pieces selected from these bachelor’s theses of a domestic university and the ENL academic corpus with 10 pieces of published articles covering similar space selected from Applied Linguistics.This thesis tries to reveal features and problems in realizing these relations byanalyzing the overall distribution features, use of explicit logical connectives and how these relations can be expressed implicitly, with case study of a piece selected from the ESL academic corpus.As results show, there are altogether 1,882 instances of additive, 764 instances of adversative, 825 instances of causal and 600 instances of temporal relations realized explicitly, which indicates that these relations have been extensively expressed in the ESL academic writing. With realization of logico-semantic relations in the ENL academic corpus referred to, features in the ESL academic writing are displayed as follows:1) A predominant proportion of logical relations are marked by explicit logical connectives, leaving a minimal part realized implicitly confined to the causal and temporal category.2) Some logical connectives have been overused(e.g. and, but) or misused(e.g.collocation error or that of actually), and lack of diversity(e.g. simple forms such as and, but taking up over 50%) is revealed. Though case study takes a piece produced by a Chinese ESL learner with higher proficiency for further analysis, same problem of lacking diversity is revealed.3) Logico-semantic relations can also be expressed by grammatical metaphor(nominalization and verbalization), non-finite verbal clauses or prepositional phrases,which will contribute to objectivity, compactness of text, as well as to flexibility in the use of language.The ESL teachers are also enlightened with the following pedagogical implications, so as to facilitate the ESL students’ expression of logical relations in a native way in academic writing.1) Special emphasis is advised to be put on the use of logical connectives and corpus resources, allowing students to understand semantic meanings, pragmatic functions and conventional uses of these connectives in real data. Corresponding reading or writing tasks can be supplemented immediately to test their understanding and mastery.2) Misused cases(e.g. misuse of although...but...) or native expression can beanalyzed separately, with extra attention paid to the negative transfer of mother tongue. Students’ sensitivity to register needs to be elevated and attention should be diverted to standard use of English language in academic writing.3) Guidance of implicit expression of logical relations needs to be focused on.Acquainting students with these implicit devices will make text presented in a more objective and dynamic way, with language used in a more flexible manner.