A Corpus-Based Study On English Majors’ Use Of Modal Verbs

Modality is used to show users’ attitudes and opinions on things or acts. As one of the important and effective devices to express modality, modal verbs have been widely used in both spoken and written texts. Because of the complexity of the use of modal verbs and their various forms in different languages, modal verbs have always been treated as one of the hotly debated topics in linguistics. Studies on modal verbs indicate that there exist some problems in their proper use by Chinese learners. Based on previous studies on modal verbs, the author conducts a comparative study with the aid of a corpus approach, aiming to figure out the similarities and differences of modal verbs used by Chinese English major undergraduates and native English postgraduates as well as the possible reasons for the different use between them.Based on two self-built corpora, the Chinese undergraduate thesis corpus(CUTC)and the native postgraduate thesis corpus(NPTC), and according to Biber’s classification and semantic description to modal verbs, the present study aims to find out the frequencies and distributions of modal verbs occurring in the Chinese English major undergraduates and English native postgraduates’ theses, and to testify if there are significant differences in frequency and semantic distributions between the nine central modal verbs, and also to find out the similarities and differences in modal sequences. In addition, the possible reasons for the differences are discussed.The empirical research finds that: 1) there are significant differences between the two corpora in the use of modal verbs in both frequency and semantic distributions.Generally speaking, the Chinese English major undergraduates overuse the modal verbs that have stronger tone or were acquired earlier, and they tend to use the epistemic meanings of modal verbs; 2) there are also some differences in colligation of modal verbs between the Chinese English major undergraduates and the native English postgraduates. The result shows that the Chinese English major undergraduates prefer to use easier and fixed modal sequences; 3) after observing the modal verbs used in the two corpora, the author finds that there exist such phenomena in the Chinese undergraduates’ theses like language transfer, acquisition order, cultureand context influence, excessive emphasis on the teaching of modal verbs and their complexity in particular, all of which may explain the differences in the use of modal verbs.This thesis is expected to help students use modal verbs in a way which is much closer to the native speakers’ choice and provide adequate information for EFL learning as well as teaching in China.