A Corpus-based Comparative Study On The Use Of Logical Conjunctions In MA Theses By Chinese English Learners And Native Speakers

Recently,many scholars at home and abroad have studied the use of logical conjunctions in various genres of academic texts.Focusing on the Chinese English-major postgraduates,this paper probes into logical conjunctions used by Chinese English learners and native speakers in their MA theses through qualitative and quantitative analysis,including the frequency distribution,semantic distribution and positional distribution.The author compiles two corpora:Chinese English Learner Corpus(CLC)and Native Speaker Corpus(NSC).CLC is made up of 20 MA theses,which are written by Chinese English-major postgraduates majoring in applied linguistics and NSC also consists of 20 MA theses,which are written by native speakers majoring in applied linguistics.The current study has the following findings:(1)Generally speaking,Chinese English learners tend to use more logical conjunctions than native speakers do in master's theses.(2)As for the distribution of semantic relations,Chinese English learners tend to overuse listing logical conjunctions but underuse contrastive logical conjunctions compared with native speakers.(3)As for the distribution of positions,Chinese English learners and native speakers tend to put logical conjunctions in middle positions of sentences but rarely in final positions of sentences.(4)Through the results of Chi-square Tests,it is discovered that Chinese English learners significantly overuse some logical conjunctions while underusing other logical conjunctions.The reasons behind this phenomenon are various.Some Chinese English learners may not have an intimate knowledge of accurate usages of logical conjunctions,especially in formal genres such as MA theses.