The Negative Transfer Of Chinese Native Language On Verb Use In CET-4 Writing:A Corpus-based Study

As an important part of speech in the sentences,verbs are so frequently used that their frequency is just slightly lower than that of nouns.Because of the differences between the English and Chinese languages,in English writings,the college students in China are likely to commit errors in the use of verbs resulting from the negative transfer of their native language.The verb use errors in Chinese Learner English Corpus(CLEC for short)constructed by Prof.Gui Shichun and Prof.Yang Huizhong are tagged and classified.Moreover,the author in this thesis finds out that the overuse of notional verbs is rather obvious in their English writings.This thesis analyzes some of the verb use errors tagged in CLEC and the overuse of notional verbs from the perspective of Chinese negative transfer with the data and a large number of examples obtained from English writings of CET-4,sub-corpus in CLEC through AntConc.The verb use errors under the influence of Chinese negative transfer in this thesis include errors in misuse of transitivity/intransitivity of verbs,the auxiliary/modal verbs,converse use of finite and non-finite verbs,the overuse of notional verbs,and errors in subject-verb agreement,tense,voice,mood and modality.The materials studied in this thesis are the English writings of CET-4(St3),sub-corpus in CLEC and the university essays sub-corpus in LOCNESS(sub-LOCNESS)as a contrast.The subjects studied are non-English major,junior and senior college students,and the purpose is to find out the types of verb use errors and the reasons from the perspective of the negative transfer of Chinese native language.Besides,there are a long list of researches on English writings based on CLEC,while there are scarcely researches on the use of verbs from the perspective of Chinese negative transfer based on the comparison of two sub-corpora-St3 and sub-LOCNESS.This thesis mainly attempts to address the following issues: 1)The classification of verb use errors influenced by the negative transfer of native language for 3 levels,lexis,syntax and pragmatics.2)The statistics and exemplification with typical examples to analyze the reasons of the verb use errors in English writings of CET-4 related to the negative transfer of Chinese native language.3)The offer of some methods to improve the college students' English writing abilities,to instruct the English teaching and to promote the cross-cultural communication.Results in the lexical,syntactical and pragmatic levels show that: 1)In the negative transfer in lexis,influences are found in transitive /intransitive verbs auxiliary/modal verbs,and finite/non-finite verbs,as students cannot tell the differences on the functions of different kinds of verbs;And notional verbs are overused because many notional verbs in Chinese can be expressed by prepositions with action meaning,prepositional phrases and non-finite verbs in English.2)The syntactic negative transfer mainly lies in the misuse of verbs in subject-verb agreement,tense and voice as students fail to change the forms of verbs or they are unable to distinguish the different ways of expressing time and voice in the two languages.3)The pragmatic negative transfer is mainly discussed in the aspects of mood to reflect the different customs of language expression and thinking patterns and in the aspect of modality to attribute the negative transfer to the different cultures.Different customs of language expression and thinking patterns lie in the fact that the Chinese students overuse imperative sentences beginning with verbs and seldom employ the subjunctive mood.Meanwhile,the different cultural values are found in the choice of modal verbs when people offer advice or make judgments.Through the above analysis,the author has found out the errors in the use of verbs in CET-4 writings,and analyzed the reasons related to the negative transfer of Chinese native language,which can attract the attention of the Chinese students and teachers to the negative transfer of Chinese native language.As a result,it is of great importance to the improvement of college students' English writing abilities,instruction of the English teaching and the promotion of the cross-cultural communication.