A Corpus-based Contrastive Study On Modal Adverbs In English Academic Papers Written By Chinese And American Scholars

Modality is a very important linguistic manner employed by writers and speakers to express their opinions and attitudes.Recently,the amount of research on modality has increased significantly,especially regarding the use of modal verbs.Only limited attention has been paid to the modal adverbs,however,no contrastive study has been made of pure modal adverbs used in English experimental academic papers on oil and gas.Based on Halliday's(1985)Modality Theory,this thesis classifies modal adverbs into three categories:modal adverbs for probability,usuality and orientation.Based on self-built corpus,adopting statistic tools-AntConc 3.5.2,SPSS 23.0 and EXCE1,this thesis contrastively analyzes the distribution and features of modal adverbs in English experimental academic papers on oil and gas written by Chinese and American scholars,combining quantitative and qualitative methods.English experimental academic papers are selected from two very influential journals in the field of oil and gas,the Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering(2011-2016)and the Fuel(2011-2016).The self-built corpus comprisuing of 300 English academic papers,is divided into two sub-corpora-Corpus of Chinese Scholars(150 papers)and Corpus of American Scholars(150 papers).For the convenience of qualitative analysis,150 papers in CCS is marked as CCS1,CCS2,...,CCS 150 and 150 papers in CAS is marked as CAS 1,CAS2,...,CAS 150.This study contrastively analyzes the general distribution of modal adverbs,the distribution of modal adverbs for probability,usuality and orientation,with the purpose to answer the following questions:(1)What are the general features of modal adverbs between Chinese and American Scholars?(2)What are the features of modal adverbs for probability in English academic papers written by Chinese and American scholars respectively and why?(3)What are the features of modal adverbs for usuality in English academic papers written by Chinese and American scholars respectively and why?(4)What are the features of modal adverbs for orientation in English academic papers written by Chinese and American scholars respectively and why?Through a systematic and detailed analysis of the data,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)There is no statistically significant difference in the usage of modal adverbs in general between Chinese and American scholars.The distributions of three types of modal adverbs reveal both commonality and difference.The commonality is that modal adverbs for usuality is the most frequent type of modal adverbs used by both Chinese and American scholars.However,from a statistical perspective,the difference is that the general tendency of the frequency of modal adverbs is "usuality>orientation>probability" by Chinses scholars,while "usuality>probability>orientation" by American scholars.(2)Statistically significant difference exists in the frequency and use of modal adverbs for probability between Chinese and American scholars.In aspects of certainty and value of modal adverbs for probability,Chinese and American scholars have common patterns in adopting high value of modal adverbs,expressing confidence of their research achievements by using high degree of modal adverbs for certainty.The use of median value of modal adverbs shows no significant difference between Chinese and American scholars.Comparing to American scholars,Chinese scholars have low percentage of using high value of modal adverbs but high percentage of using low value of modal adverbs.The reasons are considered as being that Chinese scholars are influenced by self-deprecation principle in their native culture and cannot comprehensively master the connotation and denotation of the English words.In writing English experimental academic papers on oil and gas,it is a better strategy to use high degree of certainty and high value of modal adverbs for probability.(3)There is no statistically significant difference in the use of modal adverbs for usuality in general between Chinese and American scholars.It is found that generally,usuallyand commonly are the most frequently used modal adverbs for usuality by both Chinese and American scholars.The difference is that generally has the highest frequency by Chinese scholars,whereas by American scholars it is usually.The possible reasons are considered as being that Chinese scholars acquire generally earlier than usually and commonly and generally speaking,as a prep sheet in college entrance examination,is repeated over and over again by teachers and hence the word is prominent in the students5 memory;they do not have a comprehensive understanding of semantic meanings of these modal adverbs.In writing English experimental academic papers on oil and gas,it is a better way to express authors' precise opinions and objective attitudes by using generally,usually and commonly.(4)Statistically significant difference exists in the use of modal adverbs for orientation between Chinese and American scholars.For Chinese scholars,the frequency of modal adverbs for orientation is higher than American scholars.The possible reasons are considered as being that vocabulary translation influenced by negative transfer of mother tongue-Chinese,more specifically,the meaning of modal adverb expresses objectivity in Chinese,whereas on the contrary,it expresses subjectivity in English,which reflects that Chinese scholars do not grasp the semantic meaning of modal adverb.Besides,clearly is the most frequent modal adverb for orientation used by American scholars,which implies that American scholars are confident about their research results and opinions.However,in the aspect of understanding of the connotative meaning of words,the overuse of obviously by Chinese scholars is influenced by a negative transfer of mother tongue coupled with an inappropriate vocabulary translation.In writing English experimental academic papers on oil and gas,clearly is the better choice of modal adverbs for orientation.In a word,this study finds that no statistically significant difference exists in the usage of modal adverbs in general between Chinese and American scholars,which can be used as a reference point regarding the composition of English academic papers.However,the usage of three types of modal adverbs respectively reveals both commonality and difference.Given that the limitations of lack of corpus capacity and narrow analysis perspectives,it is hoped that corpus capacity could be enlarged and the features of modal adverbs could be analyzed through broader perspectives in the further study.It is also hoped that this study could offer some insights into teaching courses of writing English experimental academic papers on oil and gas.