Chinese Learners'and Native Speakers' Use Of English Catenative Verbs

In English,it is common that an action or event is described by 2 verbs linked together,in which the first verb called catenative verb(CV)initiates an action chain and the second verb in a non-finite form clarifies the specific action.The construction containing CV is called a catenative verb construction(CVC).Huddleston and Pullum(2002)classified CVCs into simple CVCs and complex CVCs on the basis of the presence and absence of noun phrases between the CVs and nonfinite verb forms.The emphasis in this research was on simple CVCs,namely,CVs directly followed by nonfinite verb forms.In addition,according to Palmer's(1987)classification,CVs can be grouped into 9 classes.This research focused on 3 of the meaning groups in which CVs are followed by to-infinitives.The first class is Appearance and chance,the second Achievement and the third Futurity.In fact,this research was a comparative interlanguage analysis aimed at comparing the usage features of English CVs in native speakers' corpus(the written component of BNC Sampler)and Chinese EFL learners' corpus(WECCL),in respect of frequency,subject types and eventuality types.The result shows that in frequency,firstly,Chinese EFL learners tend to underuse CVs in the 3 meaning groups,compared with native speakers.High-frequency CVs(e.g.,SEEM and APPEAR in the class of Appearance and chance)for native speakers are also frequently used by Chinese EFL learners,but there exist significant differences(e.g.,Chinese EFL learners tend to underuse SEEM and APPEAR).CVs infrequently used(e.g.,HAPPEN and CHANCE)in BNC Sampler are equally infrequent in WECCL,with no significant difference.Secondly,in general,the distributions of the 2 subject types,human subjects and non-human subjects,between native speakers and Chinese EFL learners are nearly the same,suggesting that Chinese learners strictly observe the grammatical rules and have agood command of lexical features of CVs.For the first class of catenative verbs,non-human subjects are the more frequently used subjects in the 2 corpora,and human subjects rank the second.For the second class,and the third class of catenative verbs as well,human subjects have the higher frequencies,followed by non-human subjects.However,a few catenative verbs are exceptional in that native speakers and Chinese learners are different in their frequency distributions in using the 2 types of subjects.For APPEAR,FAIL,and PROMISE,native speakers tend to use non-human subjects,while Chinese EFL learners tend to use human subjects.For CHANCE,native speakers use human subjects more than non-human subjects,but Chinese learners do not use it as a catenative verb.For the catenative HAPPEN,native speakers use human and nonhuman subjects equally frequently,while Chinese learners use human subjects 4times,but never use non-human subjects.Finally,in eventuality types,there seems no significant difference in the choice of eventuality types between native speakers and Chinese EFL learners.The first class of CVs,which are stative in lexical aspect,often occur with non-finite state verbs.The second and third classes,which are dynamic in lexical aspect,often occur with non-finite activity verbs.The research not only expanded the scope of exploration of CVs,making clearer the usage features of the chosen CVs,but it also revealed the similarities and differences between native English speakers and Chinese EFL learners,holding implications for classroom English teaching in the Chinese context.Due to the limits of the sizes of the corpora and the research focus,greater subtleties of the use of CVs by either native English speakers or Chinese EFL learners remain to be uncovered in future.For example,larger and more comprehensive corpora can be used and the research focus can be shifted to complex CVCs and CVs linked with other types of nonfinite forms.