A Corpus-based Comparative Study On Shell Nouns In Chinese And Native MA Theses Of Applied Linguistics

Shell nouns,being general and unspecific in meaning,often occur in English academic discourse,expressing complicated ideas and contents.Based on self-compiled Chinese and Native MA Theses Corpora,the thesis conducts a comparative analysis of shell nouns used by native English speakers and advanced Chinese EFL learners of applied linguistics in English academic writing with quantitative and qualitative approaches from three aspects,including the frequency distribution,lexico-grammatical patterns and functions.The results indicate:(1)In terms of frequency distribution,there is a significant difference in the use of the 15 highly prevalent shell nouns between native English speakers and advanced Chinese EFL learners.The overall frequency of the 15 shell nouns used by the former is higher than that by the latter,however,the frequencies of three shell nouns process,reason,factor used by advanced Chinese EFL learners are higher than that used by native English speakers.Moreover,both of them incline to use the singular form of shell nouns.(2)In terms of lexico-grammatical patterns,native English speakers incline to use pattern "N-that" of the lexico-grammatical pattern"N-cl",whereas,advanced Chinese EFL learners prefer to use patterns "N-that" and"N-of".Besides,patterns "this-N" and "these-N" of the lexico-grammatical pattern"th-N" are favored by both of them.(3)In terms of functions,both native English speakers and advanced Chinese EFL learners are inclined to use different shell nouns and lexico-grammatical patterns to perform the cohesive function and the evaluative function.With regard to the evaluative function,both of them prefer to express the epistemic stance.The study helps Chinese EFL learners deepen their understanding of shell nouns,raise their awareness of cohesion in English academic writing and express the stance appropriately as well as provides reference for English for Academic Purposes teaching.