| The English genitives,as an important grammatical device,can be divided into the pre-posed s-genitive and the post-posed of-genitive.Their appropriate use will render linguistic expression more idiomatic and flexibly diverse.However,it has been discovered that the use of the genitive in the English abstracts of MA theses by Chinese EFL learners is often in conflict with the governing factors or principles,which contradicts the norms of linguistic expression of academic composition.To fully understand the genitive use of Chinese EFL learners,the present study is to make a contrastive analysis of the genitive use in the English abstracts of MA theses by Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers.The author constructs two corpora,i.e.the Chinese EFL learner corpus(referred to as “C” corpus)and the native English speaker corpus(hereinafter as “N” corpus),randomly selecting the instances of the genitive use in the English abstracts of MA theses by native English speakers and by Chinese EFL learners from Nanjing University of Finance and Economics respectively.And with reference to the five major factors influencing the choice of the genitive constructions,i.e.,animacy,sibilant-avoidance,semantic relations,end weight and nestedness,it sets out to investigate the frequency of the s-genitive and the of-genitive,based on the two corpora,analyzing the use of the s-genitive and the of-genitive governed by the single factor and by the multi-factors in the two corpora respectively,adopting Python and SPSS for data processing and analysis.What is noteworthy is that “semantic relations”,a special factor among the multi-factors governing the choice of the genitives,will be discussed separately.It is found that similarities and differences exist between the two corpora with respect to the use of the s-genitive and the of-genitive,which are concluded as follows:(1)The frequency of the s-genitive and the of-genitive used by the Chinese EFL learners is evidently higher than the genitive used by the native English speakers.(2)The “animacy” factor is taken into account most frequently by both Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers when the genitives are governed by a single factor.(3)Under the circumstance of the genitive use involving multi-factors,the“nestedness” factor in particular,the occurrence number of the of-genitive use contradicting that specific factor by Chinese EFL learners is larger than that of its use by native English speakers.(4)In terms of semantic relations,Chinese EFL learners tend to overuse the of-genitive to express the subjective relation.The self-built corpus-based study renders it possible to compare and analyze differences in the expression of academic writing between Chinese EFL learners and native English-speaking students,by easily identifying what is unidiomatic or improper,so as to take proper measures for the purpose of ameliorating the normativeness of linguistic expression of academic English writing. |
