A Multifactorial Corpus Analysis Of The Usage Of Relativizer “which” And “that” By Native English Speakers And Chinese English Learners

Adopting the constructionist approach by Goldberg,the study runs a multifactorial analysis to explore the usage of relativizer “which” and “that” in restrictive relative clauses extracted from TECCL and CLOB.The paper aims to investigate the similarities and discrepancies of the choice between relativizer “which”and “that” among native English speakers and Chinese English learners as well as the potential driving factors governing their linguistic choice,thus yielding an insight into the influence of the context on pattern selection and its underlying cognitive mechanisms as well as generating some pedagogical implications.The analysis shows that the linguistic choice of relativizer “which” and “that”among native English speakers and Chinese English learners is not determined by a single factor,but by a set of interrelated factors in the context concerning the main parts of a relative clause(that is,the antecedent,main clause and relative clause)and their interactions,which testifies the decisive role of context in the choice of the relativizer.Theses include factors concerning the antecedent: its complexity,its definiteness,the number of its modifiers and its syntactic role in the relative clause,factors concerning the relative clause: its embedding position in the main clause,distance between the antecedent and the clause,its length,the type of the verb in the clause,voice of the clause,and factors concerning the main clause: its voice and negation.Meanwhile,there exists significant interactions between factors concerning the antecedent and the main clause and factors concerning the relative clause,which indicates the predictive probability between the complexity of the antecedent and the main clause and the complexity of the relative clause.Besides,the cognitive load has a significant influence on the linguistic choice among the two groups.In cognitively more complex environments,the more explicit variant--“which” is preferred.High cognitive load of some parts of the restrictive relative clause is an indicator for lower load of other parts.On the other hand,some factors significantly contribute to the different linguistic choice among the two groups,which manifests itself in: a)native English speakers and Chinese English learners make different choices between relativizer “which” and“that” in some variable levels such as the part of speech and complexity of the antecedent,that is,Chinese English learners sometimes use the relativizer in an unidiomatic way;b)the common factors stated above have different degrees of influence on the linguistic choice between the two groups,which means the factors make significantly different contributions to the two group’s linguistic choice,such as the length of the relative clause,which ranks third among the significant factors for native English speakers while ranks last for Chinese English learners;c)compared to native English speakers,Chinese English learners are much more sensitive to the increase of cognitive load of factors in the context,such as the negation of the relative clause,separation between the main and relative clause or central embedding of the relative clause.In addition,native speakers typically choose “that” as a relativizer when referring to things.Chinese learners,however,haven’t shown preference for the two relativizers.