中国英语专业本科生议论文写作中wh-结构的使用特征研究

A Study of the Characteristics of Wh-constructions in the Argument Writings of Chinese English majors

通过WECCL语料库考察了中国英语专业学习者议论文写作中wh-结构的使用特征,发现各类wh-结构在议论文中的分布存在不对称现象,wh-问句和感叹句所占比例很小,主语关系从句明显少于宾语关系从句,主语从句也明显少于宾语从句,状语从句的位置随英语水平的提高从单一前置到前后灵活多变。研究结果表明,中国英语学习者对wh-结构的使用总体上反映了议论文的文体特征,对wh-结构运用的灵活性随着英语水平的提高而提高,但用法相对单一,缺乏多样性。学习者对wh-关系从句和名词性从句的使用情况支持感知困难假说,对wh-状语从句嵌入位置的选择特点支持概念迁移假说。

Based on the Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners(WECCL), this paper investigates the characteristics of wh-constructions in the argumentative writing of Chinese English majors. It shows that various wh-constructions are used asymmetrically, while wh-questions and wh-exclamatory sentences occupy a very small portion. There are significantly fewer wh-relative clauses embedded in the subject than those embedded in the object, and significantly fewer subject clauses than object clauses introduced by wh-words. Wh-adverbial clauses are unanimously put before the main clause by students of lower proficiency and are flexibly put either before or behind the main clause by students of higher proficiency. The results indicate that Chinese English learners' use of different wh-constructions basicly meets the stylistic requirement of argumentation. The flexibility in using wh-constructions increases with the improvement of the language proficiency, but students' mastery of wh-constructions appears lacking in diversity. The distributional features of wh-relatives and wh-nominals support the perceptual difficulty hypothesis. The preferred embedded positions of wh-adverbial clauses can account for the conceptual transfer hypothesis.