文献类型：期刊文献

英文题名：Adversative versus concessive while-clauses in native and learner English texts: A corpus-based systemic functional description

作者：Zhang, Yan[1]

机构：[1]East China Univ Sci & Technol, Sch Foreign Languages, Shanghai 201108, Peoples R China

年份：2020

卷号：35

期号：3

起止页码：670

外文期刊名：DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP IN THE HUMANITIES

收录：;WOS:【SSCI(收录号:WOS:000584511000014)，A&HCI(收录号:WOS:000584511000014)】；

语种：英文

摘要：Despite the commonly reported underuse of linking adverbials of contrast and concession (such as yet, nevertheless) by English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in writing, relatively little is known about the use of structural conjunctions in this regard. The present work uses a corpus approach to investigate the use of while, a polysemous conjunction of contrast and concession, in the writing of Chinese EFL learners as compared with their British native-speaker counterparts. The analysis of while-clauses is informed by clause-complexing and textual descriptions of clause in Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2013). Preference for initial concessive while-clauses by native-speaker students was found, in sharp contrast to the dominant use of final adversative while-clauses by Chinese EFL learners. Analysis of the native-speaker data revealed that initial concessive while-clause is characterized by equivalence or relatedness of topical themes of while-clause and its main clause, confirming the discourse-organizing function of thematic hypotactic clauses. In addition, the pattern of non-human subjects and low-value modal operators (e.g. While this . . . may . .) associated dominantly and exclusively with initial concessive while-clauses in the native corpus serves further evidence of distinctive features of concessive while-clauses. This study adds to a growing body of literature on the SFL approach to second language writing and is among the first to combine corpus-based methodologies and SFL theoretical framework to analyze logico-semantic relations. The study concludes with some pedagogical implications for teaching adversative and concessive while-clauses to EFL learners.