A Tentative Study on Chinese Learners' Acquisition in the Causal Adverbial Clause Introduced by 'Because'
Cai Yan · 2005
Causal adverbial clauses are often used by Chinese learners in their English writing. This paper, based on corpus linguistic research, studies Chinese learners' acquisition in the causal adverbial clause introduced by 'because' ('the because-clause' in short). In this research, the CLEC and its sub-corpora are respectively investigated, compared and contrasted, and analyzed, with reference to the Brown corpus on line. According to the research results, it is found that the Chinese learners place the because-clause before the main clause more often than those native speakers in the Brown corpus; it is also found that the Chinese learners sometimes use the structure of 'because…so…' to express the cause and effect, which is due to the negative transfer of their native language. With the development of their acquisition of English, Chinese learners tend to place the because-clause after the main clause, and commit less error in using 'because…so…'.