专业英语论文范文精选十篇

本文是一篇英语论文，英语的词汇量非常庞大但如果要估计具体数字，必须先判断哪些能够算作其单词。不过与其他语言不同，并没有一个权威学术机构来规定何为正式的词汇。医学、科技领域不断涌现新词，一些进入了大众日常用语中，其他只在一小部分人群内部使用。移民群体带来的外语单词也经常融入英语社会中去。一些古词和方言单词能否算作英语也无法判断。（以上内容来自百度百科）今天为大家推荐一篇英语论文，供大家参考。

专业英语论文范文精选篇一

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Research background

Ambiguity is an attribute of any idea, claim, concept or statement whose meaning,intention or interpretation is unclear or confusing. Lexical ambiguity is quite common inour daily communication. There are ambiguities in most of the language systems. A wordcan be read into different senses under different contexts. People take the most propersense based on context. It is hard to feel the process of picking the most proper sense inour mind, but it actually has such a process. This process of picking a right senseaccording to context is called “word sense disambiguation”. According to Pedersen (2001),word sense disambiguation is to select the most appropriate meaning for a word underspecific context.Researches on word sense disambiguation can be traced back to 1950s. Since then,word sense disambiguation becomes an important issue in natural language processing.Scholars pay their attention to word sense disambiguation in fields such as textcategorization, machine translation, information retrieval and speech recognition. With thedevelopment of word sense disambiguation, more and more scholars tend to use it in theirlinguistic research. Some scholars choose to do their research by artificial intelligenceways. They get statistics by building corpus with a large authentic language material.According to statistics, some deep knowledge of language will be revealed. It is not hardto see word sense disambiguation research on nouns and some verbs with no complexsenses. However, word sense disambiguation of an English modal verb is not as commonto see as word sense disambiguation of other verbs.

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1.2 Objectives and significance of the study

The objectives of the study include: constructing a fine-grain word sensedisambiguation model of might and discussing the interaction between semantic andsyntactic features. Accordingly, the significances of this study are as follows.First, as a study around the secondary English modal verb might, it not only enrichesthe study of English modal verbs, but also provides reference for other words withindeterminate senses. Second, as a study of fine-grain word sense disambiguation, it willmake some contribution to natural language processing. The fine-grain word sensedisambiguation is still far from enough. Third, by using formal concept analysis as itstheory and method, it proves formal concept analysis, as a relatively new method, is quiteeffective in word sense disambiguation. Fourth, as a study about interactions betweensemantic and syntactic features, this paper may reveal some deep knowledge of Englishmodal verb might.

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Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Studies about English modal verbs

Modal verbs are frequently used in modal system. They always indicate the speaker’sattitude towards some behaviors or objects. The history of studying the meanings of modalverbs can be traced back to Aristotle’s time. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle didsome researches on the possibility and necessity of modal verbs and the relationshipsbetween them. The thesis relates to English modal verbs. As the main representatives ofEnglish modal system, English modal verbs are discussed by many scholars. Many linguists pay attention to English modal verbs. Palmer (1990) put that modalverbs may be the most complex but important item in English grammar system. Sweetser(1990) is a supporter of the view that English modal verbs are polysemous. Sweetser (ibid.)mentions that ambiguity of English modal verbs between ‘root’ (or ‘deontic’) and‘epistemic’ senses has long been recognized. Sweetser (ibid.) argues that English modalverbs do not have two separate unrelated senses, but rather show an extension of the basicroot-sense to the epistemic domain. Some studies (e.g., Von Wright 1951; Leech 1969;Quirk 1985) also classify English modal verbs as polysemous. The supporters of the viewthat English modal verbs are monosemous believe an English modal verb has a coremeaning or basic meaning while other potential meanings can be inferred throughanalyzing the core meaning or basic meaning. Other studies (e.g., Joos 1964; Ehrman1966) discuss English modal verbs as monosemous.

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2.2 Studies about word sense disambiguation

When mentioned indeterminacy of English modal verbs, analysis of word sensedisambiguation cannot be ignored. Word sense disambiguation researches are to helpdetermine the most appropriate meaning of an ambiguous word under a certain context.Word sense disambiguation at first appeared in the field of machine translation in 1940s. Itis Weaver who introduces word sense disambiguation at first. Through the whole 1970sand 1980s, development of word sense disambiguation is limited by backward knowledgeacquisition methods. Until 1990s, owing to the statistical revolution, supervised machinelearning techniques were applied in word sense disambiguation. In 2000s, accuracies ofword sense disambiguation has been improved in a large part. There is fine-grain wordsense disambiguation, apart from coarse-grain word sense disambiguation. Nowadays, torealize word sense disambiguation, there are two kinds of necessary things: dictionary andcorpus. Dictionaries can help specify the senses of the word to be disambiguated. A corpusof real language data needs to be built up to form a context for the ambiguous word. Fourkinds of conventional methods are believed to exist by now for word sense disambiguation:dictionary and knowledge-based methods，supervised methods，semi-supervised methodsand unsupervised methods (Wikipedia, 2014). The construction of the word sensedisambiguation model usually assists studies in various fields including machinetranslation, information retrieval and hypertext navigation, text categorization and speechrecognition. Scholars both at home and abroad favor the research of word sensedisambiguation.

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Chapter 3 Methodology and Data Collection ..... 15

3.1 Research method ......... 15

3.2 Data collection....... 16

3.3 Software used in the study....... 18

3.4 Procedures of the study ..... 19

Chapter 4 Semantic Categorization of English Modal Verb Might ...... 21

4.1 Reasons for choosing might as research object ..... 21

4.2 Sense categorization of might........ 22

4.3 Summary.... 26

Chapter 5 Construction of the Fine-grain Word Sense Disambiguation........ 27

5.1 General description of construction of word sense disambiguation model..... 27

5.2 Manual tagging of the corpus ........ 28

5.3 Construction of one training set and two testing sets ........ 29

5.4 Feature selection from the context ...... 30

5.5 Vectorization of linguistic features...... 36

5.6 Interval pision of the mutual information values ..... 39

5.7 Construction of the first word sense disambiguation model ......... 49

5.8 Construction of the second word sense disambiguation model..... 53

5.9 Rule extraction according to the second model..... 55

5.10 Summary........ 61

Chapter 6 Interactive Relations of Contextual Features

6.1 Semantic intension and extension of English modal verb might

Intension means properties connoted by a word. It indicates the deep layer of thesense of English modal verb might. Extension denotes the surface of semantic part of aword in semantics. It refers to the surface layer of the sense of English modal verb might.The deep layer of the sense of English modal verb might refers to attributes distributing inthe lower layer of the SPOAD of the second model. The surface layer of the sense ofEnglish modal verb might corresponds to attributes distributing in the upper layer of theSPOAD of the second model. It illustrates that the attributes distributing in the upper layerof the SPOAD act as the extension of the sense of might, and the attributes distributing inthe lower layer function as the intension of the sense of might. Therefore, in order tounderstand extension and intension of sense of might, the careful observation of the layerdistribution in the SPOAD is indispensible.

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Conclusion

This thesis is on the fine-grain word sense disambiguation of English modal verbmight and interactive relations between semantic features and syntactic features. Thisstudy of might is mainly based on formal concept analysis both as the theoreticalfoundation and the research method. This thesis will be concluded by exploring threeaspects in this chapter: the main findings, the implications, and finally the limitations andthe suggestions for further study. This study provides two fine-grain word sense disambiguation models for Englishmodal verb might by formal concept analysis. Based on the second model, the interactiverelations of contextual features are explored. The major findings are as follows:First of all, two models of fine-grain word sense disambiguation are constructed ondifferent formal contexts by SPOAD. The first model is based on the pision of trainingset and testing sets. The accuracy of the training set itself is 92%. The accuracy of thismodel is obtained as 71.5% after examining the two testing sets. The second model isconstructed on a large formal context of 300 objects from both training set and testing setsto soften the impact of data sparseness. Two accuracies are obtained as 77.33% and76%±0.1472% by two types of cross validation which are the leave-one-out crossvalidation and the five-fold cross validation. After proving the validity of statistics of themodel by the two above validation approaches, rules are extracted based on the secondmodel. Through rechecking the second model with the extracted rules, one can obtain theaccuracy of the second model as 95.33%.

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Reference (omitted)

专业英语论文范文精选篇二

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Background or Rationale of the Thesis

Since the value of human beings was found，the concept human has become a focus ofscientific studies，including linguistic study. In ancient China, the idea of anthropocentrismwas advocated，and scholars believed in “万物是人wn shi ren，man is the soul of theuniverse)，，. As an old saying in Chinese goes, “近取诸身(J/w qu zhu shen，one is inspiredby observations from the human body and the universe)". Human beings learn the worldbased on their physical experience. Therefore，the human body is regarded as the startingpoint of cognition. It is of humanistic value for scholars to integrate the element "human"into scientific studies. Since the purpose of many linguistic studies is to serve humanbeings themselves，the human body has become an object of great research value.Meanwhile，an important concept in linguistic study is semantic field. Making ageneral review of former studies on semantic fields, it is not difficult to find that there aretoo many studies on key semantic fields，such as color，number，animal, plant，etc.However, studies on others，such as the human body and emotion are so few. Studies onthe semantic field of the human body are not so popular. The most important parts, such asheart and eye have been studied once and once again, while foot，shoulder, mouth, andsome other parts are nearly neglected. In fact, foot is an indispensable part of the humanbody, without which we cannot even take a step.For centuries, semantics has been a significant branch of linguistics. Adopting acognitive research method to study linguistic issues has become a popular trend.For the reasons above，the thesis aims to conduct a comparative study of "FOOT" inEnglish and Chinese from a cognitive perspective.

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1.2 Importance

This study is of great significance. Firstly，former studies on "FOOT" in English andChinese are few in number both at home and abroad, so this study can be seen as a supplement to former ones. Next，the study involves not only Chinese expressions but alsoEnglish ones. Adopting a comparative method，the writer aims to make a morecomprehensive study. Then，the study integrates cultural factors by providing a brand-newperspective, which strengthens the cross-cultural significance of the study. Besides，thecorpora include not only definitions in dictionaries but also words and phrases from literalworks, which is rare in former studies. In short, the thesis is innovative.

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Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Cognitive Studies of Human Body Terms

Human body terms have attracted many scholars to make detailed studies. Somepublish books to express their opinions. Feng Lingyu (2008) conducts a comprehensivestudy on human body terms in his book X Study on Human Body Terms in Chinese. Firstly,Feng reviews the historical evolution of human body system to pave way for furtherstudies. Then，Feng studies the semantic features of human body terms by analyzing thesematic relationship between morphemes and senses. Next, Feng dissects the grammaticalfeatures of human body terms, including the syntactic properties，semantics functions，andpragmatic rules. At last, Feng probes into the cognitive basis and cultural factors of thegeneration and development of human body terms. In addition，he compares similaritiesand differences of human body terms in different cultural backgrounds. Feng's bookcombines synchronic with diachronic studies to present a complete study. The Secret ofHuman Body Terms and the Human Body by Gu Jingheng (2000) focuses on head, eye, etc.to discuss the connotations behind them. He lists a large number of expressions related tothe human body. However, his analysis of the motivation and mechanism are not sointensive due to lack of a solid theoretical foundation. Huang Birong (2010) carries out amore intensive study in his book A Study on the Meaning System of Body Terms, At first，she examines the semantic features of human body terms. Secondly, she analyzes thesemantic system of key human parts, such as hand. Then, she takes a cross-culturalperspective by making a comparison between English and Chinese. Finally, she provides aconvincing explanation for the basis of human body system.

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2.2 Cognitive Studies of “FOOT”

Trying to searching for related materials at home and aboard, we are frustrated to findcognitive studies of "FOOT" are few in number. Some studies involve "FOOT" withoutexploring it in depth. General studies are so few，let alone special studies. In short, atmoment, researches on this topic are not complete.In China，there is no monograph on cognitive studies of “FOOT，，. Some scholars tryto explore the secrets behind human body terms. In The Secret of Human Body Terms andthe Human Body，Gu Jingheng (2000) not only gives an introduction of “FOOT” in words，phrases, idioms and other expressions in Chinese, but also analyzes the metaphorical andsymbolic senses of "FOOT". However，more emphasis is laid on description rather thanexplanation. Although Gu uses metaphor theory to analyze foot-related expressions, thebook lacks systematically and theoretical support.In comparison, Feng Lingjoi (2008) makes a further and deeper study. In A Study onHuman Body Terms in Chinese，Feng makes a relatively comprehensive and detailed studyof human body terms in Chinese by creatively using metaphor theory. He not only explainsrelated words (including “FOOT”)，but also searches for the psychological motivationbehind them. Although Feng takes a cognitive approach, his study only presents illustrationof theories and key body terms, failing to explore foot deeply. In addition to the two booksabove，a relatively new book is A Study on the Meaning System of Body Terms by HuangBirong (2010). From a cross-linguistic perspective，Huang makes an analysis of lexicalsystems of the human body in both English and Chinese. Huang and Feng both applyconcepts in cognitive linguistics，such as metonymy, but Huang's study is fragmentedrather than systematic.

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Chapter Three Theoretical Framework.......... 10

3.1 Basic Notions......... 10

3.2 Relevant Theories......... 17

3.3 Theoretical Framework......... 26

Chapter Four Methodology......... 29

4.1 Research Questions......... 29

4.2 Research Objects and Research Corpora......... 29

4.3 Research Instruments ......... 33

4.4 Research Method ......... 33

Chapter Five A Comparative Study of “FOOT”in English......... 34

5.1 Lexical Meaning Extension of "FOOT" in English and Chinese......... 34

5.2 Conceptual Metaphors of "FOOT" in English and Chinese......... 37

5.3 Conceptual Metonymies of "FOOT" in English and Chinese......... 44

5.4 Conceptual Metaphtonymies of "FOOT" in English and Chinese......... 53

Chapter Five A Comparative Study of "FOOT" in English and Chinese from a Cognitive Perspective

5.1 Lexical Meaning Extension of "FOOT" in English and Chinese

As shown in the figure above, among the ten senses of foot in Chinese, there arecertain relations between two or more of them. For instance, based on similarity in spaceand function，we get Sense 2; bases on similarity in space, we get Sense 8. According toconceptual metaphor theory，mappings occur from the source domains to the targetdomains.Similarly, in Sense 10, “FOOT，，is used in compound words or phrases referring tofoot-related physical activities. For example, in Chinese, the word “Jiao fu (poi,ter)”refersto people who make a living by carrying objects for others. These people live on their foot，and “FOOT，，is used to refer to their profession. It is a metonymic usage.

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Conclusion

This thesis makes a detailed study of “FOOT” in English and Chinese from acognitive perspective. After collecting a large amount of corpora, the writer makes anelaborate analysis to study the cognitive mechanism and motivation of conceptualmetaphor and conceptual metonymy. During the process，many examples are presented toillustrate the metaphorical and metonymic meanings of “FOOT” in English and Chinese.To promote better understanding, some figures are used when necessary.There are several findings of the thesis.Firstly, conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy contribute to the basicmechanisms of "FOOT" in English and Chinese ? English and Chinese share similar basicsense of foot. Under the functions of conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy, agreat number of new senses are produced. Meanwhile, some complex foot-relatedexpressions are products of both conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy. They twoprocesses work together as conceptual metaphtonymy to promote the producing of newsenses.Secondly，there are more similarities than differences of foot in English and Chinese，and foot-related expressions in Chinese are relatively more abundant and more flexible.“FOOT” metaphors in both languages involve similar domains, including object domain,action domain，and emotion domain. "FOOT" metaphtonymies in both languages containsimilar references, including profession, human, footstep，action，and nature. "FOOT"metonymies in both languages can used to refer to actions. Meanwhile，due to linguisticand cultural factors, there are also special expressions unique to English and Chinese.

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Reference (omitted)

专业英语论文范文精选篇三

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study

Since the 1950s, language transfer has gradually become an important researchsubject in the field of second language acquisition (SLA). As everyone knows, SLAhas experienced two historical stages from the 1960s to this day, which is based thedominant theories of Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis and Interlanguage Hypothesis.With the transfer of this theory mode, the cognition of language transfer hasexperienced a process from one side to the entirety and from superficiality toprofundity. Although the study of language transfer started to bring down a fever withthe appearance of Universal Grammar proposed by Chomsky in the 1950s, it becamea hot subject again in the recent twenty years. In the1980s, the study of cognitivetheory broadened the visual angle of language transfer research. Transfer is regardedas a kind of strategy in the study and it is a cognitive process. As Long and Richardspointed in the preface of Odlin’s (1989), “Language Transfer” had always been thecentral problem in the applied linguistics, SLA and language research. However,language transfer is a controversial subject, for it possesses complexity and scholarsdon’t reach a consensus on a series of issues in the study. But the influence oflanguage transfer in foreign language study is obvious and accepted. Languagetransfer was defined by Odlin (1989) as the impact caused by the similarities anddifferences resulting from the target language (TL) and any language a learneracquired before. Although Odlin is not satisfied with this definition completely, thisworking definition is widely accepted, for no one can give a definition covering morecomplete essence of language transfer. That is to say, learning in one’s first language(L1) makes it easier to understand concepts and lay a foundation in basic knowledge,which will also help learners’ acquisition of a second language (L2) (Lin Jing, 1997).

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1.2 Aims of the Research

Students in junior high school are in the primary stage of English learning. Theymaster limited English vocabularies. There are many problems in English sentencestructures and discourses. Therefore, students often rely on the thinking of nativelanguage in writing. After that, they write in English way transformed by nativelanguage. In this way, memes are the imitation of applying the expression, thinkinghabit and folk culture of the native language into the process of foreign languagelearning directly. The reason of the appearance of transfer between languages is theexistence of meme. People imitate frequently, which exactly explains why people’slanguage function is maintained for a long time instead of degeneration. In accordancewith memetics, language is a crucial part of the culture, which is closely related tomeme. Language itself is the meme. Meanwhile, language is one of meme vehicles.Some foreign scholars like Distin (2005) pointed explicitly that memetics offered anew explanation for the origin of language and language use and it was helpful forfurther understanding of the evolution of culture, thought and language. Commonsubstantive characteristic---replication between language transfer and meme is takeninto account, which makes it possible to discuss language transfer in the frame ofmemetics and provides a new viewpoint to probe into language transfer. Therefore, itwill be a fresh attempt to explain language transfer in English writing.

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Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 A Review of Language Transfer

Language transfer is one of the focuses paid attention by numerous linguists andlanguage researchers all the time. Zhao Shikai, a famous linguist in China pointsdefinitely that the transfer of the native language is the “fundamental issue” in theresearch of SLA in the preface of Gao Yuan’s (2002) book. In the past research,although linguists proposed various opinions, the focus of language transfer was theway to evaluate the native language or the impact of L1 in SLA. All the disputesalmost spread around this issue: Does learners’ native language or L1 play a part inacquiring L2? If it works, what’s the effect? How does it affect? The central questionof language transfer is the question of influence of learners’ native language in SLA(Dai Weidong, Wang Dong, 2002). Wang Wenyu (1999) epitomizes three stages aboutthe research of language transfer from the 1950s to the 1990s, which are the researchof contrastive analysis hypothesis and language transfer, the research of theory ofmarkedness and language transfer, the research of cognitive theory and languagetransfer. The research deepens our recognition of the essence of language. Becauselanguage transfer is a complex process of embodying learners’ inpidual difference,cognitive psychology and language environment, etc., scholars still don’t reach aconsensus on a series of issues.

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2.2 A Review of Memetics

Memetics is a burgeoning branch in the field of pragmatics research. Meanwhile,it is a new theory of explaining the universal relations of things and the rules ofcultural evolution from the diachronic and synchronic perspective. What memeticsexpress is that imitation forms the basis for meme; meme is the unit of culturalmessage, which is like gene inherited and virus transmitted; meme and genesupplement each other, which becomes the driving force of evolution. Therefore,meme can be infected from person to person. Since the emergence of memetics,people haven’t confined to the discussion of memetics’ definition. Many scholars startto explain various phenomena in sociocultural fields by memetics. However, scholarsin linguistics still pay less attention to memetics in general (Levinson, 2003). He Ziran(2007) holds that language is not only a main carrier of cultural transmission, but alsoan obvious cultural phenomenon. Memetics is helpful for language research and itseffect is worthy of attention in social evolution of language and verbalcommunication.

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Chapter 3 Theoretical Framework.......18

3.1 Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis.......18

3.2 Error Analysis.......20

3.3 Interlanguage.......21

3.4 Memetics.......23

Chapter 4 Methodology.......25

4.1 Research Questions.......25

4.2 Participants.......25

4.3 Instruments.......26

4.4 Data Collection Procedures.......26

4.5 Data Analysis.......27

Chapter 5 Results and Discussion.......28

5.1 Language Transfer of Han and Dai students.......28

5.1.1 Positive Transfer.......28

5.1.2 Negative Transfer.......28

5.2 Language Transfer and Memetics........30

Chapter 5 Results and Discussion

5.1 Language Transfer of Han and Dai Students

In 104 compositions, besides the positive transfer, the negative transfers werepided into intralingual errors and interlingual errors. Learners misuse the languagehaving the common feature with the native language, which results in the productionof errors, which is called interlingual errors, while the intralingual errors are madeinside of the TL (Hu Zhuanglin, 2002). Although the boundary between learners’interlingual errors and intralingual errors is difficult to define, SLA researchers cannotignore the influence of the interference of the native language on learners. Theanalysis results will be showed respectively in the subsequent part. According to their compositions, there were certain positive transfers in both Hanand Dai students’ compositions, which were mainly expressed in the word ordersimilar with their native languages. When there existed similarities among Chinese,English and Dai language, the positive transfer happened easily. Both Dai languageand Chinese belonged to the type “subject-predicate-object” (Luo Meizhen, 2008).Therefore, it was easier for Han and Dai students to express ideas by makingsentences, whose word order was similar with English.

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Conclusion

The primary objective of this study was to investigate the students’ languagetransfers including Han students and Dai students mainly in English writing in juniorhigh school of an ethnic region. The secondary aim of the study was to explain Hanand Dai students’ language transfer from the perspective of memetics. The study wascarried out in Nongzhang, Yingjiang County. Besides the English compositions, thetest paper was employed as the main instrument, which was analyzed by bothquantitative method and qualitative method. The major finding from this research wasthat both Han and Dai students made a large number of errors in the collocation ofword, which was mainly related to the usage of V-ing. Students were puzzled aboutwhen and how to use the form of V-ing, which didn’t exist in both Chinese and Dailanguage. According to their translation, more than half of the Han and Dai studentstranslated the five sentences of this category wrongly. From the perspective ofmemetics, one reason was that the English memes didn’t be accepted and understoodby the host in the process of transmission; the other reason was that the meme ofV-ing was eliminated in the mutual competition with other new memes. A bettersolution is to lengthen the time remained in memory.

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Reference (omitted)

专业英语论文范文精选篇四

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Background

It is a common phenomenon which is widely experienced among people all overthe world, despite of their culture, religion and language. The phenomenon is that，ifone stairs at a particular word, character or graph for a while, one may feel a sense ofconfusion, uncertainty，and loss of meaning. This，as one of the cognitive feelings asTip of the Tongue and deja vu, is acknowledged as Semantic Satiation amongwestern scholars; while for eastern scholars. Semantic Satiation has a different title;Japanese psychologists named it as Gestaltzerfall, and Taiwan psychologists referredit as Orthographic Satiation in their researches. In the mainland of China，however,Semantic Satiation is a virgin land yet to be explored.Semantic Satiation is generally studied as a psychological issue by the forerunnerscholars, eastern and western alike. Yet no discipline in the current world can entirelyisolate itself from other disciplines, nor can linguistics from psychology. Avratn NoamChomsky, the father of modem linguistic, considers linguistics as a branch ofcognitive psychology. Therefore, the research of Semantic Satiation as apsychological phenomenon can benefit also the development of linguistics in manyways.

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1.2 Contents and Objectives

This thesis is a study of the Semantic Satiation in Chinese character. With a briefbut complete and comprehensive introduction of the studies carried out by scholars inother countries and regions, this thesis aims at presenting a general review of thehistory of this phenomenon. By doing this, it is believed that the study underdiscussion will be useful and helpful for the later scholars who arc interested in thistopic, especially for scholars in the mainland oi China tor whom Semantic Satiation isstill a totally strange and new researching tieklBesides providing a general review of the studies of Semantic Satiation, thisthesis ivS to carry out a Chinese-oriented empirical study on Semantic Satiation, In thisthesis, three issues about the Semantic Satiation of Chinese characters are investigated,namely，(1) the inter-relevance of English Semantic Satiation and ChineseOrthographic Satiation: (2) the cross-satiation effect among Chinese-Englishbilinguals; and (3) the cross-satiation effect between simplified and traditionalChinese.In order to fulfill the previous objectives, the thesis is arranged into seven parts.The first part is the Introduction in which a brief introduction of the concernedphenomenon and its researching background are presented.The second pail, Chapter 2 of the body is devoted to the literature reviews ofSemantic Satiation in English, Chinese and Kanji characters in a chronological order. The disputes among the previous scholars' studies and problems untouched, togetherwith the methodologies to solve the problems, are all listed out accordingly in chapter3. There are one dispute and two problems about Chinese-oriented OrthographicSatiation: the dispute about the relation between English Semantic Satiation andChinese Orthographic Satiation aroused by Taiwan scholars; and the cross-satiationeffect among Chinese-English bilinguals, and between simplified and traditionalChinese characters.

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Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Semantic Satiation in English Language

The establishment of the studies of Semantic Satiation was officially announcedby Elizabeth Severance and Margaret Floy Washburn in 1907 when they published onthe Ametican Journal of Psychology their work entitled as The loss of associativepower in words after long fixation.In their experiment. Severance & Washburn (19()7) selected six womenobservers as their participants to look fixedly at a group of six-letter English words forthree minutes, and asked the participants to describe in details the change of theappearance of the words during the experimenting period. With a careful analysisbasing upon the description and records made by the participants. Severance &Washburn (1907) attributed the reasons of Semantic Satiation to “shifting attentions/"Severance & Washburn's (1907) experiment served a fundamental function inthe study of Semantic Satiation, both thcorclically and methodologically.Theoretically, it was the first academic paper published ami llic first seriousexperiment earned out on Semantic Satiation. With detailed records of the experimentprocess. Severance & Washburn (1907) presented the reader a vivid picture of theparticipants' experience in Semantic Satiation.

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2.2 Chinese-oriented Satiation Studies

The similar phenomenon attracted also the attention of Japanese scholars whonoticed the decomposition of Japanese Kanji characters after a steady and continuousview. Japanese scholars, with Yuri Ninose & Jiro Gyob ( 1996, 1997，2002，2003 ) asrepresentatives, took a very different way from their western peers by concentratingmainly on the structure of the words and characters, and named tlie phenomenonGestaltzerfall.In their studies, Yuri Ninose & Jiro Gyob (1996, 1997，and 2002) examined thedelays in the recognition of test Kanji following a prolonged viewing of adaptation Kanji which were comprised of both the same or different part and structures. Theresults revealed that the delay effect occurred with complex Kanji patterns containinga few components, but that the phenomenon did not occur with simple Kanji patternsconsisting of only one component (Yuri Ninose & Jiro Gyob, 2002). In the latterstudies carried out by Taiwan scholars, however, the results turned out to be acomplete opposite, which I will explain below in Section 2.2.2. Besides, in order tosettle the dispute among Japanese and Taiwan scholars, an experiment was designedand carried out to testify the decomposition of Chinese/Kanji character consisting ofonly one component.

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Chapter 3 Questions and Methodologies.......... 17

3.1 Inter-relevance between Chinese Orthographic Satiation..........17

3.2 Orthographic Decomposition in Singlc-component Chinese Characters.......... 19

3.2.1 Disputes.......... 19

3.2.2 Methodology.......... 19

3.3 Chinese-oriented Cross-satiation Effect ..........21

3.3.1 Semantic Satiation among English-Chinese bilinguals.......... 21

3.3.2 Cross-satiation Effect between Simplified and Traditional ChineseCharacters.......... 22

Chapter 4 Experiment Description.......... 24

4.1 Experiment One: Orthographic Decomposition.......... 24

4.2 Experiment Two: Cross-satiation Effect among English-Chinese Bilinguals...........26

4.3 Experiment Three: Cross-satiation between Simplified ..........30

Chapter 5 Experiment Results and Data collection.......... 34

5.1 Orthographic Decomposition among Single-component Chinese Characters..........34

5.2 Cross-satiation Effect among English-Chinese Bilinguals.......... 39

5.3 No Cross-satiation Effect between Simplified and Traditional Chinese.......... 40

Chapter 6 General Discussion

6.1 The Relation between Orthographic Satiation and SemanticSatiation

Although Taiwan scholars relied on the same explanation as western scholars,they focused on a very different aspect of the phenomenon under discussion. Unlikethe latter that centered on the loss of meaning, Taiwan scholars believed that inChinese characters，only the structure is decomposed, and the meaning is not affected.Therefore, they asserted that their study of orthographic decomposition is differentfrom that of western scholars' Semantic Satiation.However, as far as what the theories prove and the experimental data shows, thetwo are of the same nature. The Orthographic Satiation, actually, is the first stage inthe process of Semantic Satiation proposed by Xing Tian & Huber (2010). To begin with, the two phenomena are resulted from a repeated stimulation(prolonged view of a certain word). In accordance with Severance & Washburn(1907), a participant suffered Semantic Satiation after a steady stare at Blood for 179seconds, while in the experiment carried out by Lee (2007)，it took 31.17 seconds fora single-component Chinese character and 26.53 seconds for a left-to-right characterto occur Orthographic Satiation. Cheng & Wu (1994) also acknowledged that:“Semantic Satiation, as Orthographic Satiation, is a phenomenon triggered by aprolonged view.”

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Conclusion

The current study is an experimental study of Chinese-oriented satiation. In thestudy, three problems or disputes among the scholars concerning this phenomenon arcnoticed，and explanations for each problem are offered by applying experiments andrelevant theories.To begin with, the relationship between English Semantic Satiation andOrthographic Satiation in traditional Chinese characters is studied as the first concern.Although Taiwan scholars argue that in orthographic Satiation only decomposition ofa character occurs and its meaning is unaffected, the results of experiment one provetwo things: first, simple Chinese characters with only one component can also occurorthographic decomposition after repeated stimulation, which agrees with Taiwanscholar's studies and differs from Japanese scholars', and settles the dispute amongthem. Sccond. simple Chinese characicrs with one component may suffer a loss ofmeaning in Orthographic Satiation, which is against Taiwan scholars" studies. Takingthese two points as basis, the thesis comes to the conclusion that OrthographicSatiation is the first level of Semantic Satiation. Then, by applying Hjelmslcv's theoryof System of Signification: ERC.

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Reference (omitted)

专业英语论文范文精选篇五

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Research Background

Memetics is a new theory which is based on the Dawkins’ theory of evolution tointerpret cultural evolution. It interprets the common relationship among things andthe evolutionary law of the spreading culture – the essential characteristics, from thediachronic and synchronic point. The core in memetics is the term “meme” which wasfirstly coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his book TheSelfish Gene in 1976. And then foreign scholars in various study fields graduallybegan to show more interests in it and have made a lot of achievements in their ownfields. Memetics is a relatively new theory in Chinese academic circle. In 1999, anarticle The Culture Vulture was published on the 3rdvolume of the magazine Science,and this article introduced the main content about the book The Meme Machine, andalso this is the first time that the word “meme” is introduced in China. Since then,more and more Chinese scholars begin to have attempts in studying and applyingmemetics in wider and wider scopes. Now memetics has big influences on manysubjects, such as linguistics, psychology, sociology, biology and so on. In linguisticfield, some researchers adopt memetics or language meme to analyze certainlinguistic phenomena, like advertising language, net language, loan word,catch-phrase and so on and so forth.

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1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Study

Humor exists in all our lives and it pervades here and there of the world. We canfind humor on televisions, on newspapers and in our conversations and so forth.Humor, as a topic, has been studied for hundreds of thousands of years. The researchof humor is very popular all along. As a multi-disciplinary field of research, humorattracts scholars from the fields of anthology, philosophy, psychology, sociology,literature and so forth.Theoretically and practically, memetics makes a new insight to explore languagein the study of linguistics. From a perspective of language meme, language meme is aunit to spread culture and to reveal the laws of utterance spread and language transmission. Although more and more researchers have devoted to study therelationship between language meme and verbal humor, the study is still in an earlystage relatively, more problems to be solved and more attentions to be paid.Researches on verbal humor from memetics are not plentiful, researches on Englishverbal humor from the perspective of language meme are even less. And the author,as a developing learner, is trying to have an analysis of English verbal humor byapplying language meme as the theoretical foundation. And this will be treated as theinnovation point of this thesis.The purpose of the whole thesis is: First, from the perspective of language meme,the author attempts to analyze English verbal humor, especially from three levels:phonetics, vocabulary and grammar. Then, the author tries to conclude the functionsof verbal humor generated by language meme. It is hoped that this research willprovide some helpful and useful information for the relevant studies on languagememe in the future.

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Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 A Brief Introduction to Humor

Humor is very popular in our lives. To some extent, we can say that humorpervades everywhere in the world. As a preliminary part, let’s see the origin of theterm—humor. Humor firstly appears from a Latin word, means moisture or fluid. Andthere are four basic mainly humors: choler, melancholy, blood and phlegm, accordingto the ancient physiology. A person’s temper is determined by one kind of humorwhich preponderates among the four humors. And if all the four humors were inbalance well of a person, he was regarded as in “good humor”, otherwise one whowith any imbalance of the four humors would be treated as “out of humor” or“eccentric”. Yet the topic and research of humor has been lasted long, there are stillenormous amounts of controversies about what humor is. Any single definition ofhumor that can be agreed or accepted by all the researchers is not existed. Just as thesaying goes “Among one thousand inpiduals, there will be a thousandinterpretations of the character Hamlet.” Different scholars have definitions to explaintheir certain aspects of humor. There are even few scholars who do not attempt todefine humor, like Goldstein and McGhee. (Apte, 1985:13) As humor is the keysubject in this thesis, we cannot avoid exploring to specify the term “humor”.

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2.2 An Overview of Verbal Humor

Definition of verbal humor and previous studies of verbal humor abroad and athome will be included on this section. As it is just described above, humor which conveyed or expressed by ways of alinguistic system is verbal humor. (Ritchie, 2004)And the two scholars, Raskin and Koestler, also have their own further specificexplanations according to the term defined by Ritchie.Raskin (1985:3) thinks that “In verbal humor, there would be a speaker and atleast one hearer or more. And a radio, a television, or a writer can substitute for thespeaker. As well a radio, a television, an audience, an reader, or etc. may substitutethe hearer. It is the speaker’s words which produce the funny stimulus. It is thehearer’s cooperation and reaction which makes a humor complete.”From Koestler’s viewpoint (1993:684), “Verbal humor is played by sounds,words, sentences, jokes, cartoons, anecdotes, proverbs, allegories, comic verses,nonsense verses and so on and so forth.”

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Chapter Three Theoretical Foundation ......12

3.1 An Overview of Memetics.........12

3.1.1 Origin of Meme.......12

3.1.2 Definition of Meme.......13

3.1.3 Classification of Meme .......14

3.1.4 Life Cycle of Meme ......15

3.1.5 Properties of Meme.......17

3.2 A General Introduction to Language Meme ......18

Chapter Four Methodology......26

4.1 Research Questions........26

4.2 Data Collection ........26

4.3 Method of Analysis........26

Chapter Five An Analysis of English Verbal Humor generated.....28

5.1 Language Meme in English Verbal Humor .......28

5.1.1 Language Meme Manifested in Phonetics........28

5.1.2 Language Meme Manifested in Vocabulary.....32

5.1.3 Language Meme Manifested in Grammar ........36

5.2 Functions of English Verbal Humor from the Angle........40

5.2.1 Activating Atmosphere .......40

5.2.2 Improving Interpersonal Communication.........42

5.2.3 Defending Oneself ........43

5.2.4 Dissolving Embarrassment .......44

5.2.5 Criticizing and Exposing Evils .......46

Chapter Five An Analysis of English Verbal Humorgenerated by Language Meme

5.1 Language Memes in English Verbal Humor

There is a general introduction to the ways of language meme replication andtransmission in Chapter three. However, the five ways of language meme replicationand transmission are more suitable in applying in the interpretation of Chinese verbalhumor. Because English and Chinese belong to different language systems, themechanisms of generating verbal humor of Chinese and English are also differentsomehow. The speech which is through applying language memes to achievehumorous effects is called meme humor. There are three parts to compose a piece ofverbal humor: two language items which have something similar but in fact aredifferent, and a speaker. The speaker can be also an audience or a reader, which canbe called “the receiver” in common. The function of a speaker is very important.Because the effect of a verbal humor is determined by the conditions of the speaker,such as knowledge, language, intelligence, etc. The language items applied can be asound, a word, a phrase, and even a sentence. One prominent characteristic of thelanguage items is that the displayed forms and the expressed contents are notaccordant. The language items of verbal humors cannot be simply and directlyinterpreted by its external forms.Language memes in English verbal humor can be analyzed from the levels ofphonetics, vocabulary and grammar respectively.

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Conclusion

This thesis focuses on the interpretation of English verbal humor from theperspective of language meme. And through the process of analysis, the majorfindings are gotten as following:Firstly, language meme can be used to interpret verbal humor and shows its keyfunctions in the expressing and understanding of verbal humor. English verbal humorwhich can manifest language meme could be analyzed from three levels, that is,phonetics, vocabulary and grammar. It is these associations of language memestimulate the verbal humor. And it could be emphasized that English verbal humormanifested on the level of grammar is the most common way.Secondly, with the functions of humor as a reference and through a detailedanalysis of English verbal humor that includes language meme, verbal humor maymainly act five kinds of functions: activating atmosphere, defending oneself,improving interpersonal communication, dissolving embarrassment, and criticizingand exposing evils.

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Reference (omitted)

专业英语论文范文精选篇六

Chapter I Theoretical Concerns in Language Testing

在从事评估测试之前，重要的是先了解语言知识的性质，有不同的看法和观点，这反过来又导致测试的结构和内容的变化。随着历史语言生活测试，语言学习或语言能力在不同的系统和方法，在语言测试中的结果的性质的不同观点和看法。在本章中，将全面审查和一般介绍，以便进一步研究明确的理论依据。Before engaging in the evaluation of tests, it is important to understand first thatthere are different views and perspectives on the nature of language knowledge, whichin turn results in the changes of the structure and content of tests. Along the history oflanguage testing, different views and perspectives on the nature of language learningor language capability result in varied system and methods in language testing. In thischapter, an overall review and general introduction will be given so as to clear thetheoretical ground for further study.

1.1 The Historical Development

在语言能力和语言测试领域的，有没有一个单一的和稳定的一种定义，但一个不断发展和成熟的系统。一般来说，这些理论可以分为三个时期：前科学时期，的心理测量测试期间，心理语言学，社会语言学时期，即交际语言测试期。In the field of language ability and language testing, there was not a single andstable kind of definition, yet an ever-evolving and maturing system. Generallyspeaking，these theories can be pided into three periods: pre-scientific period，psychometric-staicturalist testing period and psycholinguistic-sociolinguistic period，i.e. communicative language testing period.

1) Pre-scientific period

语言测试理论与外语教学的发展走过来。20世纪40年代之前的时期通常被称为前科学的语言测试。语言学的发展，正如它的名字所暗示的，尽管有语言测试没有系统的理论在这个时期。外语教学大多是基于传统和经验。这一时期严重依赖于学习者的说话能力和/或写的语言老师的主观评价。语言被认为是语法，词汇和语音知识的结合。因此，语言测试作为一种工具来测量所必需的技术知识。语言测试的设计大多离开教师或测试设计者的经验和判断。Language testing theories came along with the development of foreign languageteaching. Usually the period before the 1940s is called the pre-scientific languagetesting. As its name suggests, despite the development of linguistics, there was nosystematic theory on language testing at this period. Foreign language teaching wasmostly based on tradition and experience. This period relied heavily on teacher'ssubjective assessment of learner's ability to speak and/or write the language.Language was considered the combination of grammatical, lexical and phonologicalknowledge. As a result, language testing was taken as a tool to measure thisknowledge. The design of language tests were mostly left to the experience andjudgment of teachers or test designers.

2) Psychometric-structuralist period

Entering the 1940s, the concept of language knowledge was greatly widened. Structural linguists, such as Bloomfield, Fires and Lado, offered a subjective andscientific analysis on language. The publication of Lado's Language Testing in 1961marked the beginning of the psychometric—structuralist period. Under the influenceof psychological behaviorism, people believe that learning language is to master aseries of skills, in other words, listening，reading, speaking and writing. It wasconcerned with constructing tests which measure knowledge of the discrete linguisticstructure and rules.The language tests produced in this period were based on an atomistic theory oflanguage (primarily American structuralism) and followed Lado's dictum that 'theelements of language...can be profitably studied and described and tested—asseparated universes'(Lado, 1961:25). The prevalent test form in this period isdiscrete-point test.

3) PsychoHnguistic—sociolinguistic period (Communicative language testing)

With the development of language research, the perception of language began tochange. First, Chomsky proposed the concept of linguistic competence and linguisticperformance, in which competence stands for unconscious knowledge of possiblegrammatical structures in an idealized speaker, and performance refers to actualproduction and comprehension of language in specific instances of language use. Theidea of language in specific instance of use began to gain importance. More and moresociolinguistic notice that the application of language involves a series of social andcultural elements and that language is an indispensible part of culture. Entering the90s in the last century, this new change occurred that a theoretical view begin toconsider language as multi-componential and recognize the influence of the testmethod and test taker characteristics on test performance, and more sophisticatedmeasurement and statistical tool are applied and “communicative” language test thatincorporate principles of “communicative” language teaching are developed .

Chapter II Theoretical Concerns of Reading

Reading, the ability to understand and absorb written information, is animportant method of acquiring knowledge and understanding new things, and anecessary tool in the development of intelligence and emotion. Through reading, onemay not only learn the language, but also obtain non-linguistic knowledge, i.e. theknowledge embeded in the text, such as politics, economics, history，geography, lifestyles, literature, and so on. The enhancement of reading capability may assist one tomaintain a lasting interest in studying a foreign language, consolidate and deepen theobtained knowledge, and improve the comprehensive capability to put the languageinto practice.

2.1 The Significance of Reading

The process of reading is to interpret the meaning of printed or written verbalsymbols. Nowadays, even when the advance of technology brings about muchconvenient electronic media, the role of reading is still unshakeable. For Englishlearners, reading is not only one of the most important skills, but also an essential wayto gain information and knowledge，to enlarge one's vocabulary, and to befamiliarized with the English language.

Chapter Ⅲ Research Study.......... 33-53

3.1 Research Objectives......... 33-34

3.2 Research Design .........34-38

3.2.1 Material description......... 35-36

3.2.2 Data collection .........36-37

3.2.3 Data analysis......... 37-38

3.3 Research Results and Discussion .........38-53

3.3.1 Characteristics of the settings of TEM-8.........38-39

3.3.2 Characteristics of the input .........39-50

3.3.3 Expected response......... 50-53

Conclusion

This paper represents an endeavor to investigate TEM-8 reading comprehensionunder the task characteristic framework. Considerable amounts of data have beencollected initially. In order to gain a good insight into the TEM-8 readingcomprehension tests, detailed comparisons need to be made between the results of thesurvey and the requirements of the two syllabi in the light of the newly-constructedframework. After a careful comparison, the author makes specific evaluations fromthe aspects of setting, rubrics, input，and expected response by combining therequirements of the two syllabi and the calculated data. As a result, conclusions can bedrawn based on the analysis and evaluation in more details. Then suggestions andrecommendations will be put forward for the future improvement in English teachingand reading tests design.

In the previous parts, the characteristics of reading comprehension and thecontent validity on reading comprehension tests in TEM-8 in recent years have beenevaluated within the framework of task characteristics in detail. All the evaluation isconducted in view of the established Teaching Syllabus for English Majors and Testingsyllabus for TFM-8 and their detailed specifications. Detailed analysis of the authentictexts is conducted. Bases on major findings obtained in the theoretical and practicalaspects of the study, both quantitative and qualitative methods have been adopted.

References

1 Nagy, William E. (1988). Teaching Iocabuktry www.51lunwen.org/language/ to Improve Reading Comprehension.International Reading Assoc.

2Anderson, N.J. (2003) Exploring Second Language Reading: Issues and Strategies.

3Bachman, L. F. (1990). “What Does Language Testing Have to Offer9" Teachers ofEnglish 1o Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL).

4Bachman, L.F. (1998.Fundamental (Consideration in Language Testing, Oxford:Oxford University Press: 101.

5Bachman, L.F., & Palmer A S. (1996). Language Tesling in Practice, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press: 44, 69.

6Bachman, L. F..Statistical Analyses for Language Assessment. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press: 259.

7Barlett, F.C. (1932). Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 201.

8Chastain, K. (1988). Developing Second Language Skills: Theory and Practice.

9Florida: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc: 338.Flesch. R. (1948). "A new readability yardstick". Journal of Applied Psychology 32'221-233.

10Goodman, K.S. (1976). Reading: A Psycholinguistic Guessing Game. Journal of theReading specialist.

专业英语论文范文精选篇七

1. Introduction

正如我们都知道，母语或外语学习者学习的知识和收购经验，在学习第二语言或外语学习会产生一些负面的影响和干扰。这是负的传递函数。所以，即使人类的发音器官有从根本上没有区别，但在讲目标语言，学习者将永远是母语的语气。As we all know, the knowledge and the acquisition experience of native language orforeign languages learning of the learners will produce some negative influence andinterference on second language learning or foreign language learning. This is negativetransfer function. So， even if the speech organs of humans have fundamentally nodifference, but in speaking the target language, learners will always be with the tone ofthe native language.

1.1 The research background

由于九江市独特的地理位置，它的方言已经形成一个特殊的发音系统，它既不属于南部方言，也不是北方的系统。作为一个土生土长的九江市，九江方言的用户，笔者有一种看法，直接从九江方言的英语发音学习语言的负迁移。但整个英语教学在九江没有采取语音教学成更严重。这里的学生没有英语语音的系统知识，他们只是跟着老师的发音也受到九江方言。发音错误无需沟通误解，但也造成听力障碍。这就是为什么很多学生觉得英语学习变得越来越困难比他们以前的研究后，他们进入大学。Due to the unique geographical location of Jiujiang city, its dialect has formed aspecial pronunciation system which neither belongs to the southern dialect nor to thesystem of the north. As a native of Jiujiang city and the user of Jiujiang dialect, theauthor has a perception of the language negative transfer directly from Jiujiang dialect toEnglish pronunciation learning. But the entirety of the English teaching in Jiujiang wasnot taken pronunciation teaching into much seriously. Students here do not have thesystematic knowledge about English phonetics and they just followed their teachers'whose pronunciation was also influenced by Jiujiang dialect. The mispronunciation willnot only make misunderstanding in communication but also cause barriers in listeningcomprehension. That is why a lot of students feel that the English learning become moreand more difficult than their former study after they enter university.

1. 2 The research significance

This study takes negative transfer from Jiujiang dialect to English as a concretebranch of language transfer.Firstly, the study summarizes the related theories about negative transfer oflanguage, especially of the pronunciation. Then find out the problems existing in Jiujiangstudents' pronunciation by means of making contrastive analysis between Jiujiang dialectand English.As an English pronunciation teacher in Jiujiang University, in the long-term ofteaching process, the author finds native students speaking English with the most obvious"Jiujiang tone". As the one of the only foil-time comprehensive undergraduate universityin Jiujiang region, plenty of students are from Jiujiang city. As their teacher ofpronunciation, the author feels the influence is obviously from the dialect negativetransfer. Suppose that after the graduation, the graduated students will teach their Students with "Jiujiang tone" English, and then it will form a vicious circle on students'pronunciation. Therefore, the research of negative transfer function from Jiujiang dialectto English pronunciation and teaching strategies analysis both have the urgent realisticsignificance.

1. 3 Layout of the thesis

This thesis is pided into six chapters. Part 1 is introduction. The background, thesignificance of the research are presented. And the second chapter is about the literaturereview which contains the related research of the negative language transfer and therelated research of the negative pronunciation transfer. In chapter three, the author makesanalysis of sound segment and suprasegmental that lead to negative transfer fromJiujiang dialect to English. Chapter four explores ways to solve the problems. Chapterfive is the part of the test. Chapter six is the conclusion part, the findings from thisresearch are concluded and the suggestions to the pronunciation teaching are proposed inthis part.

2. Literature review

2.1 The theory about language transfer

This paper mainly aims at finding the influence of mother tongue transfering toEnglish pronunciation learning. So the theory of language transfer should be listed firstand the related transfer research also will be given in this part.The word "transfer" derived from the Latin word "transferre", which means "tocarry", "to bear" or "to print, impress or otherwise copy (as a drawing or engraved design)from one surface to another" (Webster's Third New Word International Dictionary,1986).And the word "transfer" in "language transfer" that we usually say is not only thespecial term in second language acquisition and actually is an important concept inEducational Psychology. The definition about "transfer" from H. Ellis (1965) is "Ahypothesis from learning task A can make an influence on task B learning". According toJames (1989:11) point of view, H. Ellis ' definition of task A and B can replace for firstlanguage (LI) and second language (L2).By linguistic transfer, we mean what the learners carry over to or generalize in theirknowledge about their native language to help them learn to use a target language.Language transfer is produced in language learning process that old knowledge acts onnew knowledge. Even so, it is still hard to give a scientific and exact definition oflanguage transfer.In 1989, Odlin published the book Language Transfer Cross-linguistic influence inlanguage learning. In this book, the definition about transfer is presented as follow: Theinfluence resulting from similarities and differences between the target language and anyother language that has been previously (and perhaps imperfectly) acquired (Odlin, 1989:27).

3. Negative pronunciation transfer review from Jiujiang..........22-30

3.1 Negative transfer in sound segments ..........23-27

3.2 Negative transfer on suprasegmentals.......... 27-30

3.2.1 Negative transfer on the stress and the rhythm ..........27

3.2.2 Negative transfer on the intonation ..........27-30

4. The ways to solve the problems of negative pronunciation ..........30-38

4.1 Intonation first, then phonetic.......... 30-31

4.2 Using the way of contrasting and summarizing..........31-33

4.3 Listening native English materials..........33

4.4 Utilizing teaching aids.......... 33-34

4.5 Sample teaching.......... 34-38

5. Methodology.......... 38-46

5.1 The purpose of the research.......... 38

5.2 The subject of the research.......... 38

5.3 The instrument ..........38-40

5.4 Research procedures.......... 40

5.5 Result analysis ..........40-46

Conclusion

In this paper, the author does the research on the analysis of the problems whichcaused by language negative transfer and propose the suggestions to solve the problem.During this research process, we get the following findings:

1. For Jiujiang native students, the Jiujiang dialect has influenced their Englishpronunciation obviously.

2. From the negative analysis on the segmental and suprasegmental factors, theauthor has concluded that:

3. In view of the problems caused by the negative transfer, some suggestions areput forward to reduce negative transfer and improve the Jiujiang students' Englishpronunciation level as follows:

(1 ) For our teachers, we should pay more attention on the basic knowledge teachingof English phonetics. Such as in teaching the vowels or the consonants, teachers shouldillustrate how the vowel or consonant is pronounced in terms of articulation manner andplace. And tries to explain the phonetic theories to students more clearly and effectively.

(2 ) Further more, teachers should use the way of contrastive efficiently in Jiujiangdialect accent and English pronunciation. In other words, teachers should know both thesimilarities and differences among these two phonetic systems. Then give the exactly explanation of each phonetic knowledge in their teaching process and make great effortson avoiding negative transfer of maximum limit.

(3 ) Through the test of this thesis,the methods which proposed by the author inchapter four are improved correctly, so the teachers can take these methods as a referenceway in English pronunciation teaching.

4. For students, they should first try their best to create a beneficial pronunciationsurroundings to English acquisition. Because the time of pronunciation class is limited.Although the teachers have created a good pronunciation environment and found theeffective ways to teach, the subjects of language learning are still the students themselves.Only the students and the teachers these two sides combined together, the level ofpronunciation teaching and learning will be promoted effectively.

Bibliography

1Fries. C . Charles. Teaching and Learning www.51lunwen.org/language/ English as a Foreign Language[M].l945 .

2Lado, R . Linguistics Across Cultures: Applied Linguistics for Language Teachers AnnArbor[M]. Michigan: University of Michigan, 1957.

3Ellis, R . Understanding Second Language Acquisition[M]. Oxford, 1985.

4Terence Odlin, Language Transfer: Cross-linguistic influence in language learning[M]，上海外语教育出版社，2001.

5张婷婷.语音学习中母语迁移现象研究及其在英语教学中的启示[D].长春师范学院，2011

6黄冰.第二语言习得入门[M].广东高等教育出版社，2004

7甘宁.如何解决粤语对英语的语音负迁移的问题[D].华中师范大学,2011.

8李奇瑞.九江方言极其演变[J].九江师专学报,2000.

9张明渊.九江方言语音系统[J].九江职业技术学院学报,2001.

10周赣琛.普通话语音与英语语音的对比分析[J].黄冈职业技术学院,2004.

专业英语论文范文精选篇八

第一章文学评论

本章专门审查了以前的研究本论文相关的主题。因为几乎没有任何研究在过去，所以在第一部分，对语言转置做了研究以及引进国内外中式英语的解释都做出了研究，第二部分是中国式英语和翻译研究的审查。

1.1 Studies on Language Transfer语言迁移的研究

Language transfer has been a core issue in second language acquisition (SLA) andapplied linguistics for more than a century. However, scholars have had differentviews on the importance of language transfer. Some researchers considered it as themost significant factor in second language teaching and learning, while othersvirtually denied its existence as they were seeking for universalist explanation.However, in recent years, there has emerged a more balanced opinion, in which thesignificance of language transfer is acknowledged and in which transfer is believedto interact with a number of factors in ways that are not yet fully understood.Previous western research on language transfer can be generally pided into threetypes:

The first type features the behaviorist view and contrastive studies. In the 1950sand the 1960s, behaviorism played a predominant role in the area of languageteaching and learning. A distinguished representative who did early empirical researchon language transfer is Uriel Weinreich, whose benchmark book, Language inContact: Findings and Problems, was published in 1953. In his research on thephenomenon of bilingualism by American migrants, he found that language contact ina bilingual environment could lead to language interferences between the firstlanguage and the second language. The interferences could occur on different levelsof a language: phonology, grammar, vocabulary etc. Weinreich’s research promotedthe development of Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH). Although the CAHmodel was first proposed by Fries (1945),“the generally acknowledged founder of theCAH theory was the American linguist Robert Lado, with his milestone bookLinguistics across Cultures: Applied Linguistics for Language Teachers (1957)”(Zhao赵飞 2005:2). Lado proposed to make a contrast between the mother tongue and thetarget language, in order to find out their similarities and differences. According toLado, similarities between the native language and the target language will facilitatethe learning of the latter, thus positive transfer occurs, while their differences willbecome an obstacle in people's acquisition of the target language, and that is thenegative transfer. From the 1950s to the 1960s, researchers focused on the contrastiveanalysis of the linguistic differences between the mother tongue and the targetlanguage. The difficulties and problems that learners are most likely to come acrosscan be predicted through the contrastive studies about their linguistic features.

1.2 Studies on Chinglish and Translation中式英语的研究和翻译

Chinglish came into being ever since Chinese began to learn and use English.Scholars home and abroad have been devoting themselves to studying Chinglish foryears. Linguists and translators alike have shown great interest in the topic. Sol Alder,an American linguist, stated that it was impossible to eliminate Chinglish, and “thelonger one works on translation, the greater the danger that one becomes blind anddeaf to Chinglish” (1978: 27). Professor Ge Chuangui (葛传槼，1980) brought up theissue of Chinglish when talking about translating special terms and expressions withobvious Chinese characteristics. Li Wenzhong (李文中), a distinguished professor onapplied linguistics, argued that “Chinglish is kind of deformed English that isinfluenced or interfered by the mother tongue” (1993:18). Joan Pinkham (2000), anAmerican translator who used to work as a translation polisher at Foreign LanguagesPress and the Central Translation Bureau, provided numerous examples of Chinglishcontained in the work of Chinese writers or translators. She categorized the problemof Chinglish and offered valuable revision suggestions in her famous book TheTranslators’ Guide to Chinglish. Wang Nongsheng (王弄笙，2000), a foreignlanguage expert in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, also spot the problem of Chinglishin Chinese-to-English translation, and discussed the causes and ways www.51lunwen.orgto reduceChinglish in the article “Chinglish in Chinese-English Translation” published in theChinese Translators Journal. ZhuangYichuan (庄绎传，2000) stated in his speech“On Chinglish” that there were two reasons of Chinglish. One was misunderstandingof the original text, and the other was not being familiar with English characteristicsand adopting Chinese collocations and structures. M.A.K. Halliday, in his speech“Some Factors Affecting College-level English www.51lunwen.orgTeaching in 21st Century China”(2001), touched upon the problem of Chinglish occurring in the process of Englishteaching and learning in China. On the basis of interlanguage, Lin Qiong (林琼，2001)put forward that both Chinglish and China English were interlanguage variationsproduced by Chinese and affected by Chinese language culture, and they wereinevitable.

Chapter Ⅱ Theoretical Basis理论基础

2.1 The Concept of Chinglish中式英语的概念

As the interaction between China and the rest of the world keeps growing,Chinglish is no longer a new word to people. Chinglish appears now and then onnewspapers, business contracts, scientific reports, and even government documents. Itcan be seen and heard on formal and informal occasions. Surprisingly, Chinglish hasbeen found to be produced not only by average English learners in China but also bysome highly trained and experienced interpreters, causing inefficiencies incross-cultural communications.It is commonly believed that Chinglish first came into being in the trading societybetween China and Britain, and it has since gone through numerous changes.

However, to this date, there is still no unanimous definition on the word “Chinglish”.For Joan Pinkham, the author of The Translator's Guide to Chinglish, “Chinglish, ofcourse, is that misshapen, hybrid language that is neither English nor Chinese but thatmight be described as ‘English with Chinese characteristics’” (2006: 1). A fammousChinese linguist, Professor Li Wenzhong (李文中), proposed that “Chinglish isabnormal or deformed English that is produced by Chinese English learners or userswhen they are influenced by Chinese language rules” (1993:18). A third definitionfrom Wikipedia goes like this, “Chinglish is any poor or broken English that is ofChinese origin. Chinglish is usually found in written form”. A fourth definition,proposed by Deng Yanchang (邓炎昌), is perhaps the most complicated: “Chinglish isspeech or writing in English that shows the interference or influence of Chinese.

Chapter Ⅲ Manifestations of Chinglish ................................... 21-42

3.1 Data Description and Methodology ...................................21-22

3.2 Chinglish at Lexical Level ...................................22-35

3.2.1 Redundancy ...................................22-33

3.2.2 Synonyms in Pair ...................................33-35

3.3 Chinglish at Syntactical Level................................... 35-42

3.3.1 The Noun Plague................................... 35-37

3.3.2 Misplaced Phrases and Clauses................................... 37-38

3.3.3 Dangling Modifiers ...................................38-40

3.3.4 Parallel Structure ...................................40-42

Chapter Ⅳ Causes of Chinglish in Chinese ................................... 42-53

4.1 The Negative Transfer of Chinese ...................................42-46

4.1.1 The Transfer of Chinese ...................................42-44

4.1.2 The Transfer of Chinese Sentence Structures ...................................44-46

4.2 The Negative Transfer of Chinese Thought Patterns................................... 46-49

4.2.1 Intuitive Thought Pattern VS Analytical...................................46-48

4.2.2 Collectivism VS Inpidualism ...................................48-49

4.3 The Negative Influence of Formal Equivalence................................... 49-51

4.4 Possible Solutions to Chinglish...................................51-52

Conclusion结论

Chinglish, an awkward product of globalization, calls for attention from linguists,translators and anyone involved in cross-cultural communication. It is not anacceptable language, and it is different from China English. Chinglish can appear bothin written and spoken form. It can be produced not only by elementary Englishlearners, but also by some experienced and highly trained interpreters. Interpreters ofChinese premier’s press conferences should always be alert against Chinglish, as theirrepresentation of the premier’s remarks and answers will be heard and studied by tensof millions of people in the world.

At lexical level, Chinglish may take place in the form of redundant nouns,redundant verbs, redundant modifiers and synonyms in pair; at syntactic level, it maybe found in the form of noun plague, misplaced phrases and clauses, danglingmodifiers and parallel structure. As to the causes of Chinglish found in Chinesepremier’s press conference interpretation, there is “the negative transfer of Chineselinguistic features”, “the negative transfer of Chinese thought patterns” and “thenegative influence of formal equivalence”.

Since Chinglish has become one of the major factors that affect the quality ofinterpretation, there is an urgent need to find out solutions to remove it. Based on theaforesaid analysis, some suggestions on avoiding Chinglish for interpreters atpremiers’ press conferences are put forward.

专业英语论文范文精选篇九

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Necessity of the present study

In human beings verbal communication, spoken or written, a speaker or writer useslanguage not only to transmit information, exchange goods or services but also to conveyattitudes towards, comments or evaluations on what he/she says or writes as well as his/heraudience, namely the listeners or readers. In this process, metadiscourse, as one of the twoparts of discourse (the other part is primary discourse) helps the speaker or writer toconstruct a well-organized and logical discourse and to be involved or engaged into thesocial relations so as to interact with audience. So, in this sense, metadiscourse is not onlya linguistic phenomenon, but also a rhetorical and pragmatic strategy, which occurs ineveryday discourse as well as in specialized discourse, including spoken or writtenacademic discourse.Since the late 1980s, a great deal of research into metadiscourse has developed andmainly focused on written academic discourse (e.g., Vande Kopple, 1985; 1988; Crismore,1989; Markkanen et al., 1993; Mauranen, 1993; Hyland, 1998; 2005; del 2006; etc.).Although there is some existing previous research into spoken metadiscourse in academicEnglish, the native speakers of English are the objects (e.g., Luukka, 1994; Mauranen,2001; Hu, 2008; del, 2010; etc.). In addition, the treatment of metadiscourse tends tofocus on very specific categories and link one category with one type of metafunctions,namely, either textual function or interpersonal function. Take a newly research done by del (2010) for example. He proposes the taxonomy of personal metadiscourse inacademic lectures, which consists of 23 discourse functions.

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1.2 Orientation of the present study

Much metadiscourse research has largely stressed on written text, particularlyacademic writing, which ranges from theoretical study to empirical application. It is，therefore consensus that metadiscourse takes an important role in writing as well as EFLlearner’s composition. However, the research to date has emphasized on how to teachmetadiscourse rather than on how teacher’s classroom metadiscourse influences and guideslearners to notice and utilize along with the naturally-happened ‘comprehensible input’. Inaddition, unfortunately, there are few textbooks explicitly introducing knowledge onmetadiscourse in Chinese EFL context (Liu, 2009; Xu & Kang, 2008; Delvlin, 2004;Zhang, 2006; Ding & Wu, 2005).Teacher’s classroom discourse analysis and teacher talk studies have mainlyconcentrated on teacher-student interactions and activities, such as question-answer, instead of teacher’s metadiscourse analysis (Sinclair & Coulthard 1975; Cazden 1988; Ellis,1994; Swain, 2005; van Lier, 1996; Walsh, 2006).Looking more closely at how teachers use metadiscourse in the ESL classroom,Johnson (1995) points out that it is essential for teachers and those involved in ESLeducation to understand the dynamics of classroom communication, and that the nature ofclassroom communication lies in the interrelationship between what teachers and studentsbring to the classroom and what actually happens during face-to-face communication in theclassroom.

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Chapter Two Review of Relevant Literature

2.1 Introduction

Metadiscourse is an essential phenomenon of both written and spoken texts. Manyresearchers into metadiscourse have taken different perspectives to probe into it. Given thefocus of the current study on metadiscourse, this literature review mainly covers theprevious literature on metadiscourse and its related aspects including the studiescorpus-based EFL classroom discourse related to SLA perspective.The general background against which this chapter has been written includes twokinds of main studies. On the one hand, the fist type review is on studies of metadiscourse,which consists of four sections. In the first section, the definitions of metadiscourse aredescribed in more details, in which a discussion of metadiscourse, characterized asnon-propositional and secondary discourse in terms of its role in a discourse of written orspoken, has been covered. The second section examines some main taxonomies putforward by some dominant researchers in this field, which exhibits a clearer developmentof metadiscourse studies. Owing to the discussion of different classifications, a moreexplicit evidence for choosing a certain approach to classifications is enlightened tosupport the present study. The last two sections review the previous empirical andtheoretical studies of metadiscourse, which is oriented on applied linguistics in EFLcontext, in which it indicates some research issues and gaps significantly related to theconcentration for the present study.

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2.2 Review of metadiscourse studies

Metadiscourse is a widely used term in current discourse analysis, bearing a variousrelations with other fields of language studies. Although it has been growing important, agreat number of researchers study it from different aspects with different perspectives andapproaches. This section therefore will discuss the key elements, clarify the persitydefinitions and taxonomies, review and comment of empirical and theoretical studies, so asto lay a solid foundation for further investigation in the present study. From Zelling Harri’s coinage the term “metadiscourse” in 1959 to the mid-1980s inwhich it was adopted in discourse studies, interest in this notion gets to be concerned bysome researchers, which the publication of some of the first works on metadiscourse is awitness to it (Williams, 1981; Crismore, 1983; Vande Kopple, 1985, 1988 ), just as VandeKopple begins by claiming that “[M]uch of the recent work on the nature of informativetexts and on the processes that readers apply to them proceeds as if there is only one kindof meaning in such texts, the referential, ideational, or propositional” (1988: 233)，whichimplies that it is probably necessary to stress the other kind of meaning in such texts, thenon-referentical, non-topical or non-propositional.

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Chapter ThreeTowards a Framework of EFL .... 47

3.1 Introduction.........47

3.2 Inadequacies of existing metadiscourse studies..........47

3.3 The framework of EFL teachers’ classroom metadiscourse ..... 49

3.3.1 Defining linguistic metadiscourse markers........ 50

3.3.2 Features of the framework ..... 52

3.3.3 Linguistic realization of metadiscourse ...... 53

3.3.4 Functions of EFL teachers’ classroom metadiscourse ..... 59

3.4 Summary......64

Chapter Four Methodology ........ 65

4.1 Introduction.........65

4.2 Research questions.....65

4.3 Research design .........66

4.4 Operational elements of interpersonal model of metadiscourse......69

4.5 Stages of building a classroom discourse corpus for analysis .........70

4.6 Data preparation......... 73

4.7 Computer programs ..........74

4.8 Statistical analyses .....75

4.9 Summary......75

Chapter Five Results and Analyses of EFL Teachers’ Classroom Metadiscourse ..... 76

5.1 Introduction.........76

5.2 Overall results of metadiscourse markers in EFL classroom discourse.........77

5.3 Interactional metadiscourse in EFL teachers’ classroom discourse........ 79

5.4 Interactive metadiscourse in EFL classroom discourse ..........131

5.5 Summary.... 146

Chapter Six The Multifunctionality of EFL Teachers’Classroom Metadiscourse

6.1 Introduction

Multifunctionality refers to that metadiscourse cannot be treated as a strictly linguisticphenomenon at all, but should be regarded as a rhetorical and pragmatic strategy. Chapter 3proposed a theoretical framework for classroom metadiscourse in an attempt to explain andinterpret the multifunctionality of EFL teachers’ classroom metadiscourse. Chapter 4analyzed and discussed the research data and practical utilizations of ten categories ofmetadiscourse belonging to two major dimensions---interactional metadiscourse andinteractive metadiscourse. In the literature, there are a quite number of studies concernedwith the functions of metadiscourse, mainly focusing on a certain specific categories ofmetadiscourse markers and define one category with one kind of function in academicwriting (e.g. Hyland, 2000, 2005; Crismore, 1989; Cheng & Steffensen, 1996;Mauranen, 1993; etc.), medical discourse (Salager-Meyer, 1994), and textbooks(Holmes,1988a; Myers, 1992; Hyland, 1994, 2000), in addition they also make a clear-cutdistinction between textual and interpersonal metadiscourse markers. However, it is foundsome categories of metadiscourse markers have no impassable boundaries between textualand interpersonal functions, in which the factors, such as social engagement, genres andcontext are involved. Thus the present chapter turns to the discussions of multifunctionalityof EFL teachers’ classroom metadiscourse on the basis of theoretical framework, analysesand discussions towards data results and extracts from the corpus SLQC.

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Conclusions

This chapter concludes this dissertation by summarizing the major findings from thestudy of EFL teachers’ use of metadiscourse markers in classroom teaching in the Chinesecontext. Firstly, it provides the major findings from the study. And then, the theoretical andpedagogical implications are offered through discussions. Finally, the limitations of thepresent study followed by suggestions for further studies are discussed. This study investigates the EFL teachers’ use of metadiscourse in university classroomteaching in the Chinese contexts based on the corpus SLQC. This exploratory studyattempts to probe how the EFL teachers use the ten subcategories of metadiscoursemarkers to certain extent in university classroom teaching as well as their cooperation andinterplay in clusters for mulitifunctional qualities observed in classroom teaching.Metadiscourse has been demonstrated as an important means of facilitatingcommunication, promoting interaction, increasing understanding and interpretation andbuilding a relationship with audience in academic communities (e.g., Crismore, 1989;Hyland, 2000, 2005; Aguilar, 2008; Abdi, et al., 2010, etc.). To provide authentic anddemonstrative data to be analyzed, we have made great endeavor to build the corpus ofState-Level Quality Courses for university English majors for scrutiny, which comprises 24teachers’ classroom teaching transcripts from 6 universities. The concordancing softwareprogram was run to sort the great number of linguistic items of the ten subcategories ofmetadiscourse and calculate their numbers respectively. Particularly, a certain number ofspecific metadiscourse markers which belong to different categories have been decipheredin there contexts and calculated ‘by hand’.

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References (omitted)

专业英语论文范文精选篇十

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study

In English speaking, there are many words or expressions, like “oh, you know,you see, I mean, that is to say, in other words, as I said”, which probably are commonforms of discourse expressions in speech communication, and they are collectivelyreferred as “discourse markers”. They are playing certain semantic and pragmaticfunctions to control interactive verbal communication in various ways in the forms ofconjunctions (and, because, therefore), adverbs (incidentally, actually), interjections(oh, well), phrases or clauses (I mean, you know, as a consequence of). People mightseldom notice this kind of “small words or phrases” which are subconsciously used tofunctionally form the coherent contexts in order to achieve the purpose ofcommunication.

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1.2 The Purpose and Significance of the Present Study

The study of discourse markers has been conducted numerously and it is still afield which is ambiguous. As Brown and Yule (1983:1) put forward, “the analysis ofdiscourse, is necessarily, the analysis of language in use. As such, it cannot berestricted to the description of linguistic forms independent of the purposes orfunctions which forms are designed to serve in human affairs.” Discourse markersoccur in both written and spoken language. Proficient EFL speakers probably canhandle discourse markers skillfully and smoothly on a subconscious level, whichhelps them to be more fluent in the language speaking. The occurrence of discoursemarkers during human communication is an indisputable fact; nevertheless, so farthey have not been entitled with an acknowledged and unified interpretation of name,definition, classification, and function.Discourse markers have aroused a large number of scholars’ researchenthusiasms in the past years based on different research perspectives. Recently, thestudy of discourse markers has been conducted from the perspective of syntax,semantics, pragmatics, and cognitive linguistics. Discourse markers play a role invarious ways to regulate the interaction of speech communications, although they donot constitute propositional contents directly and are not restricted by syntacticstructures. The speech meaning will still be understood by decoding of the discoursemarkers, such as topic-shift, information added, and conversional turns in theutterance. Moreover, discourse markers are widely used in various language situationsto achieve different aims such as discourse pause, transition effect, discoursecoherence, and pragmatic function. The proficiency of discourse markers can makethe discourse more coherent so as to make the communication smooth. Therefore, thestudy of discourse markers is significant theoretically and practically.

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Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Chapter Overview

Research of discourse markers originated in the mid-20th century. In 1953,Randolph Quirk put forward that discourse markers commonly existed in the spokenEnglish. Linguistics has gradually noticed that the discourse markers were arepresentative feature in human languages which can be accompanied by the aid ofcognitive, social, expression and discourse knowledge (Huang, 2001). Discoursemarkers were also recognized as the structures with procedural meaning and withoutprocedural meaning, which demonstrated that they would not influence utterance truthcondition. However, the use of discourse markers could indeed help communicationto be effective in the process of communication. Schiffrin's (1987) Discourse Markersis recognized as staples of the study of discourse markers, which systematicallysummarized the research on discourse markers.In this chapter, discourse markers were mainly introduced from the aspects ofdefinitions, classifications, characteristics, and functions. After the generalintroduction of the basic items, representative studies of discourse markers fromdifferent approaches both abroad and in China were reviewed. Studies of discoursemarkers in western countries were illustrated from three different perspectives:Schiffrin’s Coherence, Fraser’s Pragmatic Approach, and Blackmore’s RelevanceApproach. The last part of this chapter was given to the introduction of publicspeaking, impromptu speeches, and the importance of using discourse markers inimpromptu speeches which were adopted as the present study’s linguistic data.

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2.2 Discourse Markers

Discourse markers have been comprehensively studied for the past two decades.However, no unified definition was given to label it due to the different theoreticalperspectives. Firstly, the terminology of discourse markers was developed through thebeginning of discourse markers analysis and changed in various ways based on theresearch purposes and perspectives. For instance, discourse markers have beendefined as pragmatic expressions (Erman, 1987), discourse connectives (Blakemore,1987), pragmatic operators (Ariel, 1994), discourse particles (Schourup,1985; Aijmer,2002), semantic conjuncts (Quirk, et al.,1985), sentence connectives (Halliday &Hasan, 1976), semantic connectives (Van Dijk,1979), cue words (Rouchota, 1996),discourse particles (Schourup, 1985), discourse connectives (Blakemore,1987, 1992,2002), conversational routines (Aijmer, 1996), pragmatic formatives (Fraser, 1988),pragmatic connectives (Van Dijk, 1985; Stubbs, 1983), etc. Thus, a large number ofterminologies appeared based on different research backgrounds, and even now thereis no unified terminology and definition have been illustrated.

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Chapter Three Theoretical Framework ....25

3.1 Chapter Overview ....25

3.2 Coherence-Based Theory .......25

3.3 Discourse Markers and Local Coherence....28

3.4 Discourse Markers and Global Coherence.........29

3.5 Discourse Markers and Contextual Coherence .........30

3.6 Summary ....31

Chapter Four Research Methodology ......33

4.1 Research Design.......33

4.2 Research subjects .....33

4.3 Research Instrument........34

4.4 Research Questions .........35

4.5 Research Procedure.........35

4.6 Summary ....38

Chapter Five Results and Discussions .....39

5.1 Chapter Overview ....39

5.2 Results of Data Analysis ........39

5.3 Discussions .......51

5.4 Summary ....51

Chapter Five Results and Discussions

5.1 Chapter Overview

This chapter presented the results of the data analysis of discourse markers inthe impromptu speech given by the college students. Depending on the researchquestions, the author conducted the present study based on the theoretical frameworkand research methodology. The following sub-sections were the results of dataanalysis, which was pided into three parts based on three questions with discussions. Discourse markers have been studied in the various conversations, but rarelywere explored in the impromptu speeches. After the conduction of discourse markersannotation and analysis, the presence of discourse markers in the impromptu speechesturned out to be a coherence device in forming a context, helping EFL speakers toexpress their ideas, emotions, and opinions logically and making the audiencecoordinate their understanding with the speakers’ through connecting the prior andfollowing information. As Lenk (1998b) said that discourse markers were one kind ofverbal items which influenced and guided the hearers to understand the utterance.Moreover, Aijmer (1996:1-47) also agreed that discourse markers could be referred to“function as cues or guides to the hearer’s interpretation”. In the following part, theresults of the research question were demonstrated one by one.

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Conclusion

The previous chapters have already interpreted the present study background,purpose, and significance with three research questions. General review of therelevant literature has been conducted with relevant research methodology. Theconclusions chapter mainly involved five sections. Section 6.2 summarized the mainfindings of the present study with further discussions. Section 6.3 concerned theimplications of using discourse markers in impromptu speeches and other types oforal English. Section 6.4 provided the limitation of the study objectively. Section 6.5summarized the whole situation of the present qualitative and quantitative study. Firstly, discourse markers are frequently adopted in Chinese College Students’Impromptu Speeches. Among more than two thousand sentences, there are 1.12discourse markers per sentence.Secondly, Chinese College Students may prefer to use these top eight types ofdiscourse markers, such as additional, causal and consequential, contrastive, emphatic,temporal, qualificatory, equivalent, and fillers.Thirdly, there are ten typical discourse markers which may be most commonlyused in Chinese College Students’ Impromptu Speeches, namely and, but, so, because,when, very, really, if, or, i think, which belongs to the above mentioned top eight typesof discourse markers. It possibly demonstrates that each inpidual discourse markeraccounts a greater proportion comparing with the other discourse markers in the sametype.

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References (omitted)