笑,香教學 tE,旬在sli 'Teaclii,吟唱:[Leami,移
26.2 (October2∞ I):89-106
The Placement of English Adverbial Clauses
in Narrative Texts of
Native Speakers and Chinese College Students·
Hsueh-Ying Yu National Chengchi University
Abstract
The placement ofEnglish adverbial clauses has scarcely received due attention in the English language teaching in Taiwan. One major reason of such negligence is that the function of adverbial clauses has not been fully understood by English teachers,
and the placement of adverbial clauses has been wrongly treated as a sentence combining issue. Thep山poseof this study is first,to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the discourse function of adverbial clauses,and to see if Chinese students have fully understood the function of adverbial clauses. Then,we wish to apply this knowledge to writing instruction as a part of pedagogical grammar. The result of our analysis shows that the placement of adverbial clauses is highly discourse determined. Discourse factors have been found to contribute to determining the positions of adverbial clauses: foregroundlbackground information structure
,
the scope of dependence of subordinate adverbial clauses,
topic continuity of neighboring clauses,and time sequence of described eventsKey Words: adverbial clauses,information structure,scope of dependence,
tOpiC contmulty,time sequence
INTRODUCTION
The placement of English adverbial clauses2 has scarcely received due attention in the English language teaching in Taiwan. One major reason of such negligence is that the function of adverbial clauses has not been fully understood by English teachers. In the perception of most people
,
adverbial clauses serve toI This paper is a result of a one-year project--Coherence Breaks in Sophomore English Composition: A Study on the Application of Discourse Grammar to Composition Instruction NSC 89-2411-H-004-004. We wish to express our thanks to the National Science Council, which provides financial support for this project. Also,we are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments
2 Subordinate clauses include participial