THE FUNCTIONS AND THE ORDERING OF 'IF-CONDITIONALS' IN ENGLISH : A GENRE ANALYSIS

ISBN-13: 9783639128208 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 156 str.

Shu Pin Nall

Opis

Previous research studies are in agreement that thecanonical order for English if-conditionals issentence-initial rather than final. However, earlierfindings regarding the distribution of the orderingbetween initial and final if-conditionals representonly those patterns specific to the limited number ofgenres examined. This corpus study isbased on a research approach which includes a largersampling pool and a selection of representativegenres as well as detailed statistical and contentanalyses. It examines the variations in thedistributional patterns between initial and finalif-clauses within each individual genre and acrossdifferent genres. The findings of this study suggestthat if-conditionals have significantly differentdistributional pattern across genres. In contrast tothe consensus view that initialif-clause rather than final is the dominant clauseorder, in 3 of the genres examined, final if-clausesoccur more frequently than initial. In addition, in 3other genres, these two clause types are equallydistributed. This study thus identifies genre as asignificant factor influencing sententialif-conditional placement.

O autorze

Shu Pin Nall received her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from Ball
State University. She is currently an assistant professor in
National Kinmen Institute of Technology in Taiwan. Her research
interest includes Second Language Acquisition, Discourse
Analysis, Second Language Writing and ESL/EFL Teaching Methods.