Two fundamental components of causality are the Cause and the Result. In linguistic work the distinction between these aspects is commonly blurred, presumably because the primary research focus has been on describing how language encodes causality. The semantic nature of the component events and the constraints on their relationship are seldom discussed; however, the current work aims to shed light on a broader spectrum of features that underlie the concept. This is an essential foundation for understanding how language communicates Result. The present discussion explores and illuminates the nature of this concept focusing on a relatively open-ended set of linguistic elements that can play a role in shaping a discourse relation in addition to discourse connectives. This is in contrast to the majority of the previous research, which has been quite intensely concerned with investigating a limited collection of well-established causality markers. Also, despite the fact that English has been used in studies on causality both as a control language and a metalanguage, there is surprisingly little work on the semantics of the relations that occur specifically in English, let alone Result relations. By borrowing from several cognitively-oriented approaches and combining empirical data from two written corpora (British National Corpus and the Penn Discourse Treebank) with experimental work, the current study systematically investigates the conceptual and linguistic properties of several closely related Result relation types (including Purpose), along with the joint role of discourse connectives and other discourse elements in conveying the intended sense. The findings indicate that linguistic signals of the conceptual structure of the relation seem to play a more significant role in the interpretation than explicit marking. Two factors emerged as more vital cues than the presence of the ambiguous connective so.  In Purpose relations, a modal auxiliary conveying an intended effect, and in Result relations the presence/absence of an intentionally acting actor are crucial for disambiguation. The multifunctional connective therefore seems to merely satisfy the mandatory marking requirement related to the intrinsically unrealized (‘nonveridical’) nature of Purpose. In Result the presence of an ambiguous marker is to a great extent optional in English. However, discourse markers can also reflect how language users categorize causal event types. This claim has been confirmed in several cross-linguistic analyses, but the lexicon of English connectives has not been systematically investigated from this vantage point. The few existing studies found that the uses of English connectives are quite unconstrained across causal categories. The present work contributes to this line of research and suggests that two unambiguous markers, as a result and for this reason, indeed cover a wide range of causal event types; however, they also exhibit significant tendencies to occur prototypically in certain relation types. The presence and role of an intentionally acting discourse participant behind both real-world and linguistic causally-related events contributes to these tendencies. The contexts that include such a participant are regarded as intrinsically subjective and have been found to manifest surface expressions of subjectivity in previous work on other languages. The current study confirms similar tendencies in the linguistic construal and marking of Result relations in English, which proves that certain language elements partake in establishing the intended interpretation on a par with discourse connectives.  What emerges as a result of this discussion, is therefore an account on how English utilizes the broad category of Result and what linguistic elements are used to convey the array of resultative events.

This thesis considers the automatic acquisition of knowledge about discourse connectives. It focuses in particular on their semantic properties, and on the relationships that hold between them. There is a considerable body of theoretical and empirical work on discourse connectives. For example, Knott (1996) motivates a taxonomy of discourse connectives based on relationships between them, such as HYPONYMY and EXCLUSIVE, which are defined in terms of substitution tests. Such work requires either great theoretical insight or manual analysis of large quantities of data. As a result, to date no manual classification of English discourse connectives has achieved complete coverage. For example, Knott gives relationships between only about 18% of pairs obtained from a list of 350 discourse connectives. This thesis explores the possibility of classifying discourse connectives automatically, based on their distributions in texts. This thesis demonstrates that state-of-the-art techniques in lexical acquisition can successfully be applied to acquiring information about discourse connectives. Central to this thesis is the hypothesis that distributional similarity correlates positively with semantic similarity. Support for this hypothesis has previously been found for word classes such as nouns and verbs (Miller and Charles, 1991; Resnik and Diab, 2000, for example), but there has been little exploration of the degree to which it also holds for discourse connectives. We investigate the hypothesis through a number of machine learning experiments. These experiments all use unsupervised learning techniques, in the sense that they do not require any manually annotated data, although they do make use of an automatic parser. First, we show that a range of semantic properties of discourse connectives, such as polarity and veridicality (whether or not the semantics of a connective involves some underlying negation, and whether the connective implies the truth of its arguments, respectively), can be acquired automatically with a high degree of accuracy. Second, we consider the tasks of predicting the similarity and substitutability of pairs of discourse connectives. To assist in this, we introduce a novel information theoretic function based on variance that, in combination with distributional similarity, is useful for learning such relationships. Third, we attempt to automatically construct taxonomies of discourse connectives capturing substitutability relationships. We introduce a probability model of taxonomies, and show that this can improve accuracy on learning substitutability relationships. Finally, we develop an algorithm for automatically constructing or extending such taxonomies which uses beam search to help find the optimal taxonomy.

Discourse connectives signal discourse coherence by making discourse relations explicit and by playing a role in the organization and structure of information in discourse. Therefore, their use in L2 writing is an important field of study that is likely to have implications for discourse competence both at the sentence-level discourse and at the level of larger discourse structure. The aim of the present study is to account for the use of three contrastive discourse connectives, but, however and although at both the microstructural and the macrostructural levels of discourse in the argumentative essays written by Turkish learners of English and native speakers of American English. The patterns of use by L2 learners are compared with those of native speakers. The analysis is based on 120 essays from two corpora: Turkish subcorpus of the International Corpus of Learner English (TICLE) and American subcorpus of Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (ALOCNESS). The study reveals that the argumentative essays of Turkish learners of English and American students do not differ significantly regarding the three connectives neither structurally nor semantically. However, at the macrostructural level of discourse, differences concerning the pattern of argumentation and the role that the connectives play in the claim-counterargument-refutation pattern of organization were observed. Further analysis on other lexical items used in argumentation shows that in ALOCNESS, there is more reliance on other means, such as the lexical items expressing modality and those signaling the argumentative nature of the text.

This study unravels the connector patterns and mental activities that the Chinese learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) and native-English speakers display/perform upon the adoption of adversative, causal and temporal connectors while writing English argumentations, descriptions and narrations. It focuses on the ways in which the Chinese ESL learners’ thinking and connector production recursively interact in meaning-building processes. To elicit information of the writers’ mental processes, three English writing tasks with concurrent verbal reports were used as main elicitation tools. Chinese university students from Low, Mid and High proficiency levels and native-American-English users (Native) were asked to speak out their thoughts while writing English argumentations, descriptions and narrations. Data were also elicited from the retrospective verbal reports and following-up interviews which were conducted right after each writing and concurrent verbal report. Comparison of connector patterns in English texts produced by the Chinese and native-English writers suggests that the Chinese Mid and Low groups use significantly more connectors than the Native group while connector frequencies between the Chinese High and the Native group reveal no significant difference. It has been argued that the High-level students, being more linguistically skilled, can use connectors as well as other cohesive devices to form textual connections as their native-English-speaking counterparts. However, the Mid and Low-level writers, lacking abilities of manipulating other cohesive devices, tend to rely mainly on connectors. Moreover, comparison between the three Chinese groups indicates that the Mid uses significantly more connectors in English texts than the High and Low groups. The Mid group, on the one hand, is not linguistically mature enough to use various cohesive devices as skillfully as the High group, but, on the other hand, has more knowledge on the connector usage than the Low. When connectors were analyzed by category, it is found that the Chinese students use fewer adversative connectors in argumentations and narrations than the native-English writers. This pattern is found to have arisen from the Chinese students’ rigid textual development. ESL learners, due to their poor second language (L2) proficiency, cannot develop sophisticated argumentative and narrative structures. Instead of resorting to counter-arguments and reverse-order narration, they tend to simply list ideas. This could result in lower occurrences of adversative connectors in their argumentations and narrations. The data that are extracted from concurrent verbal reports reveal that the Chinese students use their first language (L1) for five mental activities: (1) initiation, (2) revision, (3) comment-making, (4) decision-making, and (5) monologue-conducting while using L2 for only two: initiation and revision. Examinations on the cognitive demand of the mental activities show that ESL learners rely more on their L1 to perform the cognitively more demanding activities such as comment-making, decision-making and monologue-conducting. Furthermore, the verbal data show that the L2 proficiency levels affect ESL writers’ mental activities in two ways. First, proficient ESL learners report larger linguistic units than the less proficient ones. Second, proficient ESL learners report higher proportions of cognitively more demanding activities than the less proficient ones. These two patterns are argued to result from the different working memory capacities of the proficient and less proficient ESL writers as well as the different ways of processing information in their working memory. Finally, a model of L2 writing process is developed to delineate how L2 proficiency, working memory and cognitive process interact and contribute to L2 writing process. Theoretically, this L2 model refines the L1 model and enriches the current understanding of the L2 writing process in three ways. First, mental activities are classified according to how much cognitive workload they demand. Such categorization is necessary because it explains ESL learners’ language choice while doing verbal reports and also explains the difficulties the learners encounter in L2 writing. Second, the L2 model separates the composing process as pre- and post-stage, which allows us to see how frequencies and types of mental activities differ in the two phases. Third, by including language choice, the L2 model addresses a wider interpretation of the mental activities in writing process. Pedagogically, the comprehensive and explanatory accounts of the connector patterns and mental activities address the problems that ESL learners have when using connectors in L2 writing. This will definitely facilitate the teaching of L2 writing.

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Este estudo apresenta um levantamento de estruturas sintáticas causais e explicativas e sua correlação, respectivamente, com os modos narrativo e argumentativo de organização do texto, evidenciando a frequência de tais construções nos respectivos gêneros textuais: notícia, crônica, editorial e redação de vestibular. Para a coleta de dados, analisam-se 400 (quatrocentos) textos, 100 (cem) de cada gênero supramencionado. Há o confronto de conectivos que, na tradicional escolar, representam formas de expressão da causalidade (sentido restrito) e da explicação, repensando-se aspectos da descrição e do ensino de Língua Portuguesa, com vistas à proficiência discursiva na modalidade escrita. Aponta como principais resultados: a) a existência de três grupos de conectivos explicativos: os exclusivamente causais, os exclusivamente explicativos e os que exercem dupla função; b) a correlação entre os três modos verbais e a explicação, e, no caso da causalidade, uma correlação apenas com os modos verbais Indicativo e Subjuntivo; c) uma correspondência entre causalidade (no sentido estrito) e narração, e entre explicação e argumentação; d) a relação entre Factualidade e as estruturas causais, e entre o ato de fala chamado Justificativa e as orações explicativas, expressando não apenas ordens, pedidos, convites, opiniões e perguntas. Conclui que o estudo dos conectivos causais e explicativos deve estimular a reconstrução do conhecimento e a observância dos elementos verbais (disponíveis na língua) que são responsáveis pela construção dos sentidos. Além disso, que o ensino de Língua Portuguesa deve estar centrado em uma abordagem produtiva, mais funcional, não essencialmente classificatória e conteudista, de forma que a gramática, com a contribuição de estudos do discurso, promova o desenvolvimento de habilidades e competências de produção de textos. Não se propõe com isso que a tradição escolar seja descartada. Ao contrário, é mais uma reflexão, no caso, intradisciplinar, com vistas à construção de uma prática didático-pedagógica em língua materna / This study presents an assessment of causal and explicative syntactic structures and their respective correspondence with the narrative and argumentative modes of text organization, evidencing the frequency of such constructions in the following textual genres: news, chronicle, editorial and students writing in college entrance exams (vestibular). For data gathering, we have analyzed 400 (four hundred) texts, 100 (one hundred) of each aforementioned genres. A comparison is made with connectives which, according to traditional educational practices, represent ways of expressing cause (restrict sense) and explanation, and thus we rethink aspects of Portuguese language description and teaching, with the purpose of improving proficiency in written discourse. The principal findings are: a) the existence of three groups of explicative connectives: those which are solely causal, those which are solely explicative and those that comprise both functions; b) the correlation among the three verb moods and explanation, and, in the case of causality, the correlation only with Indicative and Subjunctive verb moods; c) the relationship between causality (in the strict sense) and narration, and between explanation and argumentation; d) the relationship between factuality and causal structures, and between the act of speech called Justification and explicative sentences, expressing not only orders, requests, invitations, opinions and questions. We conclude that the study of casual and explicative connectives should stimulate the reconstruction of knowledge and the analysis of verbal elements (available in the language), which are responsible for the construction of meanings. In addition, the teaching of Portuguese language should focus on a productive approach, more functional, not essentially based on classifications and contents, so that grammar, with the contribution of discourse studies, may foster the improvement of skills and competences in text writing. We do not propose, with this study, that traditional school teaching should be disregarded. On the contrary, this is only another approach, in this case, intradisciplinary, with the purpose of constructing a didactic-pedagogical practice for Portuguese language as mother tongue

Este estudo apresenta um levantamento de estruturas sintáticas causais e explicativas e sua correlação, respectivamente, com os modos narrativo e argumentativo de organização do texto, evidenciando a frequência de tais construções nos respectivos gêneros textuais: notícia, crônica, editorial e redação de vestibular. Para a coleta de dados, analisam-se 400 (quatrocentos) textos, 100 (cem) de cada gênero supramencionado. Há o confronto de conectivos que, na tradicional escolar, representam formas de expressão da causalidade (sentido restrito) e da explicação, repensando-se aspectos da descrição e do ensino de Língua Portuguesa, com vistas à proficiência discursiva na modalidade escrita. Aponta como principais resultados: a) a existência de três grupos de conectivos explicativos: os exclusivamente causais, os exclusivamente explicativos e os que exercem dupla função; b) a correlação entre os três modos verbais e a explicação, e, no caso da causalidade, uma correlação apenas com os modos verbais Indicativo e Subjuntivo; c) uma correspondência entre causalidade (no sentido estrito) e narração, e entre explicação e argumentação; d) a relação entre Factualidade e as estruturas causais, e entre o ato de fala chamado Justificativa e as orações explicativas, expressando não apenas ordens, pedidos, convites, opiniões e perguntas. Conclui que o estudo dos conectivos causais e explicativos deve estimular a reconstrução do conhecimento e a observância dos elementos verbais (disponíveis na língua) que são responsáveis pela construção dos sentidos. Além disso, que o ensino de Língua Portuguesa deve estar centrado em uma abordagem produtiva, mais funcional, não essencialmente classificatória e conteudista, de forma que a gramática, com a contribuição de estudos do discurso, promova o desenvolvimento de habilidades e competências de produção de textos. Não se propõe com isso que a tradição escolar seja descartada. Ao contrário, é mais uma reflexão, no caso, intradisciplinar, com vistas à construção de uma prática didático-pedagógica em língua materna / This study presents an assessment of causal and explicative syntactic structures and their respective correspondence with the narrative and argumentative modes of text organization, evidencing the frequency of such constructions in the following textual genres: news, chronicle, editorial and students writing in college entrance exams (vestibular). For data gathering, we have analyzed 400 (four hundred) texts, 100 (one hundred) of each aforementioned genres. A comparison is made with connectives which, according to traditional educational practices, represent ways of expressing cause (restrict sense) and explanation, and thus we rethink aspects of Portuguese language description and teaching, with the purpose of improving proficiency in written discourse. The principal findings are: a) the existence of three groups of explicative connectives: those which are solely causal, those which are solely explicative and those that comprise both functions; b) the correlation among the three verb moods and explanation, and, in the case of causality, the correlation only with Indicative and Subjunctive verb moods; c) the relationship between causality (in the strict sense) and narration, and between explanation and argumentation; d) the relationship between factuality and causal structures, and between the act of speech called Justification and explicative sentences, expressing not only orders, requests, invitations, opinions and questions. We conclude that the study of casual and explicative connectives should stimulate the reconstruction of knowledge and the analysis of verbal elements (available in the language), which are responsible for the construction of meanings. In addition, the teaching of Portuguese language should focus on a productive approach, more functional, not essentially based on classifications and contents, so that grammar, with the contribution of discourse studies, may foster the improvement of skills and competences in text writing. We do not propose, with this study, that traditional school teaching should be disregarded. On the contrary, this is only another approach, in this case, intradisciplinary, with the purpose of constructing a didactic-pedagogical practice for Portuguese language as mother tongue

[pt] Com base no conceito de conjunção de Halliday e Hasan, esta pesquisa de caráter psicolinguístico busca verificar o processamento de relações conjuntivas causais internas e externas, bem como o papel dos conectivos nesse processamento. Para isso, primeiro foi feita uma atividade exploratória de produção textual junto a alunos de sétimo e oitavo anos do Ensino Fundamental, para verificar se nessa faixa de escolaridade eles já utilizam relações conjuntivas causais internas e externas, e se as realizam léxico-gramaticalmente por meio de conectivos. Confirmado o uso dessas relações, foram realizados testes de compreensão leitora off-line e teste cloze em turmas do oitavo e nono do Ensino Fundamental, respectivamente. O resultado da análise estatística dos dados indicou que as relações conjuntivas causais sob investigação apresentam custos de processamento distintos. Nos testes de compreensão, em que a tarefa do participante consistiu na verificação de afirmativas relativas ao conteúdo depreendido do texto, as relações conjuntivas causais externas foram mais facilmente processadas. No teste cloze, em que o estabelecimento de relações entre orações é feito pelo aluno e, nesse sentido, mais dependente de seu conhecimento extralinguístico e do tipo de conectivo que pode expressar adequadamente tais vínculos semânticos, as relações externas parecem ter trazido mais custo para o processamento do que as internas. No caso das internas, além da identificação do caráter argumentativo do texto, pistas de ordem linguística, tais como emprego de recursos modalizadores, em especial de adjetivos, e tempo/modo verbal, podem ter facilitado o reconhecimento do tipo de relação (independentemente de ter-se efetuado uma compreensão mais efetiva do texto). Em relação à presença ou ausência de conectivo, não foi verificado efeito principal dessa variável em nenhum dos experimentos, o que pode, em princípio, ser relacionado à força da relação causal entre as orações, que, mesmo na ausência do conectivo, é possível ser recuperada pelo aluno nos textos utilizados. Este trabalho representa uma contribuição para a questão da leitura em sala de aula, particularmente no que tange à compreensão de textos de natureza argumentativa, em que as relações conjuntivas causais internas e externas comparecem substancialmente, e devem, portanto, ser mais bem abordadas nas aulas de todas as disciplinas, trabalhando-se uma interpretação que vá além da superfície textual. / [en] Based on the concept of conjunction as presented by Halliday and Hasan, this research, which has a psycholinguistic character, aims to verify the processing of internal and external causal conjunctive relations, as well as the role of connectives in this processing. For this, it was first made an exploratory activity of writing with students from 7th and 8th grades of elementary school , to see whether in this level of schooling they already use internal and external causal conjunctive relations, and if they do it lexical- grammatically through connectives . Having confirmed the use of these relations, we performed the off -line reading comprehension test and cloze test in classes from the 8th and 9th grades of Elementary Education, respectively. The result of statistical analysis of the data indicated that the causal conjunctive relationships under investigation have different processing costs. In the comprehension tests, where the task of the participant was the verification of statements about the content inferred from the text, external causal conjunctive relations were more easily processed . In the cloze test , in where the establishment of relations between sentences is done by the student and, thus , depend more on its extra-linguistic knowledge and on the type of connective that can appropriately express such semantic links, external relations seem to have brought more cost to the processing than the internal ones. In the case of the internal ones, beyond identifying the argumentative character of the text, linguistic cues, such as the use of modal resources, especially adjectives and the use of certain verb tenses and moods, may have favored the recognition of the type of relation (regardless of having had a more effective understanding of the text). Regarding the presence or absence of connective it was not observed a main effect of this variable in any of the experiments, which can, at first, be related to the strength of the causal relationship between clauses, which even in the absence of connective can be retrieved by the student in the texts used. This work brings a contribution to the question of reading in the classroom, particularly with regard to text comprehension of argumentative nature, in which internal and external causal conjunctive relations appear substantially, and should therefore be best addressed in class from all subjects, exercising an interpretation that goes beyond the surface of the text.

O presente trabalho apresenta e desenvolve conceitos oriundos da Linguística Cognitiva para investigar os aspectos cognitivos da codificação das relações causais introduzidas por conectores oracionais da língua alemã: da, denn e weil. Para tanto, este trabalho apropriou-se do aparato teórico e metodológico desenvolvido por Pander Maat & Degand (2001) e que concebe a causalidade não como uma relação única, mas como uma categoria gradual que engloba diferentes níveis de conexão. Diante disso, desenvolveram-se duas atividades elementares ao longo do trabalho. Em primeiro lugar, o levantamento bibliográfico da teoria em torno de diferentes abordagens à temática da causalidade que serviram de base para a discussão entretida nos dois capítulos iniciais. Em segundo lugar, a análise empírica de ocorrências de cada um dos conectores a partir dos métodos desenvolvidos por Pander Maat & Degand (2001), a fim de replicar seu estudo e investigar de que maneira o gradiente de relações causais pode contribuir para o estudo da causalidade na língua alemã. Ao contrapor as abordagens desenvolvidas nas tradições formalista e funcionalista de análise linguística, o presente trabalho procurou argumentar que a investigação adequada dos fenômenos relacionados à causalidade seja desenvolvidas no escopo da Linguística Cognitiva e, no caso específico desta pesquisa, no aparato teórico da Gramática Cognitiva, de Langacker (1987, 1991, 2008), já que se trata de pesquisa envolvendo aspectos da codificação gramatical da causalidade. Numa segunda etapa da discussão teórica, estabeleceram-se as bases para a pesquisa da causalidade no escopo da Gramática Cognitiva. Argumentou-se que, para o estudo bem-sucedido da causalidade, são necessários três componentes básicos: uma base conceitual sobre a qual se definem os parâmetros essenciais da experiência causal, um sujeito de consciência, ou seja, um conceituador capaz de estabelecer relações de causa a partir da base, e um conjunto de operações de perspectivação conceitual (construal operations) que determinam as formas de acesso à base conceitual. A interação entre esses três componentes determinam as diferentes categorias relacionais que compõem o gradiente causal. São elas: relação causal involuntária, relação causal voluntária, relação epistêmica causal, relação epistêmica não causal, relação de motivação entre atos de fala e relação de paráfrase entre atos de fala. A realização da parte prática do trabalho desenvolveu-se a partir da aplicação do teste de paráfrases proposto pelos autores do estudo original. As paráfrases foram adaptadas para servirem à língua alemã e suas particularidades. Do teste de paráfrase resultou que os conectores da e weil concorrem no âmbito das relações causais voluntárias. As relações epistêmicas causais são codificadas por todos os três conectores e seus usos se diferenciam a partir de diferentes organizações da estrutura informacional e do gerenciamento comunicativo. As relações epistêmicas não causais são introduzidas por da e denn, enquanto somente denn introduz relações de motivação entre atos de fala. As relações das extremidades do gradiente (causais involuntárias e paráfrase entre atos de fala) não são codificadas por meio dos conectores analisados / This master thesis introduces and develops concepts from Cognitive Linguistics to investigate the cognitive aspects of the encoding of causal relations introduced by the following sentence connectors in German: da, denn and weil. Therefore, this work took the theoretical and methodological apparatus developed by Pander Maat & Degand (2001), which conceive causality not as one single relation, but as a gradual category that encompasses dierent levels of connection. Thus, two basic research activities were established. Firstly, the literature survey of the theory around dierent approaches to the issue of causality that formed the basis for the discussion entertained in the first and second chapter. Secondly, the empirical analysis of occurrences of each of the connectors employed the methods developed by Pander Maat & Degand (2001) in order to replicate their study and thus to investigate how the gradient of causal relations might contribute to the study of causality in the German language. By opposing the approaches developed in the formalist and functionalist traditions of linguistic analysis, this study sought to argue that the proper investigation of phenomena related to causality are developed in the scope of Cognitive Linguistics and, in the specific case of this research, the theoretical apparatus of Cognitive Grammar, by Langacker (1987, 1991, 2008), since it comes to research involving aspects of grammatical encoding of causality. On a second phase, the theoretical discussion set up the foundation for the research of causality in the scope of Cognitive Grammar. It was argued that three basic components are needed to the successful study of causality: a conceptual base on which the essential parameters of the causal experience are defined, a subject of consciousness, i.e., a conceptualizer capable of establishing causal relations, and set of construal operations which determine the forms of access to the conceptual base. The interaction between these three components determines the dierent relational categories that comprise the causal gradient. They are: nonvolitional causality, volitional causality, epistemic causal relations, noncausal epistemic relations, relations between speech acts I (motivation) and relations between speech acts II (paraphrase). The empirical research was developed by means of a paraphrase test, which was proposed by the authors of the original study. Paraphrases were adapted to serve the German language and its peculiarities. The paraphrase test shown that the connectors da and weil compete under the voluntary causal relationships. Causal epistemic relations are encoded by all three connectors and their uses dier due to several possible organizations in the information structure and the communicative management strategies they mobilize in their usage events. The noncausal epistemic relations are only introduced by the denn. Moreover, denn also introduces relations between speech acts (motivation). The relations of the both ends of the gradient (nonvolitional causality and paraphrase of speech acts) are not encoded by means of the connectors analyzed

This study investigates the acquisition of Chinese connectives by second language learners under the theoretical framework of usage-based theory. Language is not a random set of words and phrases, but rather a coherent and cohesive set of utterances. As such, learning a second language (L2) entails, among other processes, learners’ development of employing cohesive devices to construct a coherent discourse in their target language. One type of cohesive devices frequently used by L2 learners is connectives. In Chinese, connectives are utilized to denote various semantic relationships between the clauses in a compound sentence. Due to their flexibility and complexity in nature, Chinese connectives present a huge challenge to L2 learners’ learning. However, to date no study has been set up to explore the learners’ development of Chinese connectives within L2 Chinese research community. This study aims to fill this gap in the literature and build an L2 acquisitional model of Chinese connectives under the theoretical framework of Constructionist Usage-based Theory. Constructionist Usage-based Theory maintains that the basic unit of language is constructions and that the syntactic and lexical form of constructions and its corresponding semantic and discourse functions are conventionalized in language usage. According to these notions, language learning is believed to be driven by the factors grounded in the form and function of constructions in language usage. This study specifically examines how the factors of frequency, form, function, contingency (interaction of form and function), and L1-tuned attention affect L2 Chinese learners’ development of Chinese connectives. Furthermore, the study investigates the learners’ knowledge about the distribution of Chinese connectives across different proficiency levels. Specifically, this study aims to address four research questions: (1) what is the relationship between L2 learners’ proficiency level and language background and the acquisition of Chinese connectives?; (2) do L2 learners overuse or underuse Chinese connectives in constructing responses when the other in a pair is given and what errors do L2 learners make when using Chinese connectives?; (3) how can 12 target pairs of Chinese connectives be categorized into (hierarchical) groups based on L2 Chinese learners’ performance?; and (4) how do theoretically-motivated models represent the factorial structure underlying L2 acquisition of Chinese connectives? To address the four research questions, this study elicited L2 Chinese learners’ performance in two tests: a mini-discourse completion test and a form-function association test. In the mini-discourse completion test, learners were required to supply a missing clause to complete a three-clause discourse in which one of paired connectives was embedded; in the form-function association test, learners were asked to choose options of paired connectives to link two given clauses where connectives were omitted. Results showed that the development of all Chinese paired connectives was positively correlated to L2 learners’ L2 proficiency level. Learners with heritage language background seemed to have an advantage over less frequent and less prototypical connectives. Predominantly, L2 learners underused Chinese connectives, resulting from the cross-linguistic influence of disparity between English and Chinese connectives at the structural level in particular and between English and Chinese textual cohesion at the discourse level in general. Based on L2 learners’ performances in the two tests, the 12 pairs of Chinese connectives were classifier into four hierarchical groups. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that the usage-based factors (i.e., frequency, co-occurrence strength, formulaicity, prototypicality, contingency, and L1-tuned attention) jointly determined the L2 acquisition and development of Chinese connectives in a complex, adaptive, dynamic manner. Summarizing these findings, this study proposed a usage-based acquisitional model of L2 Chinese connectives, providing theoretical contributions to the usage-based theory and pedagogical implications for Chinese connectives.