COMPACTING THE MESSAGE: THE USE (OR NON-USE) OF …



In: Aarts, J., de Mönnink, I. and Wekker, H. (eds) (1997) Studies in English Language and Teaching. Rodopi: Amsterdam & Atlanta, pp. 185-198.

ON IDENTIFYING THE SYNTACTIC AND DISCOURSE FEATURES OF PARTICIPLE CLAUSES IN ACADEMIC ENGLISH: NATIVE AND NON-NATIVE WRITERS COMPARED

Sylviane Granger

Centre for English Corpus Linguistics

Université Catholique de Louvain

1. Non-finite clauses in EFL grammars

In comparison to the detailed treatment which finite clauses receive in EFL grammars, the description of non-finite clauses appears very perfunctory. Not only are they insufficiently described, they are also usually scattered across several sections of the grammar, thus making it very difficult for EFL learners to form an overall picture of the part they play in discourse. In a form-based grammar such as Thomson & Martinet (1986), non-finites are dealt with in sections on participles, infinitives, gerunds, relative pronouns and clauses, etc., while in a function-based grammar like Downing & Locke (1992) they are found in sections as diverse as ‘the development of the message’, ‘expressing intrinsic features of things’, ‘enhancing the message’, etc. In most cases, non-finites are presented as free variants of finites, with no mention of any factors favouring one type over the other. It is not rare to find statements such as the following: “The non-finite verb forms -ing, -to infinitive and -en participle are used non-restrictively to express the same meanings as the finite forms” (Downing & Locke 1992:286). Two notable exceptions are Close (1975) and Johansson & Lysvag (1986). Close presents all the uses of non-finite clauses in a special section entitled ‘Condensing the sentence’, together with other abbreviatory/compacting/synthetic devices, such as verbless clauses, complex prepositional phrases, ellipsis, pro-forms, etc., while in their excellent two-volume grammar, Johansson & Lysvag give a very detailed description of these structures in two chapters, one on non-finite expansion of the sentence and the other on -ing constructions.

There are two related reasons why non-finite clauses should receive more prominence in EFL grammars, especially those aimed at advanced learners. Firstly, non-finites and in particular participle clauses - the topic of this article - have been found to figure prominently in some registers of English, notably narrative and academic writing. Beaman (1984:66), for instance, shows that finite subordinate clauses are more common in spoken narratives and nonfinite clauses in written narratives. Chafe & Danielewicz (1987:102), on the other hand, show that high frequency of participles is a distinguishing feature of academic writing. They compare four registers of English - two spoken and two written - and conclude that “language other than academic writing makes considerably less use of participles”. As the improvement of stylistic proficiency is an important objective at an advanced stage of learning, the stylistic features of non-finite clauses ought to receive more attention. The second reason for giving more prominence to non-finite clauses is that they are a major means of syntactic compression (Greenbaum 1988). The finite adverbial clause in the sentence As he was of noble extraction, he found it easy to mix with the local aristocracy can be abbreviated to a nonfinite clause (Being of noble extraction, he found it easy...) or further compressed into a verbless clause (Of noble extraction, he found it easy...). A better mastery of non-finites could therefore help learners to develop a more compact, integrated style.

2. Participle clauses

The category of non-finite clauses clauses, ie clauses whose verb element is non-finite (Quirk et al, 1985:992), consists of participle clauses and infinitive clauses. Sentences (1) to (3) illustrate the three major syntactic functions of participle clauses: nominal in (1), adverbial in (2) and postmodifying (or: adnominal) in (3).

(1) I enjoyed spending my holidays with them.

(2) As mentioned in section 1, several statistical tests were used..

(3) People working in this field have made considerable progress.

Nominal clauses contain -ing participles functioning as subject, object, subject complement, etc. Unlike for the other two types, there are no systematic finite alternatives. In sentence (1), for instance, the -ing participle is triggered by the verb avoid and has no finite counterpart. This makes nominal clauses less interesting to investigate from a stylistic point of view and they have therefore been excluded from the current investigation.

Adverbial -ing and -ed clauses express a variety of semantic relationships, which can be expressed by means of a subordinator - a conjunction (ex. 4) or a preposition (ex. 5) - or left implicit (ex. 6-8). They usually have no subject of their own but when they do, as in sentence (8), they are referred to as ‘absolute clauses’. Adverbial clauses which are not introduced by a subordinator are called ‘supplementive clauses’ by Quirk et al (1985:1123). As their adverbial status is often unclear (see section 6), I have classified them in a category of their own, reserving the term ‘adverbial’ for subordinator-headed clauses.

Adnominal participle clauses, which function as postmodifiers to nouns or pronouns, are usually referred to as ‘reduced relative clauses’ (ex. 9 & 10). Indeed, they can be viewed as shorter versions of full relative clauses (A report that was written by my colleague; a taste which resembles that of soapy water).

(4) When returning the merchandise, be sure to bring your receipt.

(5) On becoming a member, you will receive a membership card and a badge.

(6) Returning to my village after thirty years, I met an old schoolteacher.

(7) Stated bluntly, he had no chance of winning.

(8) No further discussion arising, the meeting was brought to a close.

(9) A report written by my colleague appeared last week.

(10) This is a liquid with a taste resembling that of soapy water.

(from Quirk et al 1985)

Adverbial and supplementive clauses bear the danger of ‘dangling’ or ‘unattached’ participles, which are condemned in all grammars and writing textbooks, for native and non-native speakers alike. According to Greenbaum (1991:159) “a dangling modifier has no subject of its own, and its implied subject cannot be identified with the subject of the sentence though it can usually be identified with some other phrase in the sentence”. To illustrate this phenomenon, he juxtaposes erroneous sentences and their corrected versions (cf. ex. 11 & 12).

(11) dangling Being blind, a dog guided her across the street.

corrected Being blind, she was guided across the street by a dog.

(12) dangling After turning the radio off, the interior of the car became silent.

corrected After she (or I, etc.) turned the radio off, the interior of the car became

silent.

In this article I investigate the use of participle clauses in the academic writing of native English students and advanced EFL learners and compare the results in terms of frequency of occurrence, syntactic pattern and discourse function. The analysis is based on two 45,000 word corpora extracted from the ICLE (International Corpus of Learner English) and LOCNESS (Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays) databases (for more information, see Granger forthcoming). The non-native (NNS) corpus consists of argumentative essays written by advanced EFL learners and is subdivided into three 15,000 word subcorpora - NNSF, NNSS and NNSD - which cover writing by French, Swedish and Dutch students respectively. The native speaker (NS) corpus covers similar writing by American English students; for comparison purposes, it has also been split into three similar-sized chunks - US1, US2 and US3.

3. Overall frequency of occurrence of participle clauses

Table 1 gives the overall frequency of occurrence of participle clauses in the NS and NNS corpora. It brings out a statistically significant underuse of these clauses - both -ed and -ing - by EFL learners (p ................
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