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The incidence and effects on coherence of marked themes in interlanguage texts: a corpus-based enquiry
PERGAMON
English for Speci®c Purposes 19 (2000) 99±113
www.elsevier.com/locate/esp
The incidence and eects on coherence of marked themes in interlanguage texts: a corpus-based enquiry Christopher F. Green *, Elsie R. Christopher, Jaquelin Lam Kam Mei The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Abstract Chinese writers of academic texts in English demonstrate a clear tendency to place in sentence-initial position certain topic-fronting devices (beginning For and Concerning), and logical connectors (Besides, Furthermore and Moreover) to introduce new information. When fronted in this way, these items usurp the position of the information structure element referred to in systemic-functional linguistics as theme. Theme functions in discourse to convey given or known information, but when theme position is occupied by new information, that information may constitute a marked theme. To establish empirically that Chinese subjects utilise theme position in the way described, a non-native speaker (NNS) corpus of academic writing produced by Chinese subjects was tagged to detect occurrences of the two topic-fronting devices and the three thematised connectors. The same phenomena were similarly investigated in three native-speaker (NS) corpora. The ®ndings demonstrate that Chinese subjects do have a greater tendency than native speakers to place the connectors under consideration in theme position, but the ®ndings are less clear for the topic-fronting devices. This empirical study was followed by an exercise in which texts containing marked themes were analysed to determine the eects of the markedness on information structure. It was found that inappropriate occupation of theme position by the items under consideration here has a deleterious eect on information structure and that this, in turn, has negative eects on both local and global text coherence. # 2000 The American University. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
* Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected] 0889-4906/00/$20.00 # 2000 The American University. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 8 8 9 - 4 9 0 6 ( 9 8 ) 0 0 0 1 4 - 3
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1. Introduction This paper reports the ®rst phase of a two-phase study into the ways in which Chinese subjects utilise theme position in their written English. The ®rst phase seeks to investigate quantitatively the widely-held (if not particularly well-attested) view that, relative to English native speaker norms, Chinese subjects tend to use sentence-initial theme position in their written English to front new topical referents and certain logical connectors. The investigative procedure takes the form of a contrastive corpus-based enquiry. Following the empirical exercise, we go on to analyse the eects on text coherence of the utilisation of theme position by the subjects in question. The second phase of the study will present a fully speci®ed and trialled set of pedagogic plans aimed, ®rst, at sensitising learners to the functions of theme in written academic discourse and, second, at helping learners to apply knowledge of the role of theme to the production of writer-responsible discourse (Connor, 1996) in which theme is used eectively to orient and guide the audience through the argument being presented. It may be useful here to de®ne our particular use of the term theme. Theme here is taken to refer to material immediately preceding the main verb of the main clause. The material which includes the main verb and all other remaining constituents of the sentence constitutes the rheme. For example: Topical Theme Electronic corpora
Rheme facilitate empirical research in linguistics.
In using this de®nition of theme and rheme, we follow Berry (1989). However, while the de®nition of theme may be applied neatly and uncontroversially to the analysis of topic-fronting devices, the status of fronted connectors as themes is disputed. Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik (1981), for example, argue that fronted connectors cannot be considered to have a thematic role since they are not fundamental to the explication of the actor-object relations within the sentences in which they appear. This, it is contended here, is essentially a structural (intra-sentential) rather than information-oriented (intersentential) analysis, which does not take fully into account the fact that English allows considerable mobility in the positioning of some logical connectors. If connectors appear in sentence-initial position, this placement will re¯ect a choice, informed or otherwise, by the writer to thematise these elements. Such elements, it is argued here, then constitute non-topical themes. For example: Topical Theme Electronic corpora
Rheme facilitate empirical research in linguistics.
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Thematised connector Moreover,
Reiterated topical theme they
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Rheme permit a high degree of con®dence in research outcomes.
Both Fries (1983) and Eiler (1986) appear to support the notion that fronted adverbial conjuncts may be assigned the role of theme in English information structure and the argument is accepted in this paper. There is some evidence that Chinese users of English have a strong tendency to thematise propositional referents and certain logical connectors in their written English (Rutherford, 1983; Field & Yip, 1992; Milton & Tsang, 1993). This propensity contravenes the requirement in written English to embed such elements within theme±rheme information structures unless there is a good (discourserelated) reason for doing otherwise (Halliday, 1985). In unmarked information structure, theme will convey given information (i.e., information retrievable from the surrounding context of the discourse, or present in the mind of the reader) and rheme will carry new information. The opposite is, of course, the case in marked information structure, which may be used to introduce a new topical referent, or to state a contrast to an immediately prior point. Green (1996) cites a particular structural device used by the Chinese writers to facilitate the thematisation of topical referents: For/Concerning + topic noun phrase + comma + topic co-referential pronoun. For example: Topical theme For/Concerning the assignment
Reiterated topical theme it
Rheme was very demanding for most of us.
This kind of structure violates theme±rheme information structure by reiterating the theme (in its weakened pronoun form) unnecessarily. The structure is actually overly cohesive and interferes with what Firbas (1986) has termed the ``communicative dynamism'' of the message. Communicative dynamism is a fundamental concept in systemic linguistics and relates to the extent to which each linguistic element within a message contributes towards the unfolding development of the communication. Clearly, what we term the reiterated theme in the example above reduces the communicative dynamism of the message since it contributes nothing to the development of the message; it is at once both intrusive and redundant. In the example above, in unmarked word order, theme slot would be occupied by grammatical subject and not by a fronted topic: Most of us found the assignment very demanding. If the demands of the discourse required a more emphatic announcement of the topic of the message, to introduce it as a new topical referent perhaps, then a standard device might be employed for the purpose:
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With regard to the assignment, it was very demanding for most of us. The point we want to stress here is that Chinese learners' thematisations frequently constitute marked variants of canonical English word order. Fronted topics and logical connectors may reverse the given-new information sequence by depositing what should be rhematic material in thematic position; the consequence of which is an overload of loudly-announced new information.
2. Focus of the study We decided to focus on the two topicalising devices mentioned earlier and three logical connectors viz moreover, furthermore and besides because, within their own categories, these items carry out similar pragmatic functions and are, from direct observation, common in Chinese-English interlanguage texts. Milton and Tsang (1993) present evidence of students' overuse and misuse, in sentence-initial position, of the connectors mentioned above. Milton and Tsang, however, are concerned primarily with the frequency of these items and are less interested in viewing the problem from a word order perspective i.e., how the usurping of theme position by these items may contribute to both local and global incoherence of texts. We argue that, in fact, inappropriate choice of constituent to occupy theme position, at best, adds a strong and overly emphatic accent to the discourse in which these selections occur. At worst, in violating the conventions of English information structure, inappropriate choice of theme and its consequent development constitutes an important contributing factor to global incoherence.
3. Crosslinguistic and universalistic characterisations of interlanguage texts It might be helpful at this point to inquire into the causation of fronting phenomena in Chinese±English interlanguage. It has become the received wisdom, based largely on the work of Li and Thompson (1976); Thompson (1978), and Schachter and Rutherford (1979), that the tendency of Chinese subjects to front information (including adverbial constituents) which is salient in the mind of the writer may be attributed to the crosslinguistic in¯uence of the mother tongue. Chinese and English, it is argued, are at almost polar extremes in typological terms; Chinese is a topic-prominent (t-p) language with relatively ¯exible canonical word order, while English is a subject-prominent (s-p) language with an innately rigid word order. These studies, however, investigate topic- and subject-prominence as syntactic features and do not consider directly their impact on information structure. In point of fact, Chinese has a far greater ¯exibility of word order than English. In Chinese, the occupation of theme position by the discourse topic does not have the eect of rendering the information structure marked. In English, however,
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when topic occupies theme position but does not con¯ate with grammatical subject, conditions are created for the appearance of discourse markedness. The process of acquiring grammaticalisation is likely to be a long one for Chinese learners of English, and there is a considerable potential to fossilise at some interlanguage stage. Even at relatively high levels of measured pro®ciency, Chinese learners tend to retain the ¯exibility of L1 word order in their L2 production and the topic-fronting devices under investigation here may possibly represent traces of this crosslinguistic in¯uence. While acknowledging the contribution of crosslinguistic studies in accounting for the appearance of marked themes in the written English discourse of Chinese subjects, it should also be pointed out that universal rather than L1-speci®c factors may well play an important part in the explication of this phenomenon. It has been argued that in both the L1 and L2 acquisition processes, the lexicon is acquired in advance of the grammatical system (see in particular Blumstein & Milberg, 1983; Lieberman, 1984; Schnitzer, 1989), and that the prior acquisition of lexis gives rise to a universal pre-grammatical mode of exposition which is only gradually displaced by an elaborated grammatical mode. Givon (1995) relates this theory to interlanguage discourse and argues that such discourse displays loosely conjoined rather fully cohesive syntax, an absence of grammatical morphology and, in terms of information structure, pragmatic (topicprominent) rather than grammatical word order. Giv on further characterises interlanguage discourse as knowledge (lexis)-cued rather than grammar-cued and views it as the product of ``pre-grammatical discourse processing'' (ibid: 61). Givon proposes a set of discourse cueing features (encompassing the grammatical categories of reference, temporality, aspectuality, modality and mood) which contributes vitally to the coherence of discourse. Pre-grammatical discourse will either manifest avoidance of these cueing devices, or will utilise them in an erroneous or inappropriate manner. There is, then, some evidence to support the notion that, irrespective of L1, a learner's L2 output may be ``naturally'' lexis-cued and topic-prominent in base orientation. One consequence of this may be a tendency for nominal groups in relatively free word order to drive the discourse with the consequent potential for the appearance of marked themes. While base tendencies may be similar for all L2 (English) learners, it would certainly appear that Chinese learners have more work to do in acquiring the dense, ®xed word order grammaticalisation of English than learners whose L1, like English, is rather more subject-prominent in orientation. The universal and crosslinguistic theories presented here, then, far from being antagonistic, are actually quite reconcilable. Learners will need sucient time to achieve grammatical discourse processing competence. The mere presence of certain discourse-cueing features will not automatically confer coherence to a text. On the contrary, empirical studies have failed to show any positive correlation between the density of cueing devices in texts and the perceived coherence of those texts (Connor, 1984; Scarcella, 1984). Scarcella has pointed out that the presence of formally correct but pragmatically inappropriate or misapplied cues can only add to the incoherence of a text. This
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notion has found support in the work of Crewe (1990), while Ehrlich (1998) has argued persuasively that it is the contextual appropriacy of grammatical cueing devices and their distribution throughout a text which determines whether they contribute or detract from the overall coherence of the text.
4. Procedures In the ®rst stage of the research, a section (600,000 words) from an NNS corpus of Hong Kong (freshman) students' academic writing (the HKUST Learner Corpus1) was tagged and consequently analysed for occurrences of the fronting devices beginning with concerning and for and the logical connectors moreover, furthermore and besides. For purposes of comparison, sections of expository writing from two NS corpora, LOB and BROWN (both 600,000 words), were similarly tagged. The LOB and BROWN corpora were tagged before a more comparable corpus of native speaker academic writing, the Cambridge Syndicate Examination corpus (CSE), became available to us. The CSE comprises Advanced-Level General Studies essays produced by students at a similar maturational stage to our NNS subjects. In addition, this corpus provided texts within the same (expository) genre as those produced for the NNS corpus, and is of the same size as all the other corpora. Topics, however, could not be controlled: the NNS corpus consists entirely of 800-word essays on the topic The Medium of Instruction in Hong Kong, while the CSE corpus comprises essays of a similar length but on a variety of topics. This lack of topic uniformity is, perhaps, of less importance than the generic similarity of the texts under consideration here. The lengthy tagging exercise itself involved the setting of particular parameters for the machine recognition of the fronting devices under consideration. Searches were carried out to ¯ag occurrences of full-stop + sentence-initial Concerning and For. Manual checking was then necessary to ensure that these occurrences were indeed examples of fronted topics rather than prepositional phrases, exempli®cation markers or fronted subordinate clauses of cause. The occurrences of the logical connectors were similarly identi®ed and tagged. Following the tagging exercise for each of the corpora, the resulting data were considered in terms of conformity to English native speaker expectations of information structure. This was achieved by further analysing the data in terms of the pragmatic appropriateness or in appropriateness of the items under consideration. With regard to the logical connectors of addition, judgements were based on the grounds that if a connector did not function as a discourse miscue, 1
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Learner Corpus comprises more than ten million words of the written academic English of Chinese (Cantonese) learners of English. The corpus consists of expository essay assignments produced by undergraduates in the ®rst semester of their ®rst year at the University. The compilation of the corpus, begun in 1992, is overseen by John Milton.
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then its use would be considered appropriate. This is clearly an unre®ned way of categorising the uses of the connectors, ignoring as it does the subtle dierences between items within the same broad class (e.g., the pragmatic variation obtaining between besides and moreover). However, within the limited scope of this paper, we found this to be the most practical way to present a broad notion of how our subjects use these connectors. An equally coarse-grained measure was adopted for classifying the uses of the topic-fronting devices. If a device was used to introduce a new topical referent or to recall a referent with a relatively remote antecedent, its use would be judged as appropriate. The judgments of the present writers as to the appropriateness of use of the items were validated by six volunteer English native-speaking colleagues who checked all our judgments individually and independently. In cases of disagreement, the judgment ®nding favour with the majority of the volunteers was accepted. The terms, AU (appropriate use) and IU (inappropriate use) were coined to compare the numbers of appropriate and inappropriate uses of the experimental items in the NS and NNS corpora.
5. Results and discussion The results show that there are considerable divergences between the data extracted from the NNS and NS corpora both in terms of the frequencies of the speci®ed items and the ways in which they are actually used. A total of six incidences of the fronting device beginning concerning were found in the NNS corpus; only one occurrence was evaluated as AU and the other ®ve were judged to be IU. The topic-fronting device beginning for appears 143 times with 104 occurrences counted as IU and 39 as AU. An analysis of these two thematised devices is given in Table 1. Table 2 displays the frequencies in the NNS corpus of the additive-type thematised logical connectors. The ®ndings indicate that, as hypothesised, all three connectors are frequently used by the subjects. Of particular interest here is the fact that most of the uses of besides were judged to be inappropriate. This is Table 1 Frequency counts of the two fronting devices in the NNS corpus Sentence-initial Concerning and For
For Concerning
Occurrences Total (1 in n)
Appropriate Use (AU) (1 in n)
Inappropriate Use (IU) (1 in n)
143 (1/3,036) 6 (1/99,705)
39 (1/11,132) 1 (434,162)
104 (1/4,174) 5 (1/119,646)
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Table 2 Frequency counts of the thematised additive logical connectors in the NNS corpus Thematised Logical Connectors
Moreover Besides Furthermore
Occurrences Total (1 in n)
Appropriate Use (AU) (1 in n)
Inappropiate Use (IU) (1 in n)
142 (1/1,053) 270 (1/1,608) 192 (1/2,261)
398 (1/1,090) 22 (1/19,734) 190 (1/2,285)
14 (1/31,011) 248 (1/1,750) 2 (1/217,081)
accounted for by the fact that subjects frequently use besides to look at the argument they are presenting from a dierent perspective rather than using the connector simply to add a further point. This ®nding coheres with one of the outcomes of a study carried out by Malcolm and Honjio (1988) into the structure of the expository English tests produced by Chinese subjects. The high frequency of these connectors is further evidenced by the results of a general search of a NNS monitor archive (see Table 3) in which, out of a sample of 26 sentence-initial connectors and topic-fronting devices, moreover ranked 5th, besidesranked 7th and furthermore ranked 8th. The results displayed in Table 3 demonstrate that, in contrast to the connectors in question, there were relatively few incidences of the two topic-fronting structures beginning for and concerning. For is actually ranked 20 and concerning 26. We had hypothesised that the two fronting devices and the three thematised connectors would be comparatively more frequent in the writing of our subjects that in native English writing. The hypothesis is con®rmed in the comparisons of the NNS corpus and the three NS corpora. Table 4 shows that, apart from sentence-initial for2, the other experimental items appeared far more frequently in the NNS corpus than in any of the three NS corpora. There was no evidence of inappropriate use of the experimental items in theNScorpora. The comparatively infrequent occurrence of the topic-fronting devices in the NNS corpusmaybe accounted for in terms of our subjects relatively advanced L2 acquisition stage. Other studies (see, e.g., Sung, 1991, which investigated the English writing of Chinese senior high school students) record a far higher 2
There are more occurrences of sentence-initial for in the LOB corpus than in the NSS corpus. Manual investigation indicates that this may be attributed to the fact that some of the ®les in LOB have aliterary orientation and contain a substantial number of sentence-initial time phrases and clauses of cause, both beginning with for.
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Table 3 Overall frequency rankings of fronting devices and thematised logical connectors in a 600,000-word NNS monitor archive
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24/25 25/24 26
Thematised connectors and topic-fronting devices
Occurrences
And Also Because Therefore Moreover Although Besides Furthermore Actually Finally Firstly Nevertheless Secondly Eventually Regarding Namely Consequently Lastly Similarly For Afterwards Anyway Previously Likewise Alternatively Concerning
8598 8369 6924 4422 3211 2874 2557 1319 1250 1023 723 636 537 321 295 256 247 210 158 143 125 124 51 30 30 6
number of topicalised structures which utilise the sentence-initial devices beginning for and concerning.
6. Thematic development Following the quantitative procedures outlined above, we analysed a sample of 200 texts from the NNS corpus and identi®ed three basic ways in which theme was developed by subjects. These thematic progressions are discussed and exempli®ed below. It should be noted that each of the text excerpts below are presented in both their original forms and as ``reformulations''. The reformulations are actually original excerpts altered minimally to exclude the logical connectors and topicfronting devices under consideration in this study. Our reason for presenting both original and reformulated excerpts in parallel is to demonstrate as clearly as
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Table 4 A comparison of the incidence of the thematised connectors and topic-fronting devices in the NNS corpus and the NS corpora CORPORA
Thematised connectors Moreover Furthermore Besides
NNS
NS
HKUST Learner Corpus
LOB
BROWN
11 (1/56,661) 5 (1/124,654) 3 (1/207,757)
31 (1/21,465) 12 (1/55,453) 16 (1/41,589)
262 (1/2,379) 1 (1/623,271)
91 (1/93,020) 0
CSE (Cambridge Examination Syndicate corpus) No. of occurrences 142 7 (1/1,053) (1/82,316) 192 27 (1/2,261) (1/21,341) 270 3 (1/1,608) (1/92,070)
Sentence-initial concerning and for
No. of occurrences
For
143 (1/3,036) 6 (1/99,705)
Concerning
88 (1/92,070) 0
possible the emerging discourse competence of the subjects; a phenomenon more easily perceived when inappropriately thematised constituents are deleted. It should also be noted at this point that the reformulated excerpts illustrate very plainly Danes's (1974) observation that three types of thematic progression may be discerned incoherent discourse viz simple linear, constant and derived progressions. The three headings below re¯ect these progressions in respective order. 6.1. Linkage of theme to a preceding rheme In this kind of progression, successive themes are derived from the head of the preceding rheme. In the example below, diculties in the rheme of the ®rst sentence becomes, in the lexical guise of those problems, the theme of the second sentence. Original excerpt. For using English as the medium of instruction in Hong Kong, it cause diculties for students. Besides, those problems are worse because of students' low pro®ciency in English. Moreover, the low language standard of students mean that they are hard to understand the content of some subjects. Reformulation. Using English as medium of instruction in Hong Kong cause diculties for students. Those problems are worse because of students' low
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pro®ciency in English. The low language standard of students mean that they are hard to understand the content of some subjects.3 6.2. Linkage of theme to a more remote preceding theme or rheme In this progression, a new theme is derived from a more distant theme or the head of a more distant rheme. In the example below, the text-initial theme, the Hong Kong government, appears in shortened form as the theme of the third sentence. Lexical repetition (rather than pronoun substitution) is necessary here because the intervening second sentence creates an extended gap between the ®rst mention of the theme and its reiteration. Original excerpt. Concerning Hong Kong government, it always insist on student using English as the medium of instruction in Hong Kong schools. It is a sign of colonialism and is not good for students. Furthermore, the government should allowed the use of Chinese as medium of instruction. Reformulation. The Hong Kong government always insist on student using English as the medium of instruction in Hong Kong schools. This is a sign of colonialism and is not good for students. The government should allowed the use of Chinese as medium of instruction. 6.3. Linkage of minor themes to a metatheme In this kind of progression, successive themes are derived from a text- or paragraph- initial metatheme. In the example below, the metatheme which forms the ®rst sentence is followed by successive themes which illustrate particular aspects of the point it conveys. Original excerpt. There are some problems in using English as the medium of instruction in Hong Kong. Students are lack of understanding their subject areas. Moreover, English becomes hated because students are force to use it. Furthermore, many teachers do not have good enough language skills to teach through English and fail to help their students. Reformulation. There are some problems using English as the medium of instruction in Hong Kong. Students are lack of understanding their subject areas. English becomes hated because students are force to use it. Many teachers do not have good enough language skills to teach through English and fail to help their students. In the original excerpts above, thematic progression is obscured by the sheer number of adipose items distributed throughout the textÐall of which usurp theme position. The distracting connectors in the original excerpts above are at least mostly used in a pragmatically appropriate way to make additional points 3 The reformulations are all student-generated and, as the reader will note, retain a degree of nonstandard expression.
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relevant to the theme. When inappropriate cueing devices (miscues) are employed the results are, of course, rather more disorienting for the reader.
7. Thematisation and information structure Unmarked English syntax realises the importance of new information through what Halliday (1985) has termed end-focus i.e., new information is given prominence by being placed towards the end of a sentence, while given information is assigned sentence-initial (theme) position to allow for logical connection to the preceding information. As indicated earlier in this paper, there are occasions for breaking given-new information structure to realise particular pragmatic intentions, but it is our contention that Chinese learners break the given-new progression too frequently and unintentionally by using theme position to introduce new information rather than to retain given-new sequencing of information, to introduce a new topical referent, or to present a contrast to what has gone before. The usurpation of theme position leads to the appearance of an uncommonly large number of marked themes which, in turn, gives rise to writing which is overly emphatic in tone at best and which, at worst, lacks the smooth logical development of theme which characterises coherent writing. Consider the original excerpt from the NNS corpus below: English is the medium of instruction in many Hong Kong schools. It is because the government makes this a law many years ago. Moreover, many parents prefer their children to be educated in English medium because it can provide better prospects. Concerning Chinese medium, it is more popular for students. The theme Chinese medium has no antecedent and its appearance (heavily emphatic because of the use of a fronting device) is incohesive and jarringÐ despite its intended contrastive function. On the subject of thematic antecedent, Ehrlich (1998) makes an important point: . . . cohesive discourse results when some part of a sentence's dominant clause, that is, the main point of the sentence, is connected to succeeding sentences. When cohesive devices connect succeeding sentences to information which is not prominent within the discourse, incohesive discourse results. This example from the NNS corpus illustrates Ehrlich's point: (a) Many students are hard to study their subjects in Hong Kong. (b) It is because the medium of instruction is English. (c) Besides, they have to pass many examinations. This is a defective attempt to link minor themes to a metatheme. Sentence (c) should connect with sentence (a), but the intervening sentence (b), which has become dominant within the discourse, does not relate to sentence (c) in a cohesive way. A similar problem is apparent in this original NNS test:
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Concerning some people, they tend to believe that using Chinese as the teaching medium in Hong Kong would make study easier, but they are wrong. If parents let their children start building a good basics as soon as possible, it will be easier for them to study in English. Hence, it depends on the attitudes of parents to get rid of this misconception. In this example, the sentence separating the ®rst and ®nal sentences creates an extended interval between the ®rst mention of the problem and its reiteration. The result is that readers are left stranded looking for a cohesive antecedent in the second sentence and, not ®nding it, are then required to put extra eort into construing the connection for themselves. This kind of defective cohesion is compounded by our Chinese subject's overwhelming tendency to place certain classes of logical connectors, including the additive category under consideration here, in theme position. Subjects seem to be unaware that many types of connector are, in fact, mobile elements and that the writer has some choice in where to place them in a sentence. The evidence from the NS corpora shows quite clearly that native speakers rarely thematise these adverbials, preferring instead to make them less salient by embedding them medially within the clause.
8. Conclusion In this paper, we have analysed two distinctive surface structure features of the interlanguage texts produced by Chinese writers of academic English. We have established, through a contrastive corpus-based enquiry, that Chinese writers of English, relative to native speaker norms, do indeed thematise logical connectors of addition. There is, however, less evidence in the data of the employment of topic-fronting devices, and this we attribute mainly to the fact that most of the subjects have passed through the interlanguage stage at which L2 output is grossly in¯uenced by transferred syntactic and discoursal characteristics of L1. We went on to demonstrate how subjects frequently fail to use theme as a vehicle for maintaining given-new information structure, but choose rather to occupy theme position in appropriately with a surfeit of loudly-announced new information, or redundant or misleading discourse cues. This leads to the overproduction of marked themes. Texts characterised by an excess of marked themes tend, at best, to be overly emphatic in tone. At worst, and depending on the distribution of the marked themes, such texts are likely to exhibit a degree of local or global incoherence. As indicated in the introduction to this study, this paper represents the ®rst phase of a two-phase enquiry into the use of theme in Chinese-English interlanguage texts. The next phase of research will consider ways in which teachers might best raise learner consciousness of the importance of theme in English information structure, and how this awareness may be activated to help learners produce fully coherent written discourse. We have demonstrated that
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basic forms of thematic progression are, in fact, quite readily detectable in our subjects' writing, but that the development of theme is frequently interrupted by the overuse and misuse of thematised elements which constitute marked themes. The discernible emerging discourse competence of the subjects makes us optimistic about the applicability of the ®ndings of this study to pedagogy.
References Berry, M. (1989). Thematic options and success in writing. In C. S. Butler, R. A. Cardwell, & J. Channell, Language and literature: theory and practice. Nottingham: University of Nottingham. Blumstein, S. E., & Milberg, W. (1983). Automatic and controlled processing in peech/language de®cits in aphasia. Paper presented at the Symposium on Automatic Speech, Minneapolis: Academy of Aphasia. Connor, U. (1984). A study of cohesion and coherence in English as a second language student's writing. Papers in Linguistics 17, 301±316. Connor, U. (1996). Contrastive rhetoric. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crewe, W. J. (1990). The illogic of logical connectives. ELT Journal 44, 4,316±325. Danes, F. (1974). Functional sentence perspective and the organisation of text. In F. Danes, Papers in functional sentence perspective. Prague: Academia. Ehrlich, S. (1988). Cohesive devices and discourse competence. World Englishes, 7(2), 111±118. Eiler, M. (1986). Thematic distribution as a heuristic for written discourse function. In B. Couture, Functional approaches to writing: research perspectives (pp. 49±68). London: Pinter. Field, Y., & Yip, M. O. (1992). A comparison of internal conjunctive cohesion in the English essay writing of Cantonese speakers and native speakers of English. RELC Journal, 23(1), 15±28. Firbas, J. (1986). On the dynamics of written communication in the light of the theory of functional sentence perspective. In C. R. Cooper & S. Greenbaum, Studying writing: linguistic approaches (pp. 40±71). California: Sage. Fries, P. H. (1983). On the status of theme in English: arguments from discourse. In J. S. Petro® & E. Sozer, Micro and macro connexity of texts (pp. 116±152). Hamburg: Buske. Givon, T. (1995). Coherence in text versus coherence in mind. In M. A. Gernsbacher & T. Givon, Coherence in spontaneous text (pp. 59±115). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Green, C. F. (1996). The origins and eects of topic-prominence in Chinese±English interlanguage. IRAL, 34(2), 119±134. Halliday, M. A. K. (1985). An introduction to systemic-functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold. Li, C., & Thompson, S. (1976) Subject and topic: a new typology of language. In C. Li, Subject and topic (pp. 457±489). New York: Academic Press. Lieberman, P. (1984) The biology and evolution of language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Malcolm, I., & Honjio, P. (1988). Argumentation patterns in contemporary Chinese: implications for English teaching. In V. C. Bickley, Language teaching and learning styles within and across cultures (pp. 321±333). Hong Kong: Institute of Language in Education. Milton, J., & Tsang, E. S. C. (1993). A corpus-based study of logical connectors in EFL students writing: directions for future research. In R. Pemberton & E. S. C. Tsang, Studies in lexis (pp. 215±246). Hong Kong: University of Science and Technology Language Centre. Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1981). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman. Rutherford, W. E. (1983). Language typology and language transfer. In S. Gass & L. Selinker, Language transfer in language learning (pp. 358±379). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Schachter, J., & Rutherford, W. E. (1979). Discourse function and language transfer. Working Papers in Bilingualism, 19, 3±12. Schnitzer, M. (1989). The pragmatic basis of aphasia. Hillsdale NJ: Erlbaum.
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Thompson, S. (1978). Modern English from a typological point of view: some implications of the function of word order. Linguistische Berichte, 54, 19±35. Scarcella, R. (1984). Cohesion in the writing development of native and non-native English speakers. Unpublished doctoral dissertation: University of Southern California. Sung, W. M. (1991). Typological transfer: a factor in the learner language of Hong Kong students? In D. Bunton & C. F. Green, English usage in Hong Kong (pp. 52±61). Hong Kong: Institute of Language in Education.
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www.elsevier.com/locate/esp
The incidence and eects on coherence of marked themes in interlanguage texts: a corpus-based enquiry Christopher F. Green *, Elsie R. Christopher, Jaquelin Lam Kam Mei The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Abstract Chinese writers of academic texts in English demonstrate a clear tendency to place in sentence-initial position certain topic-fronting devices (beginning For and Concerning), and logical connectors (Besides, Furthermore and Moreover) to introduce new information. When fronted in this way, these items usurp the position of the information structure element referred to in systemic-functional linguistics as theme. Theme functions in discourse to convey given or known information, but when theme position is occupied by new information, that information may constitute a marked theme. To establish empirically that Chinese subjects utilise theme position in the way described, a non-native speaker (NNS) corpus of academic writing produced by Chinese subjects was tagged to detect occurrences of the two topic-fronting devices and the three thematised connectors. The same phenomena were similarly investigated in three native-speaker (NS) corpora. The ®ndings demonstrate that Chinese subjects do have a greater tendency than native speakers to place the connectors under consideration in theme position, but the ®ndings are less clear for the topic-fronting devices. This empirical study was followed by an exercise in which texts containing marked themes were analysed to determine the eects of the markedness on information structure. It was found that inappropriate occupation of theme position by the items under consideration here has a deleterious eect on information structure and that this, in turn, has negative eects on both local and global text coherence. # 2000 The American University. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
* Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected] 0889-4906/00/$20.00 # 2000 The American University. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 8 8 9 - 4 9 0 6 ( 9 8 ) 0 0 0 1 4 - 3
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1. Introduction This paper reports the ®rst phase of a two-phase study into the ways in which Chinese subjects utilise theme position in their written English. The ®rst phase seeks to investigate quantitatively the widely-held (if not particularly well-attested) view that, relative to English native speaker norms, Chinese subjects tend to use sentence-initial theme position in their written English to front new topical referents and certain logical connectors. The investigative procedure takes the form of a contrastive corpus-based enquiry. Following the empirical exercise, we go on to analyse the eects on text coherence of the utilisation of theme position by the subjects in question. The second phase of the study will present a fully speci®ed and trialled set of pedagogic plans aimed, ®rst, at sensitising learners to the functions of theme in written academic discourse and, second, at helping learners to apply knowledge of the role of theme to the production of writer-responsible discourse (Connor, 1996) in which theme is used eectively to orient and guide the audience through the argument being presented. It may be useful here to de®ne our particular use of the term theme. Theme here is taken to refer to material immediately preceding the main verb of the main clause. The material which includes the main verb and all other remaining constituents of the sentence constitutes the rheme. For example: Topical Theme Electronic corpora
Rheme facilitate empirical research in linguistics.
In using this de®nition of theme and rheme, we follow Berry (1989). However, while the de®nition of theme may be applied neatly and uncontroversially to the analysis of topic-fronting devices, the status of fronted connectors as themes is disputed. Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik (1981), for example, argue that fronted connectors cannot be considered to have a thematic role since they are not fundamental to the explication of the actor-object relations within the sentences in which they appear. This, it is contended here, is essentially a structural (intra-sentential) rather than information-oriented (intersentential) analysis, which does not take fully into account the fact that English allows considerable mobility in the positioning of some logical connectors. If connectors appear in sentence-initial position, this placement will re¯ect a choice, informed or otherwise, by the writer to thematise these elements. Such elements, it is argued here, then constitute non-topical themes. For example: Topical Theme Electronic corpora
Rheme facilitate empirical research in linguistics.
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Thematised connector Moreover,
Reiterated topical theme they
101
Rheme permit a high degree of con®dence in research outcomes.
Both Fries (1983) and Eiler (1986) appear to support the notion that fronted adverbial conjuncts may be assigned the role of theme in English information structure and the argument is accepted in this paper. There is some evidence that Chinese users of English have a strong tendency to thematise propositional referents and certain logical connectors in their written English (Rutherford, 1983; Field & Yip, 1992; Milton & Tsang, 1993). This propensity contravenes the requirement in written English to embed such elements within theme±rheme information structures unless there is a good (discourserelated) reason for doing otherwise (Halliday, 1985). In unmarked information structure, theme will convey given information (i.e., information retrievable from the surrounding context of the discourse, or present in the mind of the reader) and rheme will carry new information. The opposite is, of course, the case in marked information structure, which may be used to introduce a new topical referent, or to state a contrast to an immediately prior point. Green (1996) cites a particular structural device used by the Chinese writers to facilitate the thematisation of topical referents: For/Concerning + topic noun phrase + comma + topic co-referential pronoun. For example: Topical theme For/Concerning the assignment
Reiterated topical theme it
Rheme was very demanding for most of us.
This kind of structure violates theme±rheme information structure by reiterating the theme (in its weakened pronoun form) unnecessarily. The structure is actually overly cohesive and interferes with what Firbas (1986) has termed the ``communicative dynamism'' of the message. Communicative dynamism is a fundamental concept in systemic linguistics and relates to the extent to which each linguistic element within a message contributes towards the unfolding development of the communication. Clearly, what we term the reiterated theme in the example above reduces the communicative dynamism of the message since it contributes nothing to the development of the message; it is at once both intrusive and redundant. In the example above, in unmarked word order, theme slot would be occupied by grammatical subject and not by a fronted topic: Most of us found the assignment very demanding. If the demands of the discourse required a more emphatic announcement of the topic of the message, to introduce it as a new topical referent perhaps, then a standard device might be employed for the purpose:
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With regard to the assignment, it was very demanding for most of us. The point we want to stress here is that Chinese learners' thematisations frequently constitute marked variants of canonical English word order. Fronted topics and logical connectors may reverse the given-new information sequence by depositing what should be rhematic material in thematic position; the consequence of which is an overload of loudly-announced new information.
2. Focus of the study We decided to focus on the two topicalising devices mentioned earlier and three logical connectors viz moreover, furthermore and besides because, within their own categories, these items carry out similar pragmatic functions and are, from direct observation, common in Chinese-English interlanguage texts. Milton and Tsang (1993) present evidence of students' overuse and misuse, in sentence-initial position, of the connectors mentioned above. Milton and Tsang, however, are concerned primarily with the frequency of these items and are less interested in viewing the problem from a word order perspective i.e., how the usurping of theme position by these items may contribute to both local and global incoherence of texts. We argue that, in fact, inappropriate choice of constituent to occupy theme position, at best, adds a strong and overly emphatic accent to the discourse in which these selections occur. At worst, in violating the conventions of English information structure, inappropriate choice of theme and its consequent development constitutes an important contributing factor to global incoherence.
3. Crosslinguistic and universalistic characterisations of interlanguage texts It might be helpful at this point to inquire into the causation of fronting phenomena in Chinese±English interlanguage. It has become the received wisdom, based largely on the work of Li and Thompson (1976); Thompson (1978), and Schachter and Rutherford (1979), that the tendency of Chinese subjects to front information (including adverbial constituents) which is salient in the mind of the writer may be attributed to the crosslinguistic in¯uence of the mother tongue. Chinese and English, it is argued, are at almost polar extremes in typological terms; Chinese is a topic-prominent (t-p) language with relatively ¯exible canonical word order, while English is a subject-prominent (s-p) language with an innately rigid word order. These studies, however, investigate topic- and subject-prominence as syntactic features and do not consider directly their impact on information structure. In point of fact, Chinese has a far greater ¯exibility of word order than English. In Chinese, the occupation of theme position by the discourse topic does not have the eect of rendering the information structure marked. In English, however,
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when topic occupies theme position but does not con¯ate with grammatical subject, conditions are created for the appearance of discourse markedness. The process of acquiring grammaticalisation is likely to be a long one for Chinese learners of English, and there is a considerable potential to fossilise at some interlanguage stage. Even at relatively high levels of measured pro®ciency, Chinese learners tend to retain the ¯exibility of L1 word order in their L2 production and the topic-fronting devices under investigation here may possibly represent traces of this crosslinguistic in¯uence. While acknowledging the contribution of crosslinguistic studies in accounting for the appearance of marked themes in the written English discourse of Chinese subjects, it should also be pointed out that universal rather than L1-speci®c factors may well play an important part in the explication of this phenomenon. It has been argued that in both the L1 and L2 acquisition processes, the lexicon is acquired in advance of the grammatical system (see in particular Blumstein & Milberg, 1983; Lieberman, 1984; Schnitzer, 1989), and that the prior acquisition of lexis gives rise to a universal pre-grammatical mode of exposition which is only gradually displaced by an elaborated grammatical mode. Givon (1995) relates this theory to interlanguage discourse and argues that such discourse displays loosely conjoined rather fully cohesive syntax, an absence of grammatical morphology and, in terms of information structure, pragmatic (topicprominent) rather than grammatical word order. Giv on further characterises interlanguage discourse as knowledge (lexis)-cued rather than grammar-cued and views it as the product of ``pre-grammatical discourse processing'' (ibid: 61). Givon proposes a set of discourse cueing features (encompassing the grammatical categories of reference, temporality, aspectuality, modality and mood) which contributes vitally to the coherence of discourse. Pre-grammatical discourse will either manifest avoidance of these cueing devices, or will utilise them in an erroneous or inappropriate manner. There is, then, some evidence to support the notion that, irrespective of L1, a learner's L2 output may be ``naturally'' lexis-cued and topic-prominent in base orientation. One consequence of this may be a tendency for nominal groups in relatively free word order to drive the discourse with the consequent potential for the appearance of marked themes. While base tendencies may be similar for all L2 (English) learners, it would certainly appear that Chinese learners have more work to do in acquiring the dense, ®xed word order grammaticalisation of English than learners whose L1, like English, is rather more subject-prominent in orientation. The universal and crosslinguistic theories presented here, then, far from being antagonistic, are actually quite reconcilable. Learners will need sucient time to achieve grammatical discourse processing competence. The mere presence of certain discourse-cueing features will not automatically confer coherence to a text. On the contrary, empirical studies have failed to show any positive correlation between the density of cueing devices in texts and the perceived coherence of those texts (Connor, 1984; Scarcella, 1984). Scarcella has pointed out that the presence of formally correct but pragmatically inappropriate or misapplied cues can only add to the incoherence of a text. This
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notion has found support in the work of Crewe (1990), while Ehrlich (1998) has argued persuasively that it is the contextual appropriacy of grammatical cueing devices and their distribution throughout a text which determines whether they contribute or detract from the overall coherence of the text.
4. Procedures In the ®rst stage of the research, a section (600,000 words) from an NNS corpus of Hong Kong (freshman) students' academic writing (the HKUST Learner Corpus1) was tagged and consequently analysed for occurrences of the fronting devices beginning with concerning and for and the logical connectors moreover, furthermore and besides. For purposes of comparison, sections of expository writing from two NS corpora, LOB and BROWN (both 600,000 words), were similarly tagged. The LOB and BROWN corpora were tagged before a more comparable corpus of native speaker academic writing, the Cambridge Syndicate Examination corpus (CSE), became available to us. The CSE comprises Advanced-Level General Studies essays produced by students at a similar maturational stage to our NNS subjects. In addition, this corpus provided texts within the same (expository) genre as those produced for the NNS corpus, and is of the same size as all the other corpora. Topics, however, could not be controlled: the NNS corpus consists entirely of 800-word essays on the topic The Medium of Instruction in Hong Kong, while the CSE corpus comprises essays of a similar length but on a variety of topics. This lack of topic uniformity is, perhaps, of less importance than the generic similarity of the texts under consideration here. The lengthy tagging exercise itself involved the setting of particular parameters for the machine recognition of the fronting devices under consideration. Searches were carried out to ¯ag occurrences of full-stop + sentence-initial Concerning and For. Manual checking was then necessary to ensure that these occurrences were indeed examples of fronted topics rather than prepositional phrases, exempli®cation markers or fronted subordinate clauses of cause. The occurrences of the logical connectors were similarly identi®ed and tagged. Following the tagging exercise for each of the corpora, the resulting data were considered in terms of conformity to English native speaker expectations of information structure. This was achieved by further analysing the data in terms of the pragmatic appropriateness or in appropriateness of the items under consideration. With regard to the logical connectors of addition, judgements were based on the grounds that if a connector did not function as a discourse miscue, 1
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Learner Corpus comprises more than ten million words of the written academic English of Chinese (Cantonese) learners of English. The corpus consists of expository essay assignments produced by undergraduates in the ®rst semester of their ®rst year at the University. The compilation of the corpus, begun in 1992, is overseen by John Milton.
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then its use would be considered appropriate. This is clearly an unre®ned way of categorising the uses of the connectors, ignoring as it does the subtle dierences between items within the same broad class (e.g., the pragmatic variation obtaining between besides and moreover). However, within the limited scope of this paper, we found this to be the most practical way to present a broad notion of how our subjects use these connectors. An equally coarse-grained measure was adopted for classifying the uses of the topic-fronting devices. If a device was used to introduce a new topical referent or to recall a referent with a relatively remote antecedent, its use would be judged as appropriate. The judgments of the present writers as to the appropriateness of use of the items were validated by six volunteer English native-speaking colleagues who checked all our judgments individually and independently. In cases of disagreement, the judgment ®nding favour with the majority of the volunteers was accepted. The terms, AU (appropriate use) and IU (inappropriate use) were coined to compare the numbers of appropriate and inappropriate uses of the experimental items in the NS and NNS corpora.
5. Results and discussion The results show that there are considerable divergences between the data extracted from the NNS and NS corpora both in terms of the frequencies of the speci®ed items and the ways in which they are actually used. A total of six incidences of the fronting device beginning concerning were found in the NNS corpus; only one occurrence was evaluated as AU and the other ®ve were judged to be IU. The topic-fronting device beginning for appears 143 times with 104 occurrences counted as IU and 39 as AU. An analysis of these two thematised devices is given in Table 1. Table 2 displays the frequencies in the NNS corpus of the additive-type thematised logical connectors. The ®ndings indicate that, as hypothesised, all three connectors are frequently used by the subjects. Of particular interest here is the fact that most of the uses of besides were judged to be inappropriate. This is Table 1 Frequency counts of the two fronting devices in the NNS corpus Sentence-initial Concerning and For
For Concerning
Occurrences Total (1 in n)
Appropriate Use (AU) (1 in n)
Inappropriate Use (IU) (1 in n)
143 (1/3,036) 6 (1/99,705)
39 (1/11,132) 1 (434,162)
104 (1/4,174) 5 (1/119,646)
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Table 2 Frequency counts of the thematised additive logical connectors in the NNS corpus Thematised Logical Connectors
Moreover Besides Furthermore
Occurrences Total (1 in n)
Appropriate Use (AU) (1 in n)
Inappropiate Use (IU) (1 in n)
142 (1/1,053) 270 (1/1,608) 192 (1/2,261)
398 (1/1,090) 22 (1/19,734) 190 (1/2,285)
14 (1/31,011) 248 (1/1,750) 2 (1/217,081)
accounted for by the fact that subjects frequently use besides to look at the argument they are presenting from a dierent perspective rather than using the connector simply to add a further point. This ®nding coheres with one of the outcomes of a study carried out by Malcolm and Honjio (1988) into the structure of the expository English tests produced by Chinese subjects. The high frequency of these connectors is further evidenced by the results of a general search of a NNS monitor archive (see Table 3) in which, out of a sample of 26 sentence-initial connectors and topic-fronting devices, moreover ranked 5th, besidesranked 7th and furthermore ranked 8th. The results displayed in Table 3 demonstrate that, in contrast to the connectors in question, there were relatively few incidences of the two topic-fronting structures beginning for and concerning. For is actually ranked 20 and concerning 26. We had hypothesised that the two fronting devices and the three thematised connectors would be comparatively more frequent in the writing of our subjects that in native English writing. The hypothesis is con®rmed in the comparisons of the NNS corpus and the three NS corpora. Table 4 shows that, apart from sentence-initial for2, the other experimental items appeared far more frequently in the NNS corpus than in any of the three NS corpora. There was no evidence of inappropriate use of the experimental items in theNScorpora. The comparatively infrequent occurrence of the topic-fronting devices in the NNS corpusmaybe accounted for in terms of our subjects relatively advanced L2 acquisition stage. Other studies (see, e.g., Sung, 1991, which investigated the English writing of Chinese senior high school students) record a far higher 2
There are more occurrences of sentence-initial for in the LOB corpus than in the NSS corpus. Manual investigation indicates that this may be attributed to the fact that some of the ®les in LOB have aliterary orientation and contain a substantial number of sentence-initial time phrases and clauses of cause, both beginning with for.
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Table 3 Overall frequency rankings of fronting devices and thematised logical connectors in a 600,000-word NNS monitor archive
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24/25 25/24 26
Thematised connectors and topic-fronting devices
Occurrences
And Also Because Therefore Moreover Although Besides Furthermore Actually Finally Firstly Nevertheless Secondly Eventually Regarding Namely Consequently Lastly Similarly For Afterwards Anyway Previously Likewise Alternatively Concerning
8598 8369 6924 4422 3211 2874 2557 1319 1250 1023 723 636 537 321 295 256 247 210 158 143 125 124 51 30 30 6
number of topicalised structures which utilise the sentence-initial devices beginning for and concerning.
6. Thematic development Following the quantitative procedures outlined above, we analysed a sample of 200 texts from the NNS corpus and identi®ed three basic ways in which theme was developed by subjects. These thematic progressions are discussed and exempli®ed below. It should be noted that each of the text excerpts below are presented in both their original forms and as ``reformulations''. The reformulations are actually original excerpts altered minimally to exclude the logical connectors and topicfronting devices under consideration in this study. Our reason for presenting both original and reformulated excerpts in parallel is to demonstrate as clearly as
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Table 4 A comparison of the incidence of the thematised connectors and topic-fronting devices in the NNS corpus and the NS corpora CORPORA
Thematised connectors Moreover Furthermore Besides
NNS
NS
HKUST Learner Corpus
LOB
BROWN
11 (1/56,661) 5 (1/124,654) 3 (1/207,757)
31 (1/21,465) 12 (1/55,453) 16 (1/41,589)
262 (1/2,379) 1 (1/623,271)
91 (1/93,020) 0
CSE (Cambridge Examination Syndicate corpus) No. of occurrences 142 7 (1/1,053) (1/82,316) 192 27 (1/2,261) (1/21,341) 270 3 (1/1,608) (1/92,070)
Sentence-initial concerning and for
No. of occurrences
For
143 (1/3,036) 6 (1/99,705)
Concerning
88 (1/92,070) 0
possible the emerging discourse competence of the subjects; a phenomenon more easily perceived when inappropriately thematised constituents are deleted. It should also be noted at this point that the reformulated excerpts illustrate very plainly Danes's (1974) observation that three types of thematic progression may be discerned incoherent discourse viz simple linear, constant and derived progressions. The three headings below re¯ect these progressions in respective order. 6.1. Linkage of theme to a preceding rheme In this kind of progression, successive themes are derived from the head of the preceding rheme. In the example below, diculties in the rheme of the ®rst sentence becomes, in the lexical guise of those problems, the theme of the second sentence. Original excerpt. For using English as the medium of instruction in Hong Kong, it cause diculties for students. Besides, those problems are worse because of students' low pro®ciency in English. Moreover, the low language standard of students mean that they are hard to understand the content of some subjects. Reformulation. Using English as medium of instruction in Hong Kong cause diculties for students. Those problems are worse because of students' low
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pro®ciency in English. The low language standard of students mean that they are hard to understand the content of some subjects.3 6.2. Linkage of theme to a more remote preceding theme or rheme In this progression, a new theme is derived from a more distant theme or the head of a more distant rheme. In the example below, the text-initial theme, the Hong Kong government, appears in shortened form as the theme of the third sentence. Lexical repetition (rather than pronoun substitution) is necessary here because the intervening second sentence creates an extended gap between the ®rst mention of the theme and its reiteration. Original excerpt. Concerning Hong Kong government, it always insist on student using English as the medium of instruction in Hong Kong schools. It is a sign of colonialism and is not good for students. Furthermore, the government should allowed the use of Chinese as medium of instruction. Reformulation. The Hong Kong government always insist on student using English as the medium of instruction in Hong Kong schools. This is a sign of colonialism and is not good for students. The government should allowed the use of Chinese as medium of instruction. 6.3. Linkage of minor themes to a metatheme In this kind of progression, successive themes are derived from a text- or paragraph- initial metatheme. In the example below, the metatheme which forms the ®rst sentence is followed by successive themes which illustrate particular aspects of the point it conveys. Original excerpt. There are some problems in using English as the medium of instruction in Hong Kong. Students are lack of understanding their subject areas. Moreover, English becomes hated because students are force to use it. Furthermore, many teachers do not have good enough language skills to teach through English and fail to help their students. Reformulation. There are some problems using English as the medium of instruction in Hong Kong. Students are lack of understanding their subject areas. English becomes hated because students are force to use it. Many teachers do not have good enough language skills to teach through English and fail to help their students. In the original excerpts above, thematic progression is obscured by the sheer number of adipose items distributed throughout the textÐall of which usurp theme position. The distracting connectors in the original excerpts above are at least mostly used in a pragmatically appropriate way to make additional points 3 The reformulations are all student-generated and, as the reader will note, retain a degree of nonstandard expression.
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relevant to the theme. When inappropriate cueing devices (miscues) are employed the results are, of course, rather more disorienting for the reader.
7. Thematisation and information structure Unmarked English syntax realises the importance of new information through what Halliday (1985) has termed end-focus i.e., new information is given prominence by being placed towards the end of a sentence, while given information is assigned sentence-initial (theme) position to allow for logical connection to the preceding information. As indicated earlier in this paper, there are occasions for breaking given-new information structure to realise particular pragmatic intentions, but it is our contention that Chinese learners break the given-new progression too frequently and unintentionally by using theme position to introduce new information rather than to retain given-new sequencing of information, to introduce a new topical referent, or to present a contrast to what has gone before. The usurpation of theme position leads to the appearance of an uncommonly large number of marked themes which, in turn, gives rise to writing which is overly emphatic in tone at best and which, at worst, lacks the smooth logical development of theme which characterises coherent writing. Consider the original excerpt from the NNS corpus below: English is the medium of instruction in many Hong Kong schools. It is because the government makes this a law many years ago. Moreover, many parents prefer their children to be educated in English medium because it can provide better prospects. Concerning Chinese medium, it is more popular for students. The theme Chinese medium has no antecedent and its appearance (heavily emphatic because of the use of a fronting device) is incohesive and jarringÐ despite its intended contrastive function. On the subject of thematic antecedent, Ehrlich (1998) makes an important point: . . . cohesive discourse results when some part of a sentence's dominant clause, that is, the main point of the sentence, is connected to succeeding sentences. When cohesive devices connect succeeding sentences to information which is not prominent within the discourse, incohesive discourse results. This example from the NNS corpus illustrates Ehrlich's point: (a) Many students are hard to study their subjects in Hong Kong. (b) It is because the medium of instruction is English. (c) Besides, they have to pass many examinations. This is a defective attempt to link minor themes to a metatheme. Sentence (c) should connect with sentence (a), but the intervening sentence (b), which has become dominant within the discourse, does not relate to sentence (c) in a cohesive way. A similar problem is apparent in this original NNS test:
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Concerning some people, they tend to believe that using Chinese as the teaching medium in Hong Kong would make study easier, but they are wrong. If parents let their children start building a good basics as soon as possible, it will be easier for them to study in English. Hence, it depends on the attitudes of parents to get rid of this misconception. In this example, the sentence separating the ®rst and ®nal sentences creates an extended interval between the ®rst mention of the problem and its reiteration. The result is that readers are left stranded looking for a cohesive antecedent in the second sentence and, not ®nding it, are then required to put extra eort into construing the connection for themselves. This kind of defective cohesion is compounded by our Chinese subject's overwhelming tendency to place certain classes of logical connectors, including the additive category under consideration here, in theme position. Subjects seem to be unaware that many types of connector are, in fact, mobile elements and that the writer has some choice in where to place them in a sentence. The evidence from the NS corpora shows quite clearly that native speakers rarely thematise these adverbials, preferring instead to make them less salient by embedding them medially within the clause.
8. Conclusion In this paper, we have analysed two distinctive surface structure features of the interlanguage texts produced by Chinese writers of academic English. We have established, through a contrastive corpus-based enquiry, that Chinese writers of English, relative to native speaker norms, do indeed thematise logical connectors of addition. There is, however, less evidence in the data of the employment of topic-fronting devices, and this we attribute mainly to the fact that most of the subjects have passed through the interlanguage stage at which L2 output is grossly in¯uenced by transferred syntactic and discoursal characteristics of L1. We went on to demonstrate how subjects frequently fail to use theme as a vehicle for maintaining given-new information structure, but choose rather to occupy theme position in appropriately with a surfeit of loudly-announced new information, or redundant or misleading discourse cues. This leads to the overproduction of marked themes. Texts characterised by an excess of marked themes tend, at best, to be overly emphatic in tone. At worst, and depending on the distribution of the marked themes, such texts are likely to exhibit a degree of local or global incoherence. As indicated in the introduction to this study, this paper represents the ®rst phase of a two-phase enquiry into the use of theme in Chinese-English interlanguage texts. The next phase of research will consider ways in which teachers might best raise learner consciousness of the importance of theme in English information structure, and how this awareness may be activated to help learners produce fully coherent written discourse. We have demonstrated that
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basic forms of thematic progression are, in fact, quite readily detectable in our subjects' writing, but that the development of theme is frequently interrupted by the overuse and misuse of thematised elements which constitute marked themes. The discernible emerging discourse competence of the subjects makes us optimistic about the applicability of the ®ndings of this study to pedagogy.
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