A Corpus-based Analysis of the Variation of Relative Pronouns Depending on Genres

초록

The purpose of this study is to investigate the distributional patterns of relative pronouns depending on genres and identify the pragmatic factors which affect the preference of using a certain type of relative pronoun. Since we assume that the different genres reflect different discourse purposes, we selected three different genres in spoken discourse such as conversation, classroom lesson, and broadcast talk, and three in written discourse such as social letter, novel, and press news report. The research data for this paper is limited to zero, that, which, who, and whom. To examine the distribution of relative pronouns, we collected 200 relative clauses from each selected genre in ICE-GB corpus. Our finding shows that the discourse purpose can make an effect on the real usage of relative pronouns. Another finding is that the distributional patterns of syntactic types and those of restrictive usage of relative pronouns are realized differently depending on genres because of genre specific characteristics. Accordingly, our results provide compelling evidence that pragmatic factors affect the variation of relative pronouns.

키워드