| This thesis is a descriptive and empirical analysis of distribution, frequency and use of hedging expressions in English scientific research aiiicles by native speakers and by Chinese speakers who use English as an interLanguage. Then the thesis attempts to see whether LI (Chinese here) has any influence on the differences existing in hedging in English scientific research articles by Chinese speakers. This thesis consists of five pails. Part One is a general introduction, providing some background and overview of the topic. Part Two is the method employed in the research, in which the necessaiy corpus for the present study is collected from some science journals and analyzed. The results come in Part Three, which compares the English scientific research articles by native ~iters and by Chinese writers from five categories: epistemic verbs, modals, adverbs, adjectives and nouns. Part Four is a discussion, in which the assumption is supported by the finding that there are both qualitative and quantitative differences in hedging between the English scientific research articles by native writers and by Chinese writers. This part also compares some Chinese speakers? Chinese research articles and their English research articles, finding that there is, to some extent, LI (Chinese here) influence on hedging in English scientific research articles by Chinese speakers who use English as an interlanguage. Concluding remarks come in Part Five. This thesis, through empirical and descriptive analysis of a corpus of 45 scientific research articles, holds that the way Chinese ~iters use hedges differs both qualitatively and quantitatively from native ~iiters?performance in English scientific research articles. Native transfer is one of possible causes of such differences. |
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