ABSTRACT

Previous works have identified multiple factors and their interplay that condition the positioning of the concessive adverbial clauses. This study continues this line of research by 1) focusing exclusively on the positioning of although-led concessive adverbial clauses (although-clauses hereafter) among different concessive clause relations; 2) supplementing the factor set with more linguistic features, such as sentence-initial adverbials and hedging terms; and, 3) extending and generalizing the scope of competition among semantic, discoursal and processing motivators to a higher-level competition between ‘clarity’ and ‘processability’. Data were retrieved from 1,738 concessive sentences of student argumentative essays from the BAWE and NESSIE corpora. Models were generated based on binary logistic regression and random forests. The results show that the motivator of the relationship between the although-clauses and their main clauses was the most significant variable in all models, denoting its priority in conditioning concessive clause positioning, under the Competition Model framework. Subordinate clause complexity and deranking (i.e. clauses that do not have a full verb) were the least significant among all motivating factors. Overall, clarity-related motivators outweigh processability-related ones, prioritizing clear meaning-conveying in competition with processing motivators.

摘要

以前的工作已经确定了多个因素及其相互作用，这些因素决定了让步状语从句的定位。本研究通过以下方式继续这一研究方向：1) 仅侧重于虽然主导的让步状语从句的定位（尽管-从句）在不同的让步从句关系之间；2）用更多的语言特征补充因子集，如句首状语和对冲项；并且，3）将语义、话语和加工动机之间的竞争范围扩展和概括为“清晰度”和“可加工性”之间的更高层次的竞争。数据是从 BAWE 和 NESSIE 语料库中学生议论文的 1,738 个让步句子中检索到的。模型是基于二元逻辑回归和随机森林生成的。结果表明，尽管子句与其主句之间关系的动机是所有模型中最显着的变量，表明其在竞争模型框架下优先调节让步条款定位。从属子句的复杂性和排序（即没有完整动词的子句）是所有激励因素中最不重要的。总体而言，与清晰度相关的动机比与可加工性相关的更重要，在与加工动机的竞争中优先考虑清晰的意义传达。