Subordinate Clauses as Critical Features in English and French Learner Examination Corpora

Abstract

The aim of the study is to examine the syntactic pattern of the frequency of use of simple, complex and compound sentences focusing on different subordinate clauses as critical features in the written learner text corpora at different English and French language acquisition levels in the texts produced by secondary school test-takers in Latvia. The theoretical basis of the research is Pienemann’s Processability theory. For the purpose of quantitative and contrastive analysis of syntactic structures written learner text corpora in English and French have been compiled, in which different clauses have been marked by manual annotation and afterwards classified according to different syntactic patterns. Subordinate clauses have been grouped applying Dik’s taxonomy of embedded constructions. The preliminary research has discovered some similarities and differences between the syntactic pattern usage at the same language acquisition levels.