Sentence-Initial Conjunctive Adverbials in Academic Articles Written by Native English Speakers and Iranian Efl Writers

1. INTRODUCTIONThis study is based on an analysis of sentence-initial conjunctive adverbials in the writing of Iranian researcher writers and native speaker researchers. This is a corpus-based investigation which offers qualitative and quantitative insights into the use of CAs in published articles in the field of applied linguistics. The objective is to probe into the use of CAs by the Iranian researchers in order to see how they stack up against their native writers to illustrate some possibleinappropriate, overuse or underuse of these constituents by both groups.1. 1 Definition Of AdverbialsBiber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad and Finegan (1999, p. 762) define adverbials as clause elements with three functions: first, "to add circumstantial information about the proposition in the clause", second, "to express speaker/writer stance towards the clause" and third, "to link the clause (or some part of it) to some other unit of discourse" so he classifies them into three classes: circumstance adverbials, stance adverbials and linking adverbials.Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman (1999) define adverbials as "lexical expressions that may add little or no propositional content by themselves but they serve to specify the relationship among sentences in in oral and written discourse, thereby leading the reader to the feeling that the sentences hang together or make sense. These logical connectors, if placed appropriately, function as signposts, guiding the reader through the discourse. According to Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman (1999), cohesive devices are categorized into three types: (1) coordinating conjunctions (i.e., and, or, but, yet), (2) adverbial sub-coordinators (e.g., because, even though, since), and CAs (e.g., moreover, thus, however, similarly). This paper is an attempt to tap into the third type of logical connectors-conjunctive adverbials.The CAs chosen for analysis in this study are based on Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman's version of Halliday and Hassan's classification which divides conjunctions into four types: additive, adversative, causal and temporal.1. AdditiveEmphatic: in addition, moreover, further, furthermore, besides, also, in fact, additionally, at the same timeAppositional: that is, that is to say, in other words, for instance, for exampleComparative: likewise, similarly1. Adversative: however, nevetheless, nonetheless, despite this, in contrastContrastive: conversely, on the other hand, at the same time, meanwhile, otherwiseCorrection: instead, rather, at leastDismissal: in any case, in any event, anyhow, at any rate2. Causal: therefore, consequently, for 3. Temporal: then, in turn, next, first, second, third, fourth, first of all, firstly, last, finally, later, initiallySummarizing: in short, in summary, in brief, in sum, in conclusion, to sum up, to conclude, overall, all in all, to conclude1.2 CORPUS-BASED STUDIES ON CAsCrismore (1980) conducted an experiment on the use CAs. He tried to investigate students' mastery of meaning and use in reading and composing of five formal CAs in English (moreover, accordingly, hence, even so, and still) across school level and class type, and intended to find out whether there are differences in using CAs between remedial readers and nonremedial and between secondary students, technical college students and regular collage students. The subjects of the study were 100 students from remedial and non-remedial reading and composition class selected from a rural high school, a vocational technical college and a university, all located in the mid-west. The material in this study was five inter-sentential connectors have been given to students to provide a synonym for each connector and to generate a compound sentence using the connector appropriately between two main clauses in the compound sentences to link the ideas. …