Complementiser and Complement Clause Preference for Verb-Heads in the Written English of Nigerian Undergraduates

• 作者: Juliet Udoudom Ogbonna Anyanwu
• 来源期刊: 语言与符号学研究
• 学科: 文学
• 年，卷（期）: 2017,（4）
• 页码范围: 88-104
• 页数: 17页
• 分类号: H314.3

摘要

This paper examines complementiser and complement clause preference for verb-heads in the written English of Nigerian undergraduates. Data for the study were obtained from the respondents through a written test designed to elicit the preference of complementisers and complement clause types of some verb-heads in English. The findings of the study showed a higher preference for clausal complements introduced by the complementiser that. Of the entire tokens of clausal complements in the data collected, 128 of them(54.46%) were complement clauses headed by that, while complement clauses introduced by whether and if complementisers had preference scores of 31.07% and 8.94% respectively. The complement clause-type which recorded the lowest preference was the one headed by the complementiser for(5.53%). Further findings from the study revealed that the semantic features of relevant embedding verb heads were sometimes not taken into consideration in the choice of complementisers which introduce certain complement clauses. The low preference of the forclause is explicable in terms of the fact that the respondents regarded for as a preposition, and not a complementiser.