英语论文网

er, despite the fact that modality haslong been the subject of many logicians, philosophers and linguists’ inquiry, scholarshave not come to an agreement on its definition as they studied it from a wide varietyof angles in their own disciplines. The following is a brief survey on the definitions ofmodality.Lyons (1977, p. 452) refers to modality as the speaker’s “opinion or attitudetowards the proposition that the sentence expresses or the situation that the Quirk et al. (1985, p. 219) propose that “modality may be defined as the mannerin which the meaning of a clause is qualified so as to reflect the speaker’s judgment ofthe likelihood of the proposition it expresses as being true”.
........

2.2 Previous Studies on the Overuse of English Modals
Researchers from countries in which English is not their first language have donesome corpus-based investigations on the use of English modal verbs by the Englishlearners. Results show that there exists certain kinds of misuse of the English modalsby the English learners, i.e. they overuse several modals while underuse some other.This can be seen from the following research findings:Hu, Brown and Brown (1982) make a study of comparing the English writtenmaterials of Chinese English learners with those of the Australian’s. The studyindicates that when Chinese English learners express the demand or suggest, they areinclined to use the modal verbs Should or Must, whereas the native speakers arewilling to use Need or Had better to convey the demand and suggest.Hinkel (1995, pp. 333-335) studies the use of modal verbs between two differentnon-native countries. The research draws the conclusion that some emigrants fromSoutheast Asia frequently use Must, Should, Have to, Ought to.
....

Chapter Three Theoretical Basis.....20
3.1 Mental-space Mapping Theory....20
3.1.1 Mental-space Mapping.......20
3.1.2 Working Mechanism.......22
3.2 Modal-verb Mapping Hypothesis......28
3.2.1 Hypothesis 1: Overmapping Hypothesis......28
3.2.2 Hypothesis 2: Undermapping Hypothesis.........30
3.3 Working Mechanism of Modal-verb Mapping Hypothesis.....32
Chapter Four Methodology......35
4.1 Research Hypotheses........35
4.2 Research Design.......35
4.2.1 Participants....35
4.2.2 Materials....36
4.2.3 Procedure....39
4.2.3.1 Pilot Study.......39
4.2.3.2 Main Study.......39
4.3 Data Collection.....40
Chapter Five Results and Discussion.......42
5.1 Description of the Results......42
5.2 Hypothesis-based Discussion.......44
5.2.1 Hypothesis 1.......44
5.2.2 Hypothesis 2.......54
5.2.3 Hypothesis......58
5.3 General Discussion......59

Chapter Five Results and Discussion

5.1 Description of the Results
In the last chapter, the empirical study on modal verbs Can and Could was givenfull description, including the hypotheses, the aims, participants, materials and theprocedure. In this chapter, firstly an overview of the study results will be displayed,after which comes the major part, the hypothesis-based discussion that has twosub-hypotheses and they will be discussed respectively. Finally, there is a generaldiscussion about the application of the research findings to other modal verbs. After inputting all the original figures into SPSS 16.0 and calculating the本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。