| Abstract [eng] |
A Contrastive Analysis of Vague Language in Spoken English of Lithuanian Learners of English and Native Speakers Vagueness and vague language (VL) is an inseparable part of natural language. Furthermore, spontaneous spoken language, conversation in particular, relies on non-elaboration, dysfluencies, simplicity etc. all of which contribute to naturalness of speech. Among such features, linguists have also identified vague language which, as research shows, is often misused or underused by non-native learners of English, which, as a consequence, leads to artificially sounding speech. This study aims to investigate VL in native and non-native spoken English in order to answer the question why EFL learners sound unnatural when compared to native speakers. Two corpora, LINDSEI-LITH and LOCNEC, were chosen for the comparative analysis of learners’ and native speakers’ use of different vagueness markers (VMs). Firstly, the quantitative analysis was done, which revealed that there are more underused than overused VMs in EFL learner English. Secondly, the qualitative analysis of the most often used vague coordination tags and compromisers in LINDSEI-LITH was done. The analysis was twofold: structural and functional, and thus revealed not only syntactic patterns and lexical combinability but also similarities and differences in the functions of VMs. |
