Connecting Chinese Written Discourse: A Case Study Based on Italian Learners

The definitions of discourse markers (DMs) provided so far have underlined their high frequency in spoken language, the internal variety of these items and their usage as linking devices between different discourse segments and conversation turns. This contribution is focused on the last feature, i.e. the usage of markers as connectives, and takes into account the written productions of 32 Italian learners of Chinese. A corpus of 78 texts has been created in order to provide a quantitative and qualitative account of the usage of connective devices. Results show how conjunctions and adverbs expressing addition, condition and opposition are preferred over other categories. The statistical analysis carried out also reveals how text types do not affect the usage of connectives. Moreover, no significant difference across time has been noticed, suggesting that much has to be done in order to improve learners’ mastery of connective devices in L2 Chinese.