A Contrastive Corpus-based Study on Chunk Use between Korean and Chinese Writers in Linguistics PhD Dissertations

This study contrasted the use of chunks in linguistic PhD dissertations by Korean and Chinese writers by developing a self-built dissertation corpus consisting of approximately two million words, the findings of which were also compared with that of native English writers in previous study. The results demonstrated that Korean and Chinese writers share many of the frequent chunks, but Chinese writers use more chunks in their dissertations than Korean writers do. Structurally, preposition-based chunks were the most frequently found ones in dissertations by both Korean and Chinese writers, followed by noun-based chunks. Functionally, Chinese writers used different types of chunks more evenly than their Korean counterparts did. Compared to the Korean writers, Chinese writers’ use of chunks was generally more similar to that of native English writers. Notably, the overuse of chunks was more typical of Korean writers, while the underuse of chunks was more common for Chinese writers. This study might have important implications for language teachers, language learners, material developers, and researchers in the field of linguistics.