1. Introduction

The chapter introduces the concept of temporal adverbial clauses and the differences in ordering distribution between English and Chinese. It highlights previous research on the topic, including studies on English and Chinese learners. The chapter also discusses the influence of syntactic complexity and cognitive perspective on ordering preference, introducing Dependency Grammar as a framework for the study. Lastly, it touches on the relationship between dependency distance and the cognitive load in language processing.

2. Materials and Methods

The chapter describes the metrics used in the study, such as dependency distance and binary relations between linguistic units. It also explains the creation of the dependency tree based on directed acyclic graphs and provides examples of the dependency structure of two example sentences. The participants and data collection process are detailed, including the selection of student grades, text genres, and the corpus from which texts are selected. The methods used in the study are outlined, focusing on the discussion of finite temporal adverbial clauses and the selection of subordinators for English and Chinese temporal adverbial clauses. Finally, the manual identification and extraction of compound sentences with temporal adverbial clauses and the use of Excel and SPSS 20 for data calculation are discussed.

3. Results and Discussion

The results and discussion chapter of the paper explores the ordering distribution of temporal adverbial clauses and subordinators for temporal adverbial clauses by Chinese EFL learners at different proficiency levels. The study shows that the ordering pattern of temporal adverbial clauses by Chinese EFL learners is similar to native Chinese, but with an increase in proficiency, the ordering pattern starts to resemble native English. There are significant differences in the ordering distribution of temporal adverbial clauses among the beginning, intermediate, and advanced Chinese EFL learners and native English and Chinese. The study also discusses the ordering distribution of subordinators for temporal adverbial clauses, and explains the reasons behind the successful acquisition of this language feature by Chinese EFL learners, attributing it to the high frequency and strong salience of the language construction. Additionally, the motivation for the ordering distribution of temporal adverbial clauses by Chinese EFL learners is explored from the perspective of cognitive processing, with a focus on dependency distance and syntactic complexity.

4. Conclusion

The current study uses quantitative research methods to probe the ordering distribution of temporal adverbial clauses by Chinese EFL learners at different proficiencies. It is found that learners tend to precede temporal adverbial clauses to the main clause, and with increased proficiency, the ordering pattern approaches the target language. The ordering distribution of subordinators for temporal adverbial clauses by Chinese EFL learners is 100% preceded, consistent with native English. The high frequency and salience of prepositional temporal adverbial clauses and subordinators in learners’ input may be a reason for this. The study suggests that long dependency distance of postpositional temporal adverbial clauses causes more cognitive load and processing difficulty, motivating the preference of preceding temporal adverbial clauses. This study provides empirical support for learners and teachers to understand the ordering distribution of temporal adverbial clauses in English, and suggests the need for further research on interlanguage with different target languages and native languages.