A Dissertation by GRACE HUI-CHIN LIN Submitted to the Office of ...

I. Phonological: To avoid pronunciation
difficulties ( avoid: “tr”, “ch”, “sk”, “sh”,
and “dr” sounds)
A: Your coat is very beautiful ( avoid
“attractive” or “charming”), where did
you find it?
B: I bought it when it was on sale. It
was 30 percents off. That store
sells( avoid discounts) all the slow-selling
goods.
A: Oh, can you tell me where that store is?
( avoid show me direction to that store)
B: It is on Main Street.
A: I will go by my car. ( I will “drive”.)
II. Morphological: Avoiding talking
about what happened yesterday.
A: Where did you eat for your breakfast
yesterday?
B: ( Avoid past tense) I eat an sandwich and
a cup of coffee this morning.
A: What will you eat tomorrow?
B: I don’t know yet. ( avoid future tense)
A: Have you ever eaten snake meat?
B: Yes, it is delicious. ( avoid perfect tense)
All of the sentences B used are through
simple present tense.
III. Syntactic: Avoiding talk of a
hypothetical nature and conditional
clauses
A: What might happen on you if you select so many
credits in one semester? Your advisor might tell you to
drop some of your credits selected?
B: ( B is not fluently in communicating in hypothetical
nature, so change a topic)
I don’t know how my advisor think. I am preparing to
learn computer next month. Do you know any
computer school that is good? ( change a topic)
A uses conditional clauses but B uses the other tense to
answer and change a topic. Because B’s hypothetical
nature in communication has not been well form yet.
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