Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 Composition of Modern English NovelS 1
1.2 The Purpose and Significance of the Research 14
1.3 Research Methods 16
1.3.1 The Corpora Used to Carry Out the Study 17
1.4 Data COllection 17
1.4.1 Data Sampling of Conversation in Modern English Novels 17
1.4.2 Description of Real Life Conversation 19
1.5 The Layout of the Thesis 21
Chapter 2 CHARACTERISTICS OF CONVERSATIONAL ENGLISH 23
2.1 Conversational English 23
2.1.1 Functions of Language 23
2.1.2 Types and Participants in Conversation 26
2.1.3 Comparing Discourse,Interaction,and Conversation Analysis 35
2.2 Characteristics of Conversational English 37
2.2.1 Principles Governing Conversation 37
2.2.2 Determinants of Conversation 51
2.3 Written English and Spoken Language 58
2.3.1 Differences in Manner of Production Between Written and Spoken Language 58
2.3.2 Differences in Form Between Written and Spoken Language 60
Chapter 3 QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF CONVERSATION IN NOVELS 64
3.1 Lexical Distribution 64
3.1.1 Type/Token Ratio 65
3.1.2 Word Frequency Distribution 68
3.1.3 The Use of Personal Pronouns 73
3.1.4 High Frequency of Be,Have，Do in Both CMEN And RLC 75
3.2 Stylistical Characteristics 79
3.2.1 Word Length 80
3.2.2 Sentence Length 87
3.2.3 Fillers 93
Chapter 4 CONCLUSIONS 97
APPENDIX 102
Ⅰ．Novels in Corpus CMEN 102
Ⅱ．Twenty Longest Words In Each Corpus 104
Ⅲ．Sentence Length In Each Corpus 106
Ⅳ．Abbreviations 114
REFERENCE 115