Correlation between end-weight principle and adjective clauses in English: Q1 SCOPUS applied linguistics articles and Thai EFL learners’ essays

Oct 15, 2026

This study examines the correlation between the linguistic theory of the end-weight principle and English adjective clauses, using Q1-SCOPUS applied linguistics articles and Thai EFL learners’ descriptive essays. Two datasets are analyzed: 20 Q1-SCOPUS articles containing 117 adjective-clause instances in final position or VP postmodifiers (about 200,000 words) and 67 descriptive essays by Thai EFL high school learners under Thailand’s Ministry of Education. Results show statistically significant relationships with reported p-values of 0.01 and 0.02, supporting that English exhibits end-weight structure and that learners can follow it accurately, influenced by positive L1 interference.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages11

Reading Time28 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

African Educational Research Journal Vol. 12(1), pp. 67-77, March 2024 DOI: 10. 30918/AERJ.121.24.016 ISSN: 2354-2160 Full Length Research Paper Correlation between end-weight principle and adjective clauses in English: Q1 SCOPUS applied linguistics articles and Thai EFL learners’ essays Abhinan Wongkittiporn English Language Department, Rangsit University, Thailand. Accepted 26 March, 2024 | ABSTRACT
The researcher in this study applied the notions of quantitative method, theoretical linguistics and applied linguistics to examine the correlation between the linguistic theory of end-weight principle and English adjective clauses in Q1-SCOPUS applied linguistics articles and Thai EFL learners’ descriptive essays. The significance of this study is that structure and use in writing should be learned simultaneously. This current study also innovatively supports Thai EFL learners to examine their linguistic competence in structuring information in their English writing. The data collection in this study was divided into two datasets. The first dataset was 20 Q1-SCOPUS applied linguistics articles published between 2022 and 2024. Approximately 200,000 words provided 117 sentences containing adjective clauses in the final position or VPpostmodifiers. On the other hand, the second dataset was 67 descriptive essays written by Thai EFL highschool learners from both public schools and private schools under the supervision of the Ministry of Education, Thailand. The original theory of the end-weight principle proposed by Quirk et al. (1972) is followed in this study. The syntactic structure of adjective clauses follows Radford (2009) who analyzed adjective clauses as complementizer phrases (CP) . The inferential statistical analysis of correlation follows SPSS 29. The results showed that there was a statistically significant relationship between the datasets of applied linguistics articles and EFL learners’ descriptive essays where the p-values were reported at 0.01 and 0.02, respectively. Not only do these statistical relationships show that English is an end-weight language, but also Thai EFL learners can follow the norm accurately. This is due to the positive effect of themother tongue interference since the Thai language is an end-weight language. The pedagogical implication of the study to EFL learners is that information structures should be contributed to grammar classes. For future studies, it is recommended to test the hypothesis of the end-weight principle with reduced adjective clauses in the medial position of sentences.
Keywords: Adjective clauses, applied linguistics articles, descriptive essays, end-weight principle, Thai EFL learners. | | --- | | *Corresponding author. E-mail: [abhinan.w@rsu.ac.th](abhinan.w@rsu.ac.th). | INTRODUCTION Information structure is an important linguistic aspect of arranging information into clauses, sentences and paragraphs (Birner and Ward, 2009) . It is viewed as similar to that of building constructions that connect everything. However, most English language learners are apt to ignore studying information structure. They seem to pay more attention to the study of vocabulary and grammar in writing (Wongkittiporn, 2024) . Although the notion of vocabulary and grammar could help them write to communicate, the way information is linked to creating Afr Educ Res J 68 the smoothness of reading seems problematic. The English Language is heavy-ended. This means that the head is short, while the longer part is left for the final position of the sentence. In other words, writing along subject is not uncommon in English, such as (1a) . (1) (a) To swim for 50 minutes every day is good. (b) It is good to swim for 50 minutes every day. Examples (1a)-(1b) are arbitrary control constructions , which are factual or habitual information applicable to everyone. Even though both examples are semantically the same, the way the information is structured is different between

FAQs

What is the main focus of the study?

The study investigates the correlation between the end-weight principle and the use of English adjective clauses in Q1-SCOPUS applied linguistics articles and Thai EFL learners’ descriptive essays.

How were the two datasets constructed?

Dataset one includes 20 Q1-SCOPUS applied linguistics articles (2022–2024) totaling about 200,000 words and 117 sentences with adjective clauses in the final position or VP postmodifiers. Dataset two contains 67 descriptive essays written by Thai EFL high school learners.

What do the statistical results indicate?

The inferential analysis reports statistically significant relationships between the two datasets, with p-values of 0.01 and 0.02, indicating learners can follow end-weight norms.

Oct 15, 2026

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