????? which? that:?? ??? ?? (A Discourse-Pragmatic Analysis of English Relativizers That and Which)

? ??? ??? ??? ? ????? which? that? ?? ????? COCA ??? ??? ?? ?? ????, ??? ?? ??? ???? ? ?????? ?? ??? ??? ?? ??? ??? ????? ?? ? ?????? ???? ????? ?? ?? ??? ???? ??? ???? ???? ???. ?? ?? ? ????? ? ?????? ?? ?? ??? ?? ?? ???? ??? COCA ???? ?? ???? ? ??? ?? ?????. ? ?????? ?? ??? ?? ??? ?? ? ???? ??? ??? ?????. ? ?????? ??? ??? ? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ????? ?? ?? ??? ?? ??? ? ??? ???? ? ?????? ??? ??? ??? ??? ?????. ????? ? ????? ?? ??????? ???? ?? ??? ?? ?? ??? ??? ?? ? ?????? ?? ??? ?? ??? ??? ??? ???? ??? ??? ?????.

This study investigates the usage of English relativizers, that and which, based on the corpus data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). It discusses how English speakers selectively use the relativizers based on their structural and discourse-functional properties. For its purpose, it examines 1,000 instances of that and which and discusses their usages comparatively. It is demonstrated here that their syntactic and functional properties differ greatly in several respects. For example, the relativizer, which, is likely to form a non-restrictive relative clause rather than a restrictive one. On the contrary, the relativizer, that, leads a restrictive relative clause, and it is rarely used in a non-restrictive clause. This study proposes that such a difference may be attributed to the discourse processing strategies that English speakers employ for the successful communication; They use the different forms of relativizer to reduce potential ambiguity, so that they have successful communication.