Having read the writing of non-native English speakers on several occasions, it has always struck me how easily I can identify what is 'wrong' about a particular sentence without really determining why. For example, in this sentence:
You see the man clamp his fists hard, like he is trying to suppress some strong emotions.
I recognise on a basic level that clamp is improper usage and should be replaced with clench, but I'm not sure why I find "suppress some strong emotions" odd. It doesn't look grammatically incorrect to me, and yet it doesn't sound naturally phrased either. The use of 'like' here also feels strange–perhaps because the informal register of 'like' clashes with the literary tone of the sentence? (This was taken from a written narrative.)
Furthermore, there seems to be a difference between the naturalness of native and non-native English writing regardless of accuracy / correctness. Native speakers make grammatical mistakes that still register as ones made by native speakers, for instance. In contrast, the above sentence reads very much 'foreign'. So when a sentence doesn't sound natural, where does the problem lie?
Are there linguistic concepts and terms that allow me to properly discuss this phenomenon? (e.g. The lack of natural flow is due to "semantic confusion". "Syntactical errors" are also at work.) I would appreciate suggestions.
Best Answer
I am not a native speaker, but the problem you described is true for any language. Having learnt English for a few years and still having hard time speaking idiomatically, I am starting to understand the key reasons behind it.
Neglecting semantics and being unaware of well-established and fixed phrases and collocations while finding target language counterparts of our native words and phrases
Let's suppose I want to say to put pressure on sb. I don't know how it would be in English. In my native tongue, this verb phrase is one single verb. I look it up in a dictionary and get: push, squeeze, jam, crush etc. If I were an ideal student I would do more research to find a verb or a phrase with the closest meaning possible, but doing extensive research for every single word takes much time. Laze and self-confidence overcome. I wishfully think this one is correct and I have seen it used in this context. Voila! I clamp my fists hard and hope it will pass and nobody will notice.
The rest ensues from the aforesaid.
Why does it happen?
Each language has its own established word use rules and fixed phrases which are not always logical and do not necessarily have direct counterparts in other languages. When it's your mother tongue, you absorb these peculiarities for years, you read a lot of books, listen to good language everyday - much more than a learner does. A learner's contact with the language is limited. It begins at school and boils down to a few hours a week at best. We have much less opportunities to embrace huge amount of language material a native speaker contacts with over the course of, say, first 15-20 years of their life when personality is formed and basic mental skills are developed.