| This thesis is intended to investigate the distribution and usage of copular verbs in technical English represented by T4 in comparison with the other' five corpora, namely, LOBA, BROWNA, NEC, MEE and MTE. The research is facilitated by the application of computers. Corpora and software are utilized in search of copular verbs and in analyzing the quantitative data. The findings of the study reveal a number of features of copular verbs in T4: the much use of copula be in T4 leads to the highest frequency of copular verbs as a whole in it, which is requied by the role to define and characterize the objects in question precisely and clearly; among 8 different forms of copula be, "is" is the most frequently used one in T4; among verbs of seeming, seem and appear rank first and second respectively in T4 and they can occur in several copular constructions; among verbs of resulting, become and get make a sharp contrast in their distribution in T4, which is governed by the stylistic factor. |
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