A Corpus-based Contrastive Study Of Collocational Behavior And Semantic Prosodies Of Resulting Copular Verbs In Chinese Learner English

Sinclair advocates co-selection theory as the core mechanism of language description, which consists of four aspects, namely, collocation, colligation, semantic preference and semantic prosody. Based on the co-selection theory, this paper intends to investigate the collocational behavior and semantic prosodies of under the colligation of copular verb+adj through a corpus-based contrastive analysis between Chinese learner English and native English. Copular verbs, as a subgroup of English verbs, are special in terms of their semantic features and syntactic function. The reason why they are selected is that learners of English in Chinese context sometimes have much difficulty in choosing the most suitable one where there are several copular verbs that almost carry the identical meaning but differ in collocational or prosodic behavior. Furthermore, there has been little work undertaken on contrasting Chinese learner English with native English in terms of collocational behavior and semantic prosody of resulting copular verbs:BECOME, GET and GO, and exploring their developmental patterns. This ultimate purpose of the study is to explore what are the underlying factors for the developmental patterns.The instruments employed in this study include the principal corpora (CLEC, Flob and Frown) and WordSmith4.0. Statistical calculation and data analysis generated the following major findings:Firstly, resulting copular verbs exhibit much difference in terms of collocation, colligation, semantic preference and semantic prosody in both native English and Chinese learner English.Secondly, compared with native speakers, Chinese English learners tend to underuse the copular verb GO+adj, while more frequently use BECOME+adj. They also show much variation and deviation in their choice of collocates, some of which have their own particular semantic features and characteristic semantic preference.Thirdly, Chinese English learners have much difficulty in distinguishing semantic preference and semantic prosody among the three resulting copular verbs. Their knowledge of semantic preference and prosody grows from high school to the English major learners.Finally, different degrees of reliance on word-for-word translation, incomplete knowledge of the target language and dependence on the formal college education are one of the leading factors for the developmental pattern.The findings in this study have the following implications for the English teaching and learning in Chinese context:1) The importance of collocation and semantic prosody should be recognized in language learning.2) The traditional practice of explaining meanings to learners by offering synonyms should be used with caution.3) Collocation and colligation should be in textbook compilation and teaching syllabus and textbook.However, the present study has its own limitations and requires improvement in future related studies. First, the size of the corpora in this study limited our research range and prevented us from achieving more universally applicable conclusions. Second, the subjective classification and identification of the semantic prosody of the copular verbs might have not been approved by other researchers. Finally, due to the limited time and the size of paper, the uses of these copular verbs in this study have not been investigated completely and deeply enough. Only copular verb+adj colligation in this study is conducted as a whole rather than respectively. Future related studies can investigate each complement in detail to deepen and broaden the study.