A Corpus-based Study On English Synonymous Sentence Transformation In Junior Middle School

Synonymous sentence pair or group refers to a pair or group of sentences which express the same or similar meaning by using different words, phrases, and sentence patterns. Synonymous sentence transformation is an important way to develop learners’ ability of using different language forms to achieve the same or similar meanings or functions. It involves such aspects as lexical, grammar, meaning and function and is one of the main measures of English teaching and testing in primary and middle school in China. So a study of synonymous sentence transformation will be of great importance to improve learners’language competence and advance English teaching. This thesis studies the categories and semantic and pragmatic features of synonymous sentences by means of collecting a large quantity of examples and using BNC as a reference corpus. In this study, the author aims to answer the following questions:(1) What categories can English synonymous sentence transformation in junior middle school be grouped into?(2) Are there marked differences between the synonymous pairs in semantics and pragmatics? If so, what are they?(3) What are the reasons responsible for these differences?The results show:(1) In junior middle school, the most common synonymous sentence transformations can be divided into three kinds:word-level, phrase-level, and structure-level transformation.(2) There may be marked differences between the sentences within a synonymous pair in semantics and pragmatics. For word-and phrase-level transformation, the differences are mainly in semantics, but the marked differences at structure-level transformation primarily lie in pragmatics.(3) The main reasons responsible for the differences are:the meaning of lexical items is defined by their collocations; synonyms are likely to co-occur with different collocates; grammatical structures and sentence patterns have their distinctive semantics and functions.The results of the thesis are of great value to complete the current study of synonymous sentence transformation. Meanwhile, it provides a reference for future studies. It also has some practical value for improving the teaching of synonymous sentence transformation in junior middle school.