A Corpus-based Comparative Study On The Semantic Prosody Use Of The Cause Synonyms By Chinese EFL Learners And Native English Speakers

The phenomenon of semantic prosody was found by Sinclair and has been studied by many researchers from different perspectives in the field of corpus linguistics.However,among the existing studies,few have explored the differences between learners of different English proficiency levels in terms of the prosodic performance.To address this issue,the present study focuses on the semantic prosodies of a set of synonyms(cause,lead to,result in,make and bring about)and tries to answer the following research questions:(1)What are the semantic prosodies of the cause synonyms?(2)What are characteristics of semantic prosody use by Chinese EFL learners and are there differences between the learners of different proficiency levels?(3)What are the factors that affect Chinese EFL learners’performance in semantic prosody?To find out the prosodic performance of native English speakers and Chinese EFL learners in the selected words,the author adopted the data-based approach and analyzed the data chosen from Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners(WECCL),Chinese Learner English Corpus(CLEC)and The Corpus of Contemporary American English(COCA).To find out the factors influencing students’ prosodic performance,the author conducted interviews with three English majors and four non-English majors.By analyzing the data in COCA,the author found that cause,lead to and result in showed negative semantic prosodies,make showed a mixed prosody and bring about showed a positive prosody.In Chinese EFL learners’ corpora,cause,lead to and result in also showed negative semantic prosodies,but at the same time they were overused in positive contexts by the learners.In terms of the semantic prosodies of make and bring about,Chinese EFL learners mistakenly used them in the positive and negative way respectively,which were different from native English speakers.The comparisons of the two proficiency groups revealed that the English majors had a better performance in the prosodic use of cause,lead to,and result in and that the non-English majors had a better performance in make.In terms of bring about,both English and non-English majors showed significant differences from native speakers,showing that students’ prosodic performance might not improve simultaneously with the improvement of their language proficiency.The interviews showed that factors influencing students’ prosodic performance included the lack of semantic prosody explanations in dictionaries,students’ improper habit of using dictionaries,lack of explicit instructions and L1 transfer.Besides,other factors like the amount of English input and the strategy of avoidance were also mentioned by some of the interviewees.This study is pedagogically significant in that the findings can help English teachers and learners understand the developmental pattern of learners’ semantic prosody use and the discrepancies between them and native English speakers.This understanding could effectively improve semantic prosody teaching and learning.It is also suggested in the present study that information about semantic prosody should be included in dictionaries to increase English learners’ awareness of semantic prosody and improve idiomaticity in their English use.