A Corpus-based Study On 's-genitive And Of-phrase By Chinese English-learners

The thesis,based on the theory of Modern English Grammar and corpus-based approach,aims to explore 's-genitive and of-phrase used by Chinese English-learners from three aspects:the frequency distributions,syntactic features of the genitive noun and the semantic relations between the genitive noun and its head noun,producing the following findings:Firstly,for Chinese English-learners,the frequency of 's-genitive is significantly lower than of-phrase.In addition,'s-genitive and of phrase are both underused by English learners in China,indicating that Chinese English-learners are not capable of using these two constructions flexibly.Secondly,as to the syntactic features of the genitive noun,because of the singular noun as the unmarked form and different thinking modes,Chinese English-learners use more singular form than its plural form and the difference is significant.In addition,of-phrase is used when the genitive noun is inanimate.However,'s-genitive is preferred to nouns with human reference or characteristics,such as personal nouns,personal names,collective nouns and animal nouns,among which the personal nouns take the highest portion.Next,a group of inanimate nouns,especially geographical nouns and nouns denoting location and time,also occur in 's-genitiveThirdly,among twelve kinds of semantic relations between the genitive noun and its head noun,for Chinese English-learners,'s-genitive usually has a relatively high proportion with possessive,subjective,descriptive genitive,genitive of origin,other genitive meanings of 's-genitive and objective genitive.While in of phrase,the most frequently genitive meanings are objective,possessive,descriptive,subjective,genitive of apposition and partitive genitive.Moreover,there is a significant difference between subjective genitive and objective genitive between 's-genitive and of-phrase.That is to say,'s-genitive is closely related to subject and of-phrase to object,indicating Chinese English-learners have a good command of this grammar structure.This thesis has both theoretical and practical significance.Firstly,it enhances English learners' comprehension of genitive case.What's more,it is of great help for English learners to use the construction more accurately.Last but not least,it serves as an important inference in accurate and concise Chinese-English translation.