A Corpus-based Study Of Lexical Chunks Used By Student Interpreters In Chinese-English Simultaneous Interpreting

Evidence from corpus linguistics suggests that lexical chunks are hardly a marginal part of oral language.Given the high cognitive load of interpreting,investigations have been carried out into the use of lexical chunks by interpreters.But the lexical patterns of student interpreters have yet not been shed light on.A paucity of up-to-date and targeted corpora is also a bottleneck that hinders related studies.To probe into the patterns of lexical chunks used by MTI students,this study sets out to build a 176,000-word interpreting corpus from twenty-six student interpreters’recordings.Two-to six-word lexical chunks are extracted and categorized on the principle of corpus linguistics.The research then summarizes the frequency and variety of these lexical chunks.Meanwhile,the lexical chunks are classified into three structural types（full clauses,incomplete phrases,and clause constituents）according to Altenberg,so as to investigate their functions in composing speeches and whether MTI student interpreters record a higher frequency in the usage of lexical chunks.The research finds that MTI student interpreters outperform EFL learners in PACCEL-S in terms of variety and frequency of lexical chunks.The structural functions of the lexical chunks also correspond with Altenberg’s linear composition theory.However,given the special pragmatic setting of the interpreting tasks,lexical chunks used by student interpreters are predominantly stems and rhymes.Notwithstanding the scale and size of this corpus,the author hopes the research will induce corpus-based statistical analysis that can take on a pedagogic role in interpreting training and learning.Materials transcribed in the corpus and evidence discovered in relation to student interpreters’ use of lexical chunks can be retained as supporting resources for future research.