A Corpus-based Study Of The Semantic Prosodies Of Restrict Meaning Verbs

Taking i Write Baby corpus as the observation corpus and Corpus of Contemporary American as the reference corpus,the five English synonyms with the meaning of“restriction” are selected,namely restrict,limit,curb,confirm and inhibit.From the perspective of frequency and based on the model of extended units of meaning(EUM),this paper analyzes the acquisition condition of semantic prosody by Chinese EFL learners as the research target,comparing with native English speakers.With data-based method,this paper explores Chinese EFL learners’ mastery of these five synonyms.The results show that:(1)At the word frequency level,Chinese EFL learners differ from native speakers in the frequency of nodal words,and generally underuse them.There is no significant difference in the use of restrict,curb and confirm,indicating that they overuse limit and inhibit in their restrictive meaning.(2)In the aspect of collocation,the collocations used by Chinese EFL learners are very different from those used by native speakers.Moreover,they lack diversity.The main reasons are the students’ insufficient input of vocabulary knowledge.And the choice of composition topics also sets certain restrictions on the choice of collocations.(3)In terms of semantic prosody,EFL learners present positive,positive,neutral,positive and neutral semantic prosodies for the use of restrict,limit,curb,confine and inhibit,respectively.English native speakers’ use of restrict,on the other hand,shows neutral semantic prosody;limit,like English learners,displays positive prosody;curb,negative semantic prosody,and confine reflects neutral semantic prosody and neutral semantic prosody of inhibit.Chinese EFL learners have the same mastery of the semantic prosody of limit and inhibit as native speakers,but they prefer more positive semantic prosody in the use of restrict,curb and confine than native speakers.For example,the semantic prosody of restrict in native speakers is neutral,while Chinese EFL learners present positive semantic prosody in their using;the semantic prosody of curb in native speakers is negative,while learners in China show positive semantic prosody.The results of this study can be used for reference in language teaching,especially in curriculum design,vocabulary teaching and dictionary compilation.On the other hand,the present study can add some new information to the studies on near-synonyms.