A Corpus-based Study On English Amplifiers In Chinese English Major Learners And Native Speakers’ Writings

In English vocabulary,amplifiers indicate a degree of semantic intensification and strengthen the tone of speech.In written English,amplifiers indicate the author’s viewpoint and effectively convey information.Therefore,it is crucial to use amplifiers correctly and appropriately in written English,which can enhance the persuasiveness of writing and achieve the purpose of interpersonal communication.Based on Chinese English majors’ English Writings corpus(WECCL&CLEC-E)and native speakers corpus(CROWN&CLOB-N),this thesis adopts the list of 24 amplifiers in Kennedy(2003),uses Word Smith Tools 6.0 to retrieve the concordance lines and calculates the raw frequency of each of the 24 amplifiers in both corpora,thus gets high-frequency amplifiers,including 2 maximizers and 4 boosters.In order to shed some light on how to learn and teach English amplifiers,this thesis conducts statistical analysis on four components of the Model of the Extended Unit of Meaning and contrasts how Chinese English major learners and native speakers use them.It also attempts to investigate the reasons behind these differences.The following are the major findings of this research:Firstly,on the whole,it is found that there are significant differences in the use of amplifiers in English writing between Chinese English major learners and native speakers.At the level of collocation,Chinese English major learners tend to collocate excessively with specific words in English writings and their collocates lack variety;as for the colligation and semantic preference,Chinese English major learners lack richness in these two aspects;in terms of semantic prosody,compared with native speakers,Chinese English major learners show a more positive semantic prosody.Secondly,through analysis,this thesis finds that the main reasons for the differences between Chinese English major learners and native speakers in using amplifiers are: Chinese English major learners are impacted negatively by mother tongue transfer;Over-generalization and rote memorization of certain fixed collocations in Second Language Acquisition;neglect of learning English amplifiers from the perspective of the Model of the EUM;lack of semantic preference knowledge and semantic prosody awareness,etc.