A Corpus-based Contrastive Study On Colligation And Semantic Prosody Of Synonyms In CLEC And COCA

The discrimination of synonyms has always been the focus of foreign language learning.In recent years,there are many studies on verb synonyms and adjective synonyms.However,there are relatively few studies on noun synonyms.Based on a Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis research method,this thesis takes three nouns “issue”,“question” and “problem” as its research objects with the help of Ant Conc3.5.9,Chi-square and Log-likelihood Calculator 1.0 and UMA Corpus Tool 3.3.The author wants to find out similarities and differences of three nouns on colligation and semantic prosody.This study raises three research questions:(1)What are colligations of the three node words “issue”,“question” and “problem” in CLEC and COCA respectively?(2)What is the semantic prosody of the three node words “issue”,“question” and “problem” in CLEC and COCA respectively?(3)How the colligations and semantic prosody of the node words“issue”,“question” and “problem” are distributed in CLEC and COCA? Research findings show that Chinese English learners are underuse the noun “issue” and “question”,but overuse the noun “problem” compared to native English speakers.As far as the colligation concerned,kinds and numbers of colligations of three nouns in two corpora are basically the same.“Adj.+ n.” and “v.+ n.” are the main colligations of three nouns.In terms of semantic prosody,the noun “question” takes on a neutral semantic prosody both in two corpora,which proves that Chinese English learners could well grasp the semantic prosody of noun “question”.As for noun “issue”,it shows a neutral semantic prosody in CLEC,but a neutral and a negative semantic prosody in COCA.In terms of noun “problem”,it shows a neutral semantic prosody in CLEC,whereas a negative semantic prosody in COCA.The research finds that Chinese English learners could not master the semantic prosody of nouns “issue” and “problem”.At the same time,the study shows how the colligations and semantic prosodies of three nouns in two corpora are distributed in tables.This study provides three possible reasons that could account for differences of colligation and semantic prosody of three nouns in two corpora: the influences of L1 transfer,the lack of semantic prosody knowledge and the cultural differences.Lastly,this thesis supplies further researchers with some suggestions.