Quantitative Analysis Of Sensory Verbs In Nautical English

This thesis is to make a quantitative analysis of sensory verbs (SVs) in nautical English. The study is focused on the analysis of etymology,general definition,and semantic components,phrasal structures and syntactic frames of the SVs with high frequencies in the NEC corpus.The study is based on the statistical analysis of the frequency distributions of the SVs in NEC,as compared with the other three corpora of BRWNA,LOBA and MTE. SNOBOL4 and FoxPro programs have been applied to process the data provided in the three corpora. Chi-square test has been employed to analyze the results obtained from the corpora.The study has proven that both the frequencies and proportions of the SVs in NEC are greatly different from those in BROWNA,LOBA and MTE. At the same time,the distributions of the SVs with high frequencies in NEC also differ greatly from those of the SVs in the other three corpora. This denotes that NEC is a specific corpus in choosing words,especially SVs. Most of the SVs with high frequencies in NEC are loaned from French and Latin and some of the Old English Origin. The SVs with foreign origins,which are weak in collocation,are objective,scientific,accurate and formal. While those native words bearing comparatively stronger competence of collocation show their informality. The occurrences of both formal and informal SVs denote that NEC is a specific corpus comprising not only formal materials such as maritime laws,contracts and nautical rules,principles and regulations but informal stuffs like journals. And some conclusion is to a certain degree,helpful and enlightening to teaching.