A Corpus-Based Study Of Delexicalized Adjectives In English And Chinese

Delexicalization is a widespread phenomenon and also a central semantic tendency for words of high frequency.This thesis is a corpus-based research of the semantic behaviors of English and Chinese adjectives, as have occurred in English corpus BNC and Contemporary Chinese Corpus. On the basis of powerful data from corpora and a critical review of previous studies, the present study has tentatively worked out the behavioral patterns of English and Chinese delexicalized adjectives. It is found that when adjectives in both English and Chinese collocate with nouns to form fixed phrases or significant collocations, they are highly delexicalized. And when adjectives co-occur with nouns in an ordinary way rather than in fixed phrases, they perform a selective function and a focusing function, with the latter being their major and central function. When an adjective serves a focusing function, it is delexicalized. Adjectives within the same language function differently when they behave delexically, that is, in a focusing function. The English adjectives real, full and physical and Chinese items真实(的)and全部(的) display a predominant redundant focusing function and English adjectives scientific and illegal and their Chinese counterparts科学(的) and非法(的) mainly show a pattern of contextual built-in focusing function. These adjectives are performing the delexicalization function in different degrees. There are also differences between the collocational behaviors of English adjectives and those of their counterparts in Chinese.Firth's contextual theory and Sinclair's Shared Meaning Mechanism are adopted in the thesis to interpret the phenomenon of delexicalization.