| Shell nouns, as a kind of abstract nouns, are pervasive in English language. This kind of nouns, such as, problem,fact,idea,truth,reason,reality,hope,news,thing and so on is followed by phrases or clauses which express specific contents. Shell nouns always occur in the form of clauses, like the problem is that…,my hope is to…, and they appear in the clauses with abstract ―shell‖, comprising specific contents. In recent years, shell nouns as abstract nouns have attracted more and more researchers‘ interest in many fields. Especially, previous studies on shell nouns are mainly conducted from the perspective of lexicography, linguistics and second language acquisition. Lexicography mainly aims at dealing with the relation between the information representation of shell nouns and their grammatical patterns in dictionaries. From the perspective of linguistics, the studies mainly conducted from cognitive linguistics and systemic functional linguistics. Cognitive linguistics focuses on investigating the cognitive effects and functions of shell nouns, and studies of systemic functional linguistics attempts to emphasize the cohesive functions of shell nouns and its importance in understanding discourse. In addition to these studies, there are some studies which clarify the comparative researches of shell nouns used by native speakers and English learners in second language acquisition. In a word, most previous studies on shell nouns mainly focus on the features and functions of shell nouns. A few studies concerned with grammatical patterns of shell nouns, and the frequency of shell nouns occurring in the sentence patterns have no certain criteria and basis.Based on the foresaid situation, this thesis devotes to investigating N-be-that construction with the framework of construction grammar and the perspective of collostructional analysis. The study adopts the methods of combining quantitative study and qualitative study together with the help of COCA corpus（Corpus of Contemporary American English）, attempting to make a systemic analysis of the typical and representative language phenomenon and mainly solves the following questions: 1. what kinds of shell nouns in the noun slot are more strongly associated with N-be-that construction? 2. What are the characteristics of shell nouns occurring in N-be-that construction? 3. What are the semantic features of N-be-that construction?Based on the corpus statistics, the present study adopts R software and collostructional analysis to calculate the association strength between the noun slot and N-be-that construction via the Fisher-Yates exact test. This method is rigorously objective and quantitative by combining cognitive linguistics and corpus linguistics effectively. It identifies the association strength and relation between N-be-that construction and the noun occurring in the target construction, and explores the meaning of construction. The semantic features of N-be-that construction are further explored so as to give a scientific and systemic account of N-be-that construction.The study results show that:（1） The calculation of collostruction strength by R software shows that the study analyzes the more strongly associated colexemes of N-be-that construction in order to find the interaction of the certain noun slot and the target construction. The noun most strongly associated with N-be-that construction is problem, followed by, fact, thing, point, truth, news, reason, reality, result. 604 out of 784 collexemes show significant attraction relationship with the target construction, 180 collexemes show repulsion relationship with the target construction.（2） According to Schmid‘s classifications of shell nouns in his monograph（2000）, the top fifty shell nouns in the present study can be classified 16 factual nouns（such as, problem, point, thing, fact, reason, result, difference, implication, irony, finding, indication, trouble, downside, drawback, part, issue）, 8 linguistic nouns（such as, news, guess, argument, message, suggestion, answer, explanation, conclusion）, 21 mental nouns（such as, expectation, hope, concern, idea, assumption, view, theory, line, feeling, hypothesis, impression, consensus, belief, thought, understanding, fear, premise, perception, estimate, position, sense）, 5 modal nouns（such as, truth, possibility, danger, chance, reality）. Compared the distributions of the top 50 nouns in these four classes, and according to the examples of these shell nouns selected from the COCA, results show that in the N-be-that construction, factual nouns and mental nouns occur more frequently. This indicates that in English language, shell nouns mainly express the reality, outcome and reasons, as well as the speaker expresses ideas, makes hypothesis, and makes plans and so on.（3） Through the semantic clustering of N-be-that construction, N-be-that construction has several semantic features: first, what the problem or fact is for somebody or something（including someone‘s subjective reason and the facts of something）; what the negative state on someone‘s mind is; what the conclusion like proposition is; what the expectation or idea is after someone‘s mental activities; what the perception gap is after the subject‘s judge on given things. Second, the main contents of N-be-that construction are those which are expressed in that-clause after the shell nouns. The typical semantic of the target construction is ?<sub><sub><sub>is<sub><sub><sub>‘, and the connotations expressed by the subject are generalized in an unspecified way, thus leading the main contents highlighted by the shell nouns. Third, usually, there are some modifiers or determiners before shell nouns in the N-be-that construction, and it often occurs in the form of the+（adj） +N<sub><sub><sub>or my/his/her +（adj） +N<sub><sub><sub> Fourth, if the modifiers before shell nouns in the N-be-that construction are personal pronouns‘ prossessives, then, the transform of the speaker‘s role leads to the subjectivity of the main contents in that-clause, for example, my hope is that<sub><sub><sub>,his idea is that<sub><sub><sub> and so on. On the contrary, by backgrounding the speaker‘s role, proposition expressed in that-clause can be objectivity, for example, the hope is that<sub><sub><sub>, rather than my/ his hope is that<sub><sub><sub>4 The formation of N-be-that construction is related to the frequency of occurrence based on the usage-based theory. In the N-be-that construction, shell nouns have stronger association with the target construction. And in the online corpus, shell nouns come into the N-be-that pattern with high frequency. Thus, the higher the input frequency of a particular construction, the stronger it is going to be entrenched in the neural network. In English, N-be-that construction is entrenched deeply in the neural network based on the high frequency of occurrence.The present study explores the N-be-that construction in which shell nouns occur frequently from the perspective of construction, and it contributes to a profound understanding about N-be-that construction, as well as it helps researchers to put forward valuable implications to other similar constructions, meanwhile, it deepens the research on shell nouns. |
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