A Semantic Study Of "Adjective-Noun" Collocations Related To Food Spoilage

Collocations play a significant role in English language.The accurate usage of collocations can directly reflect a person's mastery of a language.Therefore,the significance of collocation usage cannot be neglected.The usage and the analysis of English collocations have always been the focus and difficulty of English learners and native speakers,especially the collocation and analysis of semantically similar words in English vocabulary.Currently,the research on collocation in Chinese linguistic circle is in the comprehensive development stage.In comparison with verbal collocations,Chinese academia has not given due attention to the study of “adjective-noun” collocation.Until now,there are few diachronic studies of collocation from the etymology perspective,and the initial stage of collocation's sememe study is a bit late,so the further analysis is still to be carried out.Consequently,this study selects five typical sets with the semantically similar collocations as the sample,and with the help of authoritative dictionaries(like Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary,Collins COBUILD Advanced Learners Dictionary and The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology),Wordsmith Tools and corpora(BNC and COCA).The thesis aims at disserting “adjective-noun” collocations from etymology and semantic sememes,then further probes into collocational features and lexical combinations in surface and deep phenomenon.By analyzing,research findings are as follows: firstly,etymology exerts a huge effect on the evolution of “adjective-noun” collocations' composition.The change of English lexicon meanings follows the changing of the times,society and other elements.And the same lexicon develops various meanings when it is employed in context or style in different historical periods.Secondly,semantic sememes have a deep-seated effect on the collocation structure.With the diachronic evolution of the lexical form,word meanings increase novel senses with the development of social life,and sememes also increase.The matching degree between adjectives and nouns directly affects the possibility of forming a collocation.Thirdly,the longitudinal diachronic study of etymology and the horizontal synchronic study of semantic sememes,which is supplemented by the method of corpora,vigorously promote the development of collocation research.The study on five groups of food “adjective-noun” collocations in daily use broadens the content and scope of language research.In accordance with these findings,this research can help English learners avert some mistakes of selecting impertinent decayed lexicons to combine food,and can also provide some enlightening suggestions for lexicography.