A Corpus-based Contrastive Study On The Use Of English Future Marker Constructions Will And Be Going To

This study,within the framework of construction grammar,uses distinctive collexeme analysis and two subcorpora of the same size,ICE-GB and ICE-HK,to investigate the differences and similarities between Will-construction and BGT-construction in British English and Hong Kong English.The major findings are as follows:(1)Compared with British speakers,Hong Kong speakers tend to overuse will to express futurity.(2)British speakers prefer to use will in written contexts,while be going to is used more frequently in spoken registers.In contrast,Hong Kong speakers often use both will and be going to in informal spoken contexts.(3)In British English,the typical types of distinctive collexemes in Will-construction are: state and cognition;for BGT-construction,they are: motion,communication.In Hong Kong English,the representative types in Will-construction are: motion and cognition,while those in BGT-construction are: motion and state.(4)In British English,the semantic features of these distinctive collexemes are apparent.Nevertheless,in Hong Kong English,the distinctive collexemes of the two constructions are miscellaneous,which also reflects a higher productivity of the verb slots of the two constructions in Hong Kong English than in British English.For linguistic research,this study will provide empirical support for the study on the commonalities and differences in using two near-synonymous constructions to express futurity.For grammar teaching,this study will offer a new perspective to supplement traditional English grammar teaching.Teachers can guide students to explore more constructional alternations through a large amount of corpus data and stimulate students’ interest in learning.