A Corpus-based Study Of Boosters And English-Chinese Bilingual Dictionaries

English amplifiers can be divided into two subsets, maximizers and boosters. Maximizers, such as completely, denote the upper extreme of the scale. Boosters, such as very much, denote a high degree, a high point on the scale. Boosters are mainly degree adverbs, occasionally noun phrases and prepositional phrases. In the study, attention is paid to adverbial boosters ending with -ly. The purpose of this thesis is to observe the representation of the meaning and use of boosters in English-Chinese bilingual dictionaries through comparing the relevant information revealed by the two corpora, COBUILD English collocations on CD-ROM and the British National Corpus (BNC). The selected boosters for a close examination are bitterly, wonderfully, enormously and considerably, which represent two situations. The study shows that generally speaking, the meaning and use of boosters are not represented sufficiently and distinctly in bilingual dictionaries. The thesis ends with the suggestions for the improvement of representation of the meaning and use of boosters in English-Chinese bilingual dictionaries. From the aspect of arrangement, it is advisable to enter most adverbial boosters as headwords. From the aspect of meaning and use, the suggestions are offered in terms of equivalents, examples and usage notes.