A Corpus-Based Study Of The Collocational Frameworks Of "A/An NP1 Of NP2" In English

Inspired by Renouf and Sinclair's enlightening work on collocational frameworks (1991), this study has sought to investigate one particular collocational framework–"a/an NP1 of NP2"in English as well as the Chinese learners'use of this framework.After a critical review of the previous studies from the perspectives of patterns and meanings, phraseology, and collocational frameworks, this thesis presents a corpus-based scheme of the study. It goes on to classify the frameworks into three broad categories in terms of the lexico-grammatical relationship between NP1 and NP2, based on the observation of the concordances from BNC Written. The three categories include: NP1 is the headword, NP2 is the headword, and NP1 and NP2 have a double-headed relation. In the process of classification, it discloses various features of the frameworks, such as the collocability of different collocational sequences, the figurative use of the frameworks, the negative use of the frameworks, and the semantic prosody of some collocational sequences. By studying the top 20 most frequently occurring collocational sequences from both BNC Written and Spoken, the stylistic features as well as the phraseological tendency of language use are revealed. Moreover, the frameworks in which NP1 is a noun with one pre-modifier are examined. The corpus evidence suggests that some nouns invariably co-occur with certain pre-modifiers while others can be used either alone or with pre-modifiers. Finally, the uses of the frameworks by Chinese EFL learners are investigated. By comparing the top 20 NP1s in CLEC and BNC Written, great discrepancies are found in terms of NP1 varieties and their rank ordering. Topic restriction may well account for the unusual high frequency of some NP1s in CLEC. It is also found that there exist the problems of overuse, underuse and zero use of the frameworks, all of which reveal the pragmatic incompetence of the Chinese learners. This sharp discrepancy definitely calls for our attention to improve EFL teaching and learning.