A Contrastive Analysis On The Usage Of Get

This thesis focuses on the high-frequency verb get used by Chinese advanced learners of non-English majors. A corpus-based Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (CIA) approach is adopted by the comparison of BROWN and the sub-corpus of CLEC, St4. Interlanguage theory, error analysis theory and contrastive theory are adopted and the book Vocabulary Syllabus of College English Teaching is offered for reference. It aims to find out if there are differences in the use of get and its phrases /collocations/idioms between Chinese learners and English native speakers, if Chinese learners fully acquire get senses and its phrases/collocations/idioms in Vocabulary Syllabus, and if these senses and phrases/collocations/idioms in vocabulary syllabus are frequently used by English native speakers. Then it describes get errors in St4 and identifies the error sources. The results show that (1) generally speaking, Chinese learners tend to overuse verb get compared with English native speakers, which may be attributed to the first sense and the eleventh sense; (2) specifically speaking, Chinese learners do not fully acquire the 12 senses of get and the 19 phrases/ collocations/idioms of get required by the vocabulary syllabus. Chinese learners have a big difference in the use of get from English native speakers. Some typical collocations and senses of get used by native speakers are underused or even never used by Chinese learners and not listed in the vocabulary syllabus. Based on the findings above, some suggestions on the revision of vocabulary syllabus are put forward. In addition, Chinese learners often make errors on the verb get. By classifying the 89 get errors and identifying the error sources, the author concludes that both mother tongue interference and ignorance of the rules greatly prevent Chinese learners from using English properly. In mother tongue interference, errors at syntactic level take the highest percentage. In general, mother tongue interference, overgeneralization, ignorance of rule restrictions, incomplete application of rules, and false concepts hypothesized are the sources of get errors.