A Study On Effect Of Frequency And Semantic Markedness Of Verb On Chunk-based Verb-Noun Collocation Learning For High School Students

Collocation is an important aspect of English learning. It is difficult for the English learners to master the V-N collocation. Meanwhile it is common for the foreign language learners to make mistakes when using V-N collocation. How to master V-N collocation is important for us? The V-N collocation has the characteristics of stable construction, mutual Expectancy and inexplicability. It is necessary to investigate and analyze the structure and semantic properties of V-N collocation in order to help the foreign language learners acquire the V-N collocation. The present study focuses on the acquisition process of V-N collocation, and the considerably important factors such as frequency and semantic markedness, which significantly influence V-N collocation learning.Based on the theory of prefabricated chunk of Nattinger & Decarrico (1992), combining with features of V-N collocation's structure and the representation and memory mode of high school students, the author proposed the first hypothesis that V-N collocation can be acquired as formulaic language. Meanwhile, based on the frequency theory of Schmidt (1990) and Kellerman'(1978) theory on the semantic markedness influencing the semantic transfer of verb, the second hypothesis was proposed that frequency and semantic markedness of verb can contribute to the V-N collocation learning.In order to support and verify two hypotheses, the research was conducted both quantitatively and qualitatively. The whole research design was focused on the two investigation tests: the first one is translation items, and the second one is the self-report. And the subjects were divided into two groups by their test marks: high level and low level, there are 40 high school students respectively in each group. The test materials used in the test were designed in accordance with frequency and semantic markedness of verb, the total number of V-N collocation is 80 which were divided into four types: high frequent unmarked (HFU), high frequent marked (HFM), low frequent unmarked (LFU), and low frequent marked (LFM). The results show us that the frequency and semantic markedness has remarkable effect on the V-N collocation learning. The subjects tend to remember the high frequent and unmarked V-N collocation holistically. As for the low frequent and marked V-N collocation, the subjects can store them separately. The subjects of this study are high school students in china who are away from the foreign language environment.Therefore, the teaching implication of this study should be paid more attention to. In order to overcome the difficulty of V-N collocation learning, it is necessary to lay emphasis on the frequency of marked V-N collocation. In our teaching the practice of V-N collocation should be increased, and the problem resulted from the V-N collocation learning should be solved.The paper consists of six parts. At the beginning the paper illustrates a general introduction about the background and significance of research. And the second part reviews the related literature both home and abroad, introducing the definition and classification of collocation, and reviews the past study on V-N collocation, and lays a strong foundation for the further study. Then the third part illustrates theoretical foundation for the further study with reference to theories in the field of psycholinguistics, cognitive linguistics research. And the fourth part is the experimental design. The fifth part is the process of data analysis. The last part ends with the conclusion and limitations of the present study and the further study.