A Corpus-based Contrastive Study Of High-frequency Verb Collocation And Sentence Patterns Under Specific Semantic Categories

As the most fundamental component of language, vocabulary has long been the focus of study, for example the high frequency verbs. These verbs have several characteristics that make them especially interesting in a cross-linguistic perceptive. Studies on verbs show that many Chinese learners even have problem with the simplest verb. Therefore, the present study focuses on collocates of two high frequency verbs learn and take in terms of typical collocations and interlanguage collocations. As an exploratory study, the sentence patterns of the verb learn under specific semantic categories are investigated.A corpus-based Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (CIA) approach was adopted in the present study. By comparing the significant collocates of the two verbs and sentence patterns of learn under specific semantic categories in two sub-corpora of the Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC) with those in the British National Corpus (BNC), striking differences are found. 1) The Chinese learners have a strong tendency to overuse the two high-frequency verbs, especially with the verb learn. 2) Compared with native speakers, learners produce fewer types of collocates. There are a number of typical collocations shared by both of them, though they differ in frequency and MI score. The learners also use lots of interlanguage collocations, and sometimes they are not properly used or even unacceptable. Detailed study of some typical collocations shows that there exists great difference in their usages between learners and native speakers. 3) As to the sentence patterns and collocations of learn under specific semantic categories, learners do better in the major sense, namely the first sense of verb learn. It is the overlapping semantic category of Chinese and English. Learners are more likely to ignore other uses of the high frequency verb and become used to the only corresponding meaning of both English and mother tongue.Further analysis accounts for the overuse of the high-frequency verbs by the learners. Investigation of the interlanguage collocations of the two high-frequency verbs shows mother tongue influence.