A Corpus-based Study On The Chinese Learners' Use Of The Word AS In Light Of The Lexical Priming Theory

The word AS is one of the most frequently used word in English writing and daily communication. However, due to its complexity in part of speech, many Chinese learners of English see it as one of the most confusing words in English acquisition. It can function as a subordinate conjunction followed by clauses of time, reason and concession, and it can be used as adverb, usually in AS…AS…pattern. When used as a preposition,it can collocate with nouns and nominal phrases.Because of the complicated grammatical roles the word plays in English discourse construction,it seems necessary to explore the word in detail.The present study investigates into the statistical evidence of the multi functional word AS in light of the priming theory proposed by Hoey. The author respectively explores the high frequency colligations and collocations of conjunction AS, adverb AS and preposition AS in Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC), and then makes comparison with the data in British National Corpus (BNC),and finally generalizes the of priming features of the word AS in CLEC. The results show that the lexical priming of word AS found in CLEC not identical with those of native speakers of English. Statistics from BNC proves that native speakers are primed to use the word AS more frequently, and with more varieties in semantic collocation, grammatical construction, and pragmatic function.