A Corpus-Based Study On Verb-Noun Collocation Errors By Chinese Non-English Major College Students

Collocation is a very interesting and important topic in contemporary linguistic research. The capability of collocation is considered as one of the crucial criteria of successful language communication. Many researches on collocations have been made both at home and abroad. Many foreign researchers, such as Biskup, Fayez-Hussein, Bahns, Eldaw, Gitsaki and Howarth, have made the empirical study about collocation or verb-noun collocation for different language learners and also found many instructive results.Chinese scholars, such as Qian Yuan, Wang Rong pei, Pu Jianzhong, Fan Lianyi and Wei Naixing, also made some contributions to collocation study. The problems and importance of collocations were analysed and emphasized. Many researches reveal that verbs constitute the most difficult part of the acquisition of verb-noun collocations. Verb-noun collocation errors are the most in all lexical collocation errors committed by Chinese learners. However, only little studies on verb-noun collocation errors are conducted in China, especially as for the Chinese non-English majored college students.Therefore, the writer will conduct a corpus-based study of verb-noun collocation errors for the Chinese non-English majored college students, with the attempt to find out the distribution and characteristics of these errors, and thereby seeking the possible causes of these errors and providing the pedagogical implications. This paper mainly addresses the following three questions:1) What are the classifications and features of verb-noun collocation errors? 2) What are the causes for these collocation errors? 3) Can the proficiency level of learners be judged from the numbers of collocation errors?The writer gives a new classification for verb-noun collocation errors on the basis of surface structure and deep structure. From the surface structure, the writer finds three major patterns:Verb+a Modifier+Noun, Verb+Several Modifiers+ Noun and Verb+Noun. From the deep structure, that is, from the semantic perspective, there are five major errors:lexical transfer, misuse of synonyms, misuse of delexicalized verbs, grammar errors and phonological similarity. These verb-noun collocation errors can be classified into four major categories in relation to causes. They are:interlingual errors, intralingual errors, communicative strategy-based errors and induced errors. The major cause of these verb-noun collocation errors could be attributed to the negative transfer of the mother tongue. On the basis of the classifications and causes of verb-noun collocation errors, the writer has found out some characteristics of errors and testified that the number of Chinese non-English-major college students' verb-noun collocation errors is negatively correlated with the learners'L2 proficiency levels in most cases. According to the analysis of the findings and conclusions, some pedagogical implications are offered: raising the consciousness of collocation, stressing the difference between English and Chinese, using dictionaries correctly, enhancing classroom instruction, and encouraging students to read extensively.This research is only a tentative study on verb-noun collocation errors. It is inevitable to make some errors in the analysis. Further studies should be made in the future.