Exploring The Application Of Nominalized Phrasal Verbs In English News Reports

With the development of society and the advancement of science and technology, huge amounts of new words are finding way into English at an unprecedented pace. These new words are primarily formed by the available language materials and word formation.Nominalized phrasal verbs are compound nouns derived from phrasal verbs by the law of conversion. This thesis summarizes the application of nominalized phrasal verbs in English news reports in terms of grammar, semantics and style, and analyzes the reason why nominalized phrasal verbs are widely used in English news reports based on the theory of Grammatical Metaphor. The major findings are:1. Grammatical featuresCompared with common nouns, the characteristics of nominalized phrasal verbs in terms of stress, plural form, spelling, part of sentence and common collocation are summarized.2. Semantic featuresThere is close relationship between nominalized phrasal verbs and their original phrasal verbs. Nominalized phrasal verbs show the act or behavior conducted under certain or specific circumstances, or the consequences of the original phrasal verbs, or the subjects of the original phrasal verbs, or the objects of the original phrasal verbs. In addition, nominalized phrasal verbs are characterized with polysemy.3. Stylistic featuresNominalized phrasal verb, a type of nominalization, is a major resource for creating grammatical metaphors. Halliday has pointed out that grammatical metaphors are closely related to the complexity of written texts which are, generally, more formal than spoken texts. He proposed "lexical density" as a measure for distinguishing written from spoken styles of language, so lexical density might be expected to be a measure of formality. Nominalized phrasal verbs are so condensed that they can well compact sentences in English news report, which is an important variety of written texts. In addition, nominalized phrasal verbs are also characterized with colloquialism. They can be used as colloquial words which can lively and vividly express the speaker’s ideas, feelings and attitudes, etc.The above characteristics of nominalized phrasal verbs do meet the requirement of English news reports. Hence, they are in widespread use in English news reports in American and British mainstream medium.Nominalized phrasal verbs make English news reports more concise and vivid. To study the use of them in English news reports can not only help English learners to have good command of English new words, to enlarge their vocabulary, but also can help them to use authentic English, to improve their English proficiency and communicative skills, and to understand English news reports better.