A Corpus-based Analysis On Collocation Of Intensifiers With Adjectives

Intensifiers, as one of the main devices of emphasis, are frequently used to reinforce the speakers’tone and attitude, which would directly influence the realization of interpersonal function. Though they are commonly used by both native speakers and the Chinese English learners, it is still difficult for Chinese students to have a good command of them like the native speakers do. The usage of intensifiers is by no means easy to grasp.The main focus of this research is comparison of the usages of intensifiers between native speakers and Chinese English learners by applying both quantitative and qualitative research methods. First, My Finder and AntConc are used to search for the frequency, collocates and concordances across the two corpora BNC and CLEC, and then, the comparative research is adopted to study the similarities and the differences between native speakers and Chinese English learners. And finally, the possible cause explanation for the differences and implications of the research are discussed.The research shows that there are many similarities between the native speakers and the Chinese English learners as to the usages of the intensifiers. However, the differences show that the Chinese learners do not have sufficient knowledge of intensifiers. First, the frequency of the intensifiers is different, Chinese English learners tend to use intensifiers less frequently than native speakers do except for several ones, such as very, and enough; second, the collocational range, the Chinese learners have a more wild collocational range than the native speakers; third, the semantic prosody of some intensifiers has been used incorrectly; fourth, the Chinese learners use some collocations which are not recognized by native speakers, for instance, in BNC, perfectly tends to collocate with adjectives and adverbs while in CLEC, it tends to collocate with verbs. And the possible cause explanations for the differences are communication strategy, mother tongue interference and intralingual interference.The present study of corpus-based comparative study of intensifiers will be of great help to both English language learners and teachers.