A Corpus-based Contrastive Study On Semantic Prosodies Of English Near-synonyms Between Chinese EFL Learnefs And Native Speakers

Semantic prosody, as one of the significant contributions of corpus linguistics, provides a new perspective to the study of lexical behavior. When a lexical item collocates frequently with some other words, it will be imbued with the semantic features of these collocates, and forms a special semantic environment, which is termed as semantic prosody. The discrimination of English near-synonyms has always been an important but difficult point for Chinese students. The advent of semantic prosody pioneered a new field for research on near-synonyms, and offered new methods and evidences for near-synonym discrimination.This study adopts the corpus-based Interlanguage Contrastive Analysis (CIA) approach, chooses the Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners (WECCL) as the learner corpus, the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) as the native speaker corpus. Through comparing the collocational behavior and semantic prosodies of two synonymous groups:GAIN/OBTAIN and CAUSE/LEAD to/ RESULT in/BRING about between WECCL and COCA, the present study seeks to explore the similarities and dissimilarities of semantic prosodies in the usage of English near-synonyms between Chinese EFL learners and English native speakers.The research procedure is as follows:Firstly, retrieve all the concordances of the two selected synonymous groups via the COCA on-line retrieval system and the software BFSU PowerConc 1.0; Secondly, from all the concordances randomly extract a certain amount as samples, observe the colligational pattern of the node words, the features of the collocates and their semantic preferences; Thirdly,.obtain the significant collocates of the node word through setting the minimum co-occurrence frequency and MI score, and analyze their semantic features; Fourthly, build the semantic prosody of the node word by analyzing the expanded contexts of the collocates; at last, compare the collocational behavior and semantic prosodies of each node words in two corpora.The research findings show that there are differences in the collocational behavior and semantic prosodies of these two groups of near-synonyms in the native speakers’ language; Chinese EFL learners share some similarities with the native speakers in the usage of the two groups, however, the differences are more significant, which are mainly manifested in the misuse of the semantic prosodies of OBTAIN and BRING about, and the overuse of the negative semantic prosodies of LEAD to and RESULT in. In addition, a large amount of interlanguage collocation and unusual collocation exist in the learners’ English, which break the prosodic harmony.The above research findings have important implications to English language teaching especially vocabulary teaching. First of all, the concept of semantic prosody should be introduced into the EFL teaching, so the students would be aware of semantic prosody in their usage of words. Second, it is suggested that more information of collocation, especially the knowledge of typical collocation, be incorporated into the syllabus design and textbook compilation. Third, vocabulary research and teaching can be enhanced by the aid of corpora.