A Study On Prepositions And Prepositional Phrases In SOLAS

The SOLAS Convention or the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, has aroused wide public attention since 1914 when it came into force. With the development of modern technology and the increasing number of disasters at sea, the safety of life at sea is always concerned by people. The thesis makes a deep analysis on SOLAS Convention from the perspective of linguistics. It is helpful to understanding of texts and translation of International Maritime Conventions as represented by SOLAS.Although limited in number, prepositions are used quite frequently in English. They cannot stand alone and must be bound with nominal groups as prepositional phrases which enable limited prepositions to perform various functions. In the formal style, in order to showing the wording normative, cautious and straightforward language characteristic, the huge number of prepositions and prepositional phrases are required, It can make an accurate, logical expression and provide the guarantees for the rigor of the language by using the large number of prepositions and prepositional phrases. This thesis takes prepositions and prepositional phrases in SOLAS as the research subject.The main data of this study were obtained with the application of tools like CLAWS, AntConc and SPSS. In the light of data collection, this thesis makes a study on characteristics of distribution and usage of prepositions and prepositional phrases in SOLAS according to the comparison with Brown Corpus represented American English. The findings are as follows:in the use of prepositions,1) In the overall frequency, the use frequency of prepositions in SOLAS is more than it in Brown; 2) In the different types of prepositions, simple prepositions are most frequently used; 3) In complex prepositions, two-word prepositions are used in the highest frequency; 4) Complex prepositions are sometimes used to replace simple prepositions; 5) There is a tendency of superposition of prepositions; 6) There is frequent use of adverbials which are also referred to as prepositions. In the use of prepositional phrases,1) The most commonly used structure is preposition+common noun; 2) The prepositional phrases in SOLAS mainly serve as adjectives and adverbs to modify the other sentence parts or the whole sentences; 3) There is a high frequency application of prepositional phrases; 4) There is a tendency that the same complex prepositions and prepositional phrases are repeatedly used in parallel structures in the same paragraphs.