A Corpus-based Study On No-negation And Not-negation In Maritime English Corpus

Negation is one of the most important phenomena in the field of linguistics,and is a complicated phenomenon as well;therefore linguistics have carried out extensive and intensive researches on negation.In general English,there are many researches on negative sentence,negative meaning and its translation between Chinese and English.The study on negation in Maritime English is also worthy of arresting the attention of scholars.Thus based on the Maritime English Corpus,combined with the theories of some linguists such as Biber and Tottie,the study of no-negation and not-negation in Maritime English is accomplished.The two most commonly used negative groups are selected in this thesis:no-negation and not-negation.No-negation includes 8 no-negators such as no,never,nothing and not-negation includes 8 not-negators such as not...anybody,not…anything.Taking Brown Corpus as the reference corpus and with the aid of related computer software,the thesis analyzes the features of no-negation and not-negation in the aspects of frequency,collocation and comparison in Maritime English Corpus.The results show that the frequency of no and not is much higher than other no-negators and not-negators;the frequency of no-negators and not-negators in Maritime English Corpus is less than in Brown;in terms of collocation,be verbs are the most important words preceding no;no always negates nouns or noun phrases;Maritime English involves many passive voice sentences with the not+be+v-ed pattern;finally,in the aspect of pragmatics,by conducting a comparative study between no and not,not is more commonly used than no in MEC.The results are beneficial for people to have a better understanding of Maritime English materials.The study will promote Maritime English teaching.