A Corpus-based Study Of Features Of Semantic Prosody In Chinese EFL Learner English

Semantic prosody,together with colligation and collocation is a fruit out of corpus linguistics,which is a research focus in this field.Semantic prosody provides a new method to analyze lexical items.As a universal linguistic phenomenon,it has a leading role in language use,because it controls the option of lexical items and grammatical patterns.The knowledge of semantic prosody facilitates language learning.This thesis adopts corpus-based contrastive analysis approach and chooses CAUSE-verbs(LEAD to,RESULT in,BRING about)and FORGET in British Academic Written English and Ten-thousand English Composition of Chinese Learners to compare the use of semantic prosody between Chinese English learners and native English speakers,aiming to explore the characteristics of semantic prosody used by Chinese English learners.In addition,the study extracts the relevant data of“??" and“??”in Modern Chinese Corpus to further explore the reasons for overuse and misuse of semantic prosody among Chinese English learners from the perspectives of teaching methods,mother tongue transfer.Firstly,with the help of AntConc 3.4.3w,all concordances of the node word are extracted,and then a certain number of concordances(100)are randomly selected;secondly,build colligation and observe the semantic preferences of the collocates and their features;thirdly,get the significant collocates of the node by setting MI score and co-occurrence frequency both?3,and analyze their semantic preferences;fourthly,generalize the semantic prosody of each node word through the combination analysis of a certain number of concordances and the significant collocates and compare the semantic prosody of each node word among Chinese EFL learners English,native English and native Chinese.The results indicate that the semantic prosody employed by Chinese EFL learners is more similar to Chinese than English and the difference between Chinese EFL learners and native English speaker is significant.Chinese semantic prosody has an important role in constructing the knowledge system of inter language.It also reveals that semantic prosody decides the option of lexical items and grammatical patterns from the perspective of inter language.In the first group,the author finds that LEAD to,RESULT in,BRING about show mixed semantic prosody in native English,however,in Chinese EFL learner English,they all convey strong negative semantic prosody,especially BRING about,which is similar to semantic prosody of“??”employed in MCC.In the second group,the author finds that when Chinese EFL learners use the word FORGET,the colligation and semantic preference of FORGET tend to be similar to its Chinese equivalent“??”Therefore,the semantic prosody of FORGET employed by Chinese EFL learner is different form native English,but like Chinese.This study is enlightening for English teaching,vocabulary learning as well as teaching materials compilation.