A Corpus-based Study On International Students' Lexicon Acquisition By Comparing English-Chinese VO Collocation

The studies on second language lexical acquisition and bilingual mental lexicon both have noted that the corresponding relationship between second language and first language exerts strong influence on the acquisition of second language.The researchers also have probed to the lexicon's deep knowledge,that is,collocation and usage.Thus,the study is done in order to summarize the correspondence between the t wo languages and get a bet ter understanding of t he lexical acquisition and constructive process of mental lexicon for overseas students in the perspective of lexical collocation by analyzing typical and empirical corpus data.In addition,verbs are the top concern of lexical studies and vocabulary teaching.The prevalence of VO(verb-object)collocation in Chinese and abundance of nominal object errors among overseas students make the study of VO(nouns as object)collocation workable.This thesis analyses some verbs from HSK first rate verbs and their equivalent translations in English,and compares VO collocation in both languages based on the corpuses respectively.Then it defines the verbs into three types in order of corresponding quality between the two languages.Through the statis tical analysis and experimental researches,we have reac hed the followi ng conclusions:(1)By the e xchange ratio of VO between Chin ese and English,verbs are class ified as Type?(overlapping and roughly overlapping correspondence),Type ?(crossing correspondence),and Type ?(achiasmate correspondence).They decrease in terms of quantity: Type ?>Type?>Type ?.They also have different characteristics in the syllable: the majority of Type?are bisyllable,Type ? monosyllables and features of Type ? untypical.(2)The effect of the corresponding type is present i n Chinese learning for over seas students and t he acquisition difficulty decreases following the inequality: Type?<Type ?<Type ?.But this effect improves as the students have better master of Chinese and acquisition of the correspondence between the two languages.(3)Probability effect exists in the acquisition process of Chinese for overseas students,which weakens as their Chinese skills are getting improved.The acquisition difference of VO collocation of each type weakens down in the advanced learning stage.(4)First language of overseas students predominates in their acquisition of Chinese,but the predomination dies away as their Chinese skills become better.Advanced learners suffer decreasingly from the type effect and probability effect.(5)The acquisition process is progressive.As the language skills improve,students have better master of all types of verbs.The constructive process of bilingual mental dictionary tends to be complicated and is dissimilar in the acquisition of each type.Based on these findings,it is concluded that lexical teaching must focus on the lexical collocation of the two language systems,which helps to strengthen the teaching effectiveness.And the translations in the textbooks should based on the correspondence between two languages in order to give detailed and comprehensive interpretation,which benefits the overseas students in their acquisition of second language.