A COCA-Based Study Of Denominal Location Verbs From The Perspective Of Extended Units Of Meaning

This thesis intends to study the rules and characteristics of denominal location verbs,including frequency,developing trend,genre distribution,collocation,colligation,semantic preference and semantic prosody,and hopes to give guidance to English learning in China by analyzing the characteristics of denominal location verbs used by native speakers in COCA(Corpus of Contemporary American English).Conversion plays a significant role to enlarge the vocabulary,including noun-verb conversion which is also called the denominal verbs(Quirk 1985).Clark&Clark(1979)categorize the denominal verbs into 7 main types.From the retrieval results in COCA,among the top 100 verbs,denominal location verbs account for the largest proportion in denominal verbs.According to the retrieval results separately from the COCA and SWECCL(Spoken and Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners),it is found that Chinese English learners are not as proficient as native speakers in using denominal location verbs.For instance,the noun-verb conversion rate of "land" reaches 21%in COCA,only 3.8%in SWECCL.The noun-verb conversion rate of "face" reaches more than 36%in COCA,while only 5.1%in SWECCL.Therefore,it is necessary and meaningful to lay emphasis on the research of denominal location verbs.Previous studies indicate that there still exist deficiencies in the researches of denominal verbs.Upon the deficiencies of previous studies,the following improvements are made in this study.Firstly,according to Clark&Clark(1979),denominal location verbs can be divided into five sub-categories,namely,"in","not-in","on","not-on",and "at" categories.Four words "land","shelter","shell"and "face" with high frequency and conversion rate are eventually selected as the research objects.Secondly,COCA is applied in this study,which is the largest English corpus and can provide huge,comprehensive and authentic data for this study of denominal location verbs.Finally,Sinclair's extended units of meaning is adopted as theoretical framework in this thesis,in other words,this study conducts a research of denominal location verbs by analyzing their characteristics like collocation,colligation,semantic preference and semantic prosody.Sinclair(2004)claims that the extended units of meaning is the most comprehensive perspective to analyze the vocabulary,because it can realize the integrity of lexicon,syntax,meaning and pragmatic functions(Zhang 2010:26).This thesis adopts case study as its research methodology and conducts three main steps.Firstly,pinpoint the research objects by COCA retrieval.Secondly,retrieve the data of the frequency,trend,and genre distribution of the selected objects.Thirdly,choose 100 cases of each denominal location verb by simple random sampling and analyze the texts from the perspective of extended units of meaning.The results are obtained and shown as below:1,Denominal location verbs are frequently used in the genres like fiction,magazine,and newspaper but seldom used in academic essays.2.In terms of the collocation of denominal location verbs,most denominal location verbs tend to co-occur with certain words so as to form certain collocations;denominal location verbs often function in the sentences as transitive verbs;denominal location verbs tend to collocate with concrete words;and finally they rarely collocate with adverbs.3.Regarding the colligation of denominal location verbs,when working as transitive verbs,the selected objects often appear in the"V+N" and "V+N+prep++N" patterns;while working as intransitive verbs,different verbs present different characteristics.4.Denominal location verbs deliver certain semantic preference.To sum up,denominal location verbs are derived from the nouns normally,therefore,part of the meaning of the parent noun remains when it is converted into verbs(Gao&Xu 2000:9).5.Different denominal location verbs show different semantic prosody.By the analyses of denominal location verbs from the perspective of extended units of meaning,the study intends to help learners master the usage of denominal location verbs and be able to take extended units of meaning into consideration while leaning and using words.The significance of the study exists in its implication in research perspective,language learning and teaching,dictionary and textbook compiling.