The Linguistic Features Of-ly Adverbs In English Marine Accident Investigation Report-An Empirical Study

With the development of the global shipping industry,English Marine Accident Investigation Report,as an important basis for delineating economic responsibility,plays an important role in accident identification,liability determination and accident prevention.Therefore,the effective writing of English Marine Accident Investigation Report is crucial for the teaching of ESP.Furthermore,the use and selection of-ly adverb contribute to the effectiveness and standardization of the writing of English Marine Accident Investigation Report.This research is based on the semantic classification theory of adverbs proposed by Biber,aiming at discovering the features of distribution and use of-ly adverbs under seven semantic categories in English Marine Accident Investigation Report,combining quantitative analysis and comparative investigation.This research adopts the research method of corpus linguistics.By the self-built English Marine Accident Investigation Report Corpus with 1.1 million words and general corpus of CLOB with 1 million words,combining qualitative and quantitative analysis,mainly analyzes the overall distribution of-ly adverbs,the distributional characteristics of-ly adverbs under each semantic category and the top 30 high frequency-ly adverbs in two word lists in both corpora,and the potential reasons for the differences of distribution in two corpora from the perspectives of token and type with the aid of SPSS and AntConc.Conclusions can be drawn as follows:The results of this research show that:(1)from the perspective of overall distribution,the-ly adverbs by token under the semantic categories of time,manner,degree,restriction and stance have more occurrences in both corpora;from the overall distribution of-ly adverbs by type,-ly adverbs under manner and stance categories have more richness in both corpora;(2)from the perspective of each semantic category,the frequencies of place,time,restriction and stance-ly adverbs by token in English Marine Accident Investigation Report Corpus are significantly higher than those in CLOB,while the frequencies of manner and degree-ly adverbs by token are significantly lower than those of CLOB;(3)the richness of place,degree,restriction and stance-ly adverbs in English Marine Accident Investigation Report Corpus is significantly more abundant than that in CLOB,while the richness of time and manner-ly adverbs in English Marine Accident Investigation Report Corpus is significantly less than that in CLOB.(4)from the aspects of token and type,-ly linking adverb embodies no difference between English Marine Accident Investigation Report Corpus and CLOB.In addition,specific examples are exemplified to explore the reasons for the differences of the distribution and use of-ly adverbs in both corpora.To some extent,this research is helpful to improve the effective use of-ly adverb in the writing of English Marine Accident Investigation Report with enlightening effect on the improvement of ESP.