A Comparative Study On Appear Verbs In MEC And COCA

Appear verbs are an extremely important part of English vocabulary.They are often used in maritime English texts,which pose certain challenges to maritime English learners.Therefore,this thesis selects three appear verbs "arise,come,and appear" to study in MEC and COCA.This thesis aims to explore features of appear verbs from the respective of distribution,collocation,colligation,and semantic prosody in MEC and COCA.Based on MEC and COCA,this thesis uses quantitative and qualitative methods to manipulate and analyze the data,and then draws following conclusions.(1)The appear verbs are widely used in MEC.Among them,the occurrences of arise,come,appear is 321,908 and 288 respectively.(2)The collocates of appear verbs in MEC and COCA are different.The collocates of appear verbs in MEC are more professional,they are often matched with the words which describe ship sailing,ship safety,and maritime treaties.(3)The appear verbs have different colligations in MEC and COCA,but both share the same colligation of "V+PREP+N" in MEC and COCA.(4)In terms of semantic prosody,arise shows a negative semantic prosody in MEC and COCA;come has a mixed semantic prosody in MEC while a neutral semantic prosody in COCA,appear expresses a negative semantic prosody in MEC while a neutral semantic prosody in COCA.This research enables maritime English learners to grasp collocation,colligation,semantic prosody of appear verbs more accurately,and better promotes maritime English vocabulary teaching.