An Investiga tion in to the D evelopm en ta l Fea tures of Ch inese EFL L earners Use of Am plifier Collocations: A Corpus2ba sed Approach

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1 No. 1, January 2007 J ou rna l of F oreign L anguages 167 General Serial No. 167 : (2007) : H319 : A 3 1, 2 (1., ; 2., ) :,, : 1), 2) so, very very m uch,, 3),, : ; ; ; ; An Investiga tion in to the D evelopm en ta l Fea tures of Ch inese EFL L earners Use of Am plifier Collocations: A Corpus2ba sed Approach WAN G Hai2hua 1, CHEN Guo2hua 2 (1. Schoo l o f Fo re ign La ngua ge s, D a lian M a ritim e U n ive rsity, D a lian , C h ina; 2. N a tio na l R e se a rch C en tre fo r Fo re ign La ngua ge Educa tio n, B FSU, B e ijing , C h ina ) Abstract Based on the Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC) and part of the B ritish National Corpus ( SBNC), this paper investigates the developmental features of Chinese EFL learners use of amp lifier collocations. Results show that 1) the number of collocational tokens of maxim izers grows as the language p roficiency advances, indicating that mo re p roficient learners have a w ider vocabulary at their disposal; 2 ) the learners at high school significantly overuse the three all2rounders ; 3) in respect of the accuracy rate of collocational types and tokens of boosters, Sig2 nificant differences are found between learners at high school and English majors, between non2english majors and English majors. Key words Chinese Learner English Corpus; B ritish National Corpus; amp lifiers; boosters; collocation 1., ( intensifier) [ 1: 178 ], ( amp lifier) ( downtoner) [ 2; 3 ],, a very interesting book an interesting book, very ; You are probably right You are right, probably 3, 52

2 Quirk et al. [ 3 ], (maxim izer) ( booster),, absolutely, entirely, com pletely, totally,, badly, clearly, very, very m uch, 50 [ 4 ], ( very good) ( very well), ( deeply in love) ( It is raining heavily. ), ( nonscalar words), com plete2 ly w rong, entirely accurate, absolutely m arvelous; ( scalar words), incredibly difficult, very beautiful, considerably cheaper,,,,, , [ 3; 5; 6; 7; 8 ], ( [ 9 ] ) ( [ 10 ] ) [ 2; 4 ] [ 10; 11; 12 ],, Granger [ 10 ] Lorenz [ 11; 12 ], Granger [ 10 ] ICLE ( Internation2 al Corpus of Learner English), - ly ( token) ( type), [ 10: 147 ], Granger,, com pletely totally, high2 ly :,,, very Lorenz[ 11; 12 ],, [ 13; 14; 15; 16; 17 ] Lorenz : 1),, very Granger[ 10 ] 2), absolutely silly, extrem ely different 3), com pletely, extrem ely, desperately covered, efficiently stupid Lorenz,,, Lorenz,,, ( ), ( ) ( ) 53

3 ( the Chinese Learner English Corpus CLEC, ) ( Sub2corpus of the B ritish National Corpus SBNC) CLEC SBNC, 1, 400 BNC, Bolinger [ 7 ], Quirk et al. [ 3 ], Kennedy[ 4 ] [ 18 ] [ 19 ] [ 20 ], 31 ( 1) 1 absolutely, altogether, com pletely, en2 tirely, fully, perfectly, thoroughly, to2 tally, utterly awfully, badly, bitterly, clearly, con2 siderably, deeply, enorm ously, extrem e2 ly, far, greatly, heavily, highly, in2 credibly, intensely, particularly, severe2 ly, so, strongly, terribly, very, very m uch, violently, M I 3 [ 21; 22; 23 ],, [ 24 ], (M I < 3),, 4. 1), 1 9 4, 8 9 ; 22 16, , ; 2396, ,, = 100, 000, 2 2 ( 100, 000 ) WordSm ith Tools,, so ( So you can choose... ) ( I think so. ),, SBNC, (mutual information, M I) 2,,,,,, so, very, very m uch %, %, % 54

4 , 3,,, 1 : 3 so, very, very m uch, ( 100, 000 ) ), 10 6, badly, deeply, greatly, so, very very m uch : 4 ( 100, 000 ) badly deep ly greatly so very very much , so, very very m uch, very very m uch,, ( x 2 = , x 2 = , p < ), 1 badly, deeply, greatly, very, very m uch very m uch, very m uch 5 3, like, love m iss, A ltenberg[ 9 ] Kennedy[ 4 ], 5 enjoy, love, like, m iss thank you, very, 10 4 good, im portant, m uch well, im portant, good Lorenz[ 12 ] :, very very m uch, so SO + ADJ ( 1) ; SO + ADJ + NOUN ( S) ( 2) ; SO + ADJ /ADV + THAT(3) ; SO + ADV ( 4) ; NOT + SO + + ADJ /ADV + + AS(5) ; SO + ADJ /ADV + AS + TO (6) ; SO + ADJ /ADV + TO + DO (7) ; SO MUCH SO THAT ( 8) 8 ( p re2 fabricated structure), 2 ( ) : 55

5 2 so 5. 1) 3 4, so, very, very m uch :,,,, Granger [ 10 ], Lorenz[ 11; 12 ] Nesselhauf[ 15; 16 ],,, [ 25 ],, [ 26; 27; 28; 29; 30; 31 ],, 3, 500, ( 4, 538 ; 5, 619 ; 6, 674 ) ( 5, 500-6, 500 ; 10, , 000 ), im pressed very m uch, deeply im pressed ( CO2 BU ILD, deeply im pressed M I 5. 09; BNC, very m uch im pressed M I 1. 44) Granger[ 10 ], ( building bricks) (p. 151) 2) 1, badly, deeply, greatly,,, :,,,,,,,,,,,,, 1, greatly, greatly im prove change in2 crease, greatly 59. 3% 6., : 1) 2) so, very very m uch,, 3), 56

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