Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
Undoubtedly, vocabulary is important in language learning. Mastering somenecessary words is the basic requirement for language learners. However, manylearners may find that though they have memorized a vast number of words, in theiractual use of language, they still make many mistakes, which may interfere with theongoing communication, and even lead to misunderstanding. That is to say, theirknowledge of vocabulary is not deep, or more precisely，they do not really master themeanings and usages of some words.Degree adverbs play an indispensable role in daily language communication,which can be used to express the speaker's or the author's mood or attitude, and to acertain extent realize the interpersonal function of language. However, owing to thevariety and similarity of English degree adverbs, it is hard for EFL learners to make aclear distinction among them and properly use them, especially their semanticprosodies. Corpus-based studies find tiiat some lexical items may habitually attract certainitems which have the same or similar semantic features, and due to the high frequentco-occurrence of these items with the same or similar semantic features of the nodeword，the latter is "infected" with that kind of semantic features (Sinclair, 1991). Thisparticular linguistic phenomenon is called semantic prosody. And generally, thesemantic prosody can be classified into three categories: positive prosody, negativeprosody, and neutral or mixed prosody (Stubbs，1996). For example, in the colligationof "adv. + adj.", the adverb utterly often co-occurs with adjectives with negativeconnotations like ridiculous，miserable, unreasonable, unacceptable，etc., then it canbe said that utterly has a negative prosody; in the colligation of “adj. + n.，，，the nouncareer usually co-occurs with adjectives with positive or favorable connotations likedistinguished, brilliant，illustrious, glittering and so on, then career is proved to havea positive prosody; in the colligation of "v. + n.，，，the verb accept not only collocateswith negative words like criticism, resignation, surrender, etc., but also with positiveor neutral words like invitation, nomination，advice, assumption, etc.，so accept can besaid to have a neutral or mixed prosody.
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1.2 Significance of the Study
Sinclair (2003: 178) once claims，“The concept of semantic prosody is one of themost important contributions of corpus studies up to now."On the theoretical side, semantic prosody offers some of the strongest proof forthe principle of "co-selection" (Sinclair, 1991)，that is, the idea that speakers innormal communication choose characteristics of discourse in batches. In thetraditional concept of discourse production, discourse was seen as built up one wordat a time, with each word conveying its isolated part of meaning. By contrast,semantic prosody is the mechanism which displays how one fundamental type ofmeaning 一 evaluative meaning — is constantly shared across units in discourse.What is more, by guaranteeing the consistency of evaluation or evaluative harmony, itplays an important part in keeping the discourse together, which in turn helps thelistener comprehend the discourse (Morley & Partington, 2009). Therefore, it can besaid that semantic prosody is an indispensable part of the lexical meaning.In addition, the semantic prosody is a complex concept. The rise of semanticprosody offers a new perspective and method for describing lexical behavior, whichhas some implications for the field of vocabulary, grammar, semantics, andpragmatics and so on.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Review of Degree Adverbs
The study of degree adverbs has drawn much attention from languageresearchers both at home and abroad. One of the reasons, as described by Bolinger(1972), is that adverbs of degree are of strong expressiveness, and as one of the mostactive part of speech，they display the rare quality of invention and competitiveness,which is hard to explain. The same view can be found in Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech,and Svartvik (1985)，who point out that because of its great variety and complexity,the adverb class is the most ambiguous and bewildering of the traditional word classesand unlike other word classes，it is hard to give it a dear-cut definition. It can be seenthat the study of degree adverbs is perplexing and controversial, which needs furtherclarification.
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2.2 Review of Semantic Prosody
Arising from corpus linguistics, though a relatively fresh topic, semantic prosodyhas aroused many researchers' interest. In this part, the concept and previous studieson semantic prosody are reviewed. Owing to the complexity of the concept of semantic prosody, differentdefinitions have been given by language researchers, which may reflect differentresearch perspectives and foci. The term "prosody" is initially proposed by Firth (1957), who uses it inphonology to generalize the suprasegmental features of segmental elements in theflow of speech, such as assimilation, dissimilation, liaison and so on. Although hisconcept of prosody is confined to the field of phonology, his view of the restrictionsof context on the segmental elements has a profound influence on other linguists.Later on，his student Sinclair borrows tiie term and applies it in the study of lexis.Sinclair (1987) is the first to observe the phenomenon of semantic prosody, but itis Louw (1993) who develops the concept and gives it a first definition, which makesthe term well-known to the public. According to Louw (1993: 157), semantic prosodyis "a consistent aura of meaning with which a form is imbued by its collocates?” Themain function of semantic prosody is to express speakers' or writers' attitude towardsthe pragmatic environment, usually featured as positive or negative. A typicalexample is the word commit, whose negative implication is not represented by theword itself, but by the unit constituted by the word commit and its collocates. He alsopoints out that speakers or writers may consciously violate the semantic prosody of acertain lexical item to achieve such effects as irony, humor, or lack of sincerity，whichis called "prosodic clash.” For example, the phrase set in always co-occurs with thingswhich are negative or unpleasant. If someone says "Good times set in，，，he/she mayintend to be ironic.
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Chapter Three Research Design.......... 19
3.1 Research Questions......... 19
3.2 Research Methods......... 19
3.3 Research Instruments......... 21
3.4 Research Procedure .........23
3.5 Summary ......... 26
Chapter Four Results and Discussion ......... 27
4.1 Results .........27
4.2 Discussion......... 46
4.3 Summary 50Chapter Five Conclusion......... 51
5.1 Major Findings of the Present Study......... 51
5.2 Implications of the Study......... 53
5.3 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Studies......... 54
Chapter FourResults and Discussion
4.1 Results
A little and a bit are two near synonyms which mean in Chinesewhen they modify adjectives and adverbs. In addition, they can also modify thecomparative degree and superlative degree of adjectives and adverbs, in which casesthey mean. In this study, the latter situation does not belong to ourresearch scope, this is because different colligations may indicate different semanticprosodies (Stubbs, 2001).First, let us look at the semantic prosody of a little. It has 372 occurrences inFROWN & FLOB and 311 occurrences in CLEC. However, when looking atconcordance lines, it is necessary to make a selection of all the instances. Asmentioned in Chapter Three, those do not belong to the colligation of “adv. + adj./adv." are removed. Then 85 concordance lines in FROWN & FLOB and 60 in CLECare extracted.
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Conclusion
In this chapter, the major findings of the present study are summarized and theimplications for English language teaching and learning, language research anddictionary compiling are presented. Additionally, limitations of the present study andsuggestions for future studies are put forward. The present study has compared the semantic prosodic features of four groups ofdegree adverbs used by Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers. The majorfindings are presented as follows.First, both a little and a bit have strong negative semantic prosodies in CLECand FROWN & FLOB, suggesting that Chinese EFL learners display similar semanticprosodic features as native speakers do. However, their collocates used by ChineseEFL learners are far fewer in types and narrower in semantic scope as compared withthose of native speakers. For example, Chinese learners tend to frequently use somesimple words like afraid, unhappy, disappointed, and different, suggesting thatChinese learners have a limited collocational knowledge and are highly dependent onthe limited words they are familiar with. Moreover, it is found that the cross-linguisticsemantic prosody exists between English and Chinese, for the semantic prosody ofChinese expression “有点” is consistent with its English equivalents a little and a bit.
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Reference (omitted)
