A Corpus-Based Study of Lexical Collocations in the Writing of Arab
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A Corpus-based Study of verb-noun collocations and verb complementation clause structures in the writing of Advanced Saudi learners of English Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics School of Literature and Languages Manal Abdulrahman Alangari May 2019 0 Abstract This thesis reflects the shift in the study of collocations towards lexico-grammatical patterns through a series of three corpus-based studies on academic writing. The first study adopts a phraseological approach to explore the use of adjective-noun and verb-noun lexical collocations in the academic writing of Arab learners as compared to native speakers. The comparison between two corpora, the TEEP-ArSL and the LOCNESS-A- Level, reveals that verb-noun (VN) collocations are particularly difficult for Arab learners given that more than a quarter of the VN collocations they produced are misused. Studies 2 and 3 adopt a novel approach to the description and analysis of academic writing in the discipline of applied linguistics. These two studies focus on VN collocations by embedding them in their verb complementation clause structures, specifically noun phrase complementation. In Study 2, expert writers’ use of verb complementation clause structures and VN collocations therein are examined and compared in two corpora of published research articles in the field of applied linguistics in English and Arabic, the academic English Corpus (AEC) and the academic Arabic corpus (AAC). Study 3 investigates novice writers’ use of the same clause structures and VN collocations in two corpora of novice native and non-native students’ university exam writing - the novice native corpus (NNC) and the novice Saudi corpus (NSC). The analysis of the data in Studies 2 and 3 draws on Quirkian clause structures (Quirk, Greenbaum, & Leech, 1985) for the syntactic representation, and on Frame Semantics (Fillmore, 1982) for the identification of the semantic roles of the elements involved in the clause structures. The two studies explore the use of single-word and multi- word verbs in 15 clause structures, including the copular, transitive, complex copular, and ditransitive. The association between the verb and the clause structure is established using the measure of faithfulness (Römer, O’Donnell, & Ellis, 2015). The comparison of expert academic writing in Study 2 serves as baseline data for the comparison of novice academic writing in Study 3. The results of Study 2 show that prepositional verbs are frequently used in academic English and Arabic, despite the fact that they are seldom addressed in Arabic grammar books. The results also highlight phrasal verbs as one of the prominent characteristics of current English academic writing in the field of applied linguistics. i Study 3 explores advanced learners’ use of the 15 selected clause structures and the choices of verbs therein and whether there is a tendency to overuse, underuse or misuse these clause structures and VN collocations. It makes use of the results of study 2 to trace the influence of the first language, Arabic, on the use of verb complementation clause structures by advanced Saudi learners of English. The results of study 3 show that advanced Saudi learners use significantly more tokens in the copular, the transitive, and the prepositional type 1 clause structures than native speakers. However, the difference between the use of types is not significant which reveals an area of weakness in the writing of advanced Saudi learners related to the heavy reliance on a limited set of high frequency verbs, e.g. have, use, and say. Although native speakers used the phrasal verb clause structure more often than Saudi learners, both groups of novice writers used far fewer phrasal verbs than expert English writers; possible explanations for this underuse are investigated. The thesis concludes with a variety of pedagogical implications that could be of great benefit for language teachers and textbook and dictionary designers. ii Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank God, the Almighty, for providing me with the power and the ability to complete this work. I also would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Sylvia Jaworska, for all the time and precious thoughts that she has put into this study. She provided me with constant guidance and both personal and professional support. Her most detailed comments and insightful suggestions on the drafts of this thesis were a great invaluable source of knowledge as well as encouragement. My thanks also extend to my second supervisor and PhD programme director, Dr. Jacqueline Laws, for her warm support and constructive comments. I deeply appreciate the time she spent carefully reading and revising my drafts and providing thorough feedback. Working with them has enriched me in many ways. I benefited much from their patience, welcoming positive attitude and professionalism. I am also in debt to my country, Saudi Arabia, and Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University for providing me the chance and support to pursue my studies and funding all my expenses. My appreciation is also expressed to the module convenors, the students, and the administrators at Reading University and Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University for allowing me access to the data I needed for my study. The help I received in copying and anonymising students’ exam papers is acknowledged. I also must thank my colleagues who helped me in reviewing the data, especially Chris Ryder. He dedicated much of his time to revise the coding of the concordance lines and offered very organised and skilful help. My heartfelt gratitude is to my beloved mother, Fawziah. Her endless care, love, and prayers were of great inspiration and motivation. I am also in debt to my brother, Abdullah, who was my companion and friend during my stay in the UK. Many thanks also go to my brothers, Mohammed, Adeeb, Khalid and Ahmed, my sisters, Noura, Sumaiyah and Nada, and my husband, Mohammed, for being extremely supportive and most willing to help me. Having a baby during this journey was not easy, but my son Abdulrahman was a big source of joy and happiness. His smiles turned every hard moment into a pleasant one. His mere existence was a great motivation to work harder and be a good role model. iii Declaration I confirm that this is my own work and the use of all material from other sources has been properly and fully acknowledged. Manal Alangari iv Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................. i Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................. iii Declaration .......................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents ................................................................................................................. v List of Tables ...................................................................................................................... xi List of Figures ................................................................................................................... xiii List of Phonetic Symbols .................................................................................................. xiv List of Abbreviations for the Glossing of Arabic Examples .............................................. xv Chapter 1 : Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Rationale of the study ..................................................................................... 2 1.2 Scope of the study .......................................................................................... 6 1.3 Layout of the thesis ........................................................................................ 7 Chapter 2 : Literature Review .............................................................................................. 8 2.1 Phraseological approaches to study collocations ........................................... 8 2.1.1 The Russian phraseological approach ..................................................... 9 2.1.2 The Frequency-based approach ............................................................. 12 2.2 From collocations to lexico-grammatical patterns ....................................... 14 2.2.1 Pattern Grammar .................................................................................... 17 2.2.2 Construction Grammar .......................................................................... 19 2.3 Collocations in Learner English ................................................................... 21 2.4 Summary of previous research ..................................................................... 28 2.5 Approach to collocations in Studies 2 and 3 ................................................ 31 2.5.1 Definition of collocations ...................................................................... 31 2.5.2 Quirkian Clause structures..................................................................... 32 2.5.3 The Verb phrase in English ................................................................... 33 2.5.4 The Verb phrase in Arabic ..................................................................... 36 2.5.5 Verb complementation clause structures in English