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The Phraseology of Phrasal Verbs in English: a Corpus Study Of View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Birmingham Research Archive, E-theses Repository THE PHRASEOLOGY OF PHRASAL VERBS IN ENGLISH: A CORPUS STUDY OF THE LANGUAGE OF CHINESE LEARNERS AND NATIVE ENGLISH WRITERS by YUSHAN KE A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English School of English, Drama and American & Canadian Studies College of Arts and Law The University of Birmingham September 2013 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT The aim of this study is to supplement existing research on phraseology in learner language by exploring the behaviours of phrasal verbs, a notorious hurdle for learners of English. This thesis compares a Chinese learner corpus (CLEC) with an English native speakers’ corpus (LOCNESS), with a reference corpus, the Bank of English (BoE), being consulted where necessary. A series of quantitative and qualitative investigations are conducted on phrasal verbs: calculation of frequency distribution and type-token ratios; identification of phraseological information, including collocation, semantic preference, semantic sequence and prosody. The results are discussed in full. Additionally, a framework utilising degrees of idiomaticity and restriction strength to group phrasal verbs is proposed and the issue of distinguishing synonymous counterparts is tackled as well. The results generally indicate that Chinese learner language tends to have more phrasal verb tokens but fewer types than written native speaker English does. Detailed case studies of phrasal verbs show, however, that the phraseological behaviours of phrasal verbs as used by learners are so individualised that the findings are mixed. Learner uses are characterised by idiosyncrasies of different phraseological units, suggesting that the links (between lexis and lexis, or lexis and concepts) in the lexicon of L2 are different from those in L1. i DEDICATION This work is dedicated to, my beloved mother, and my whole family ii Acknowledgement First and foremost, praise and thanks to God for his blessings throughout my doctoral journey. This thesis would not have been possible without my supervisor, Professor Susan Hunston’s, patient guidance. Her brilliant academic coaching, intellectual enlightenment and continuous support have led me along the path towards completing this work. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to her. I owe thanks to many colleagues who have offered me help and support. Their kindness has made my life in Birmingham an enjoyable and rewarding experience. Among them, special thanks are due in particular to Dr. Makoto Sakai for his warm friendship. I am indebted to all of my beloved family members for their affection, sympathy and encouragement. Their unfailing love is the resource which fills me with the strength and enthusiasm to keep pursuing an academic career. Thanks are also due to the National Science Council for providing me with a scholarship (NSC-095-SAF-I-564-058-TMS). Any error in this thesis is, of course, my sole responsibility. This thesis was copy edited for conventions of language, spelling and grammar by Libro Editing Ltd. iii Table of Contents THE PHRASEOLOGY OF PHRASAL VERBS IN ENGLISH: A CORPUS STUDY OF THE LANGUAGE OF CHINESE LEARNERS AND NATIVE ENGLISH WRITERS .................................................................................................... 1 Chapter1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................ 1 1.1 Introduction .............................................................................................. 1 1.2 Background of the thesis .......................................................................... 1 1.2.1 Corpus, phraseological language and the contextual approach ........ 1 1.2.2 Learner language features: unnaturalness ......................................... 5 1.2.3 An overview of phrasal verbs ........................................................... 7 1.3 Motivation and problems ....................................................................... 10 1.4 Aims and scope of the thesis .................................................................. 18 1.5 Guiding questions and potential significance of the thesis .................... 19 1.6 Structure of the thesis............................................................................. 21 Chapter2: PHRASAL VERBS ........................................................................ 24 2.1 Multi-word verbs ................................................................................... 24 2.2 Definitions of phrasal verbs ................................................................... 25 iv 2.3 Other relevant MWVs ............................................................................ 29 2.3.1 Prepositional verbs and PVs ........................................................... 29 2.3.2 Free combinations and literal phrasal verbs ................................... 33 2.3.3 Phrasal-prepositional verbs............................................................. 37 2.4 PVs in dictionaries ................................................................................. 38 2.5 Elements, features and classification of phrasal verbs ........................... 40 2.5.1 Elements ......................................................................................... 41 2.5.2 Features and classification .............................................................. 42 2.6 Summary ................................................................................................ 58 Chapter3: LEARNER LANGUAGE, CORPORA AND PHRASAL VERBS 63 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................ 63 3.2 Learner language .................................................................................... 64 3.2.1 LL characteristics ............................................................................ 64 3.2.2 Learners’ lexical knowledge ........................................................... 65 3.2.3 Development of learner language studies ....................................... 67 3.3 Corpora and teaching/learning ............................................................... 72 v 3.3.1 Corpora and teaching ...................................................................... 72 3.3.2 Phraseology and teaching ............................................................... 76 3.4 Learning PVs ......................................................................................... 77 3.4.1 Collocation and PVs ....................................................................... 77 3.4.2 Problems of learning and teaching PVs .......................................... 79 3.4.3 Other studies of PVs ....................................................................... 84 3.5 Summary ................................................................................................ 86 Chapter4: PHRASEOLOGY ........................................................................... 88 4.1 Introduction ............................................................................................ 88 4.2 Phraseology and other related concepts ................................................. 90 4.2.1 Phraseology .................................................................................... 90 4.2.2 Idiomaticity ..................................................................................... 92 4.2.3 Collocation...................................................................................... 93 4.3 Phraseology and meaning .................................................................... 102 4.3.1 Units of meaning .......................................................................... 103 4.3.2 Semantic/pragmatic associations and lexical priming .................. 107 vi 4.3.3 Semantic sequence ........................................................................ 110 4.3.4 Contextual approach ..................................................................... 114 4.3.5 Phraseology/collocation in learner language ................................ 115 4.4 Summary .............................................................................................. 123 Chapter5: METHODOLOGY ....................................................................... 126 5.1 Preliminaries ........................................................................................ 126 5.2 Corpora and tools ................................................................................. 130 5.2.1 Corpora selection and structure .................................................... 130 5.2.2 Software ........................................................................................ 136 5.2.3 Materials ....................................................................................... 138 5.3 Procedure
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