摘要
The study investigates the literal and non-literal uses of nine dimension adjectives in academic speaking and writing based on MICASE as an academic speaking corpus and Hyland as an academic writing corpus.The nine dimension adjectives are.broad,deep,high,long,low,narrow,short,tall,and wide.The results show that all the nine dimension adjectives have been used in literal sense.Except for tall,all the nine adjectives are more frequently used in metaphorical sense than in literal sense.A specific study is made on their non-literal use with regard to their semantic features.
通过使用美国密歇根大学的MICASE口语学术英语语料库和英国的Hyland书面学术英语语料库,作者调查了在口语和书面的学术英语中九个描述三维的形容词的使用情况,这九个形容词是broad、deep、high、long、low、Narrow、short、tall和wide。研究发现,这九个形容词作为字面意义在口语和书面学术语篇中都有使用;除了tall以外的八个形容词的比喻用法甚至多于字面用法。本研究还对这些形容词的比喻用法进行语义分析,为英语教师、字典编撰、教材编写、语言测试等从业人员提供了参考意见。
