语料库驱动视角下学术英语动词搭配配价研究

A Corpus-Driven Study of Verb Collovalency in Academic English

本研究在语料库驱动视角下对英国学术英语写作语料库中的高频动词suggest进行搭配配价分析,并尝试探讨词汇、语法和意义之间的关系。研究结果显示:(1)动词suggest共有4种配价结构类型,23种表现形式。同其他结构相比,二价结构在表现形式和出现频数上占据优势;(2)23种配价结构均为该动词的典型配价结构,具有统计学意义,其中以Sub V Obj-that、Sub V Obj-nom、 Sub V Obj-(that)和it be V-ed Obj-that这四种配价结构的典型性最为突出;(3)一种配价结构可能对应多种意义,多种配价结构也可能共享同一意义,动词suggest的语义内容取决于特定的文本语境。本研究将词汇、语法和意义放置在同一配价型式内考察,其结果可应用于学术英语写作教学,以帮助英语学习者掌握规范的学术语言。

This paper utilized the corpus-driven approach to examine the valency patterns for the verb suggest,which occurs frequently in British Academic Written English(BAWE) Corpus,and explored the interrelationship of lexis,grammar and meaning.The corpus-driven approach and the collovalency strength analysis were used in this research.The corpus-driven approach rejected presupposed results, and it is found to be a reliable approach in extracting valency patterns from authentic texts.The collo valency strength analysis is argued to be more successful than the frequency analysis in the identification of typical valency patterns, since it was more effective in distinguishing which valency patterns had a closer relationship with the verb suggest,especially when the valency patterns were in the same frequency.The experimental data demonstrated that there were twenty-three types of valency patterns in total,including four monovalent patterns,eleven divalent patterns, five trivalent and three valency patterns with it.Notably, divalent patterns predominated not only in the number of types but also in the occurrence of frequency,which appeared 730 times in the 815 pieces of concordance lines.Besides,it is showed that the above valency patterns had statistically significant correlations with the verb suggest, and four valency patterns-,, ,and —were particularly salient in terms of the collo valency strength values.Finally,it is manifested that one valency pattern might have several meanings while different valency patterns might share one same meaning.To be specific, the verb suggest could be taken as a polysemous word, whose meaning depends on the semantic and syntactical environment in which it occurs.For example,the divalent patterns(Sub V Objthat) and shared three different meanings.When the subjects were described as research phenomena(e.g.,data,evidence,research,fad,theory,studies,hypothesis,etc.) and pronouns like it,this and that,the semantic meaning of the verb suggest would refer to the indication of some signs or characteristics.When the subjects were human names(e.g.,Boyer,Hobsbawm,Lewis,etc.) and pronouns like he,we and they,the meaning of suggest would refer to the presentation of personal viewpoints.And when the subjects were pronoun I,the meaning of suggest would refer to the suggestions on specific issues.The findings on the one hand corroborate the efficiency of the statistical approach—collo valency strength—in identifying representative valency patterns,which may help English learners stay away from those sentence patterns which are correct in grammar but unrepresentative in usage.On the other hand,it is suggested that the individual words or lexical items in them selves do not carry inherent meanings,but their meanings could be acquired through the environment of the words,i.e.,the usage context,the typical collocates,the grammar patterns,etc.The theory of collo valency synthesizes lexis,grammar and meaning in one valency pattern,which could be introduced to the teaching of English academic writing for helping English learners master standardized academic language.