C-Smile, COCA, and BNC: A Focus on Amplifiers and Adjective Collocations

Yazid Basthomi, Nurenzia Yannuar, Utami Widiati, Rahma Martiningtyas

Abstract


In order to explicate a specific message from statements, amplifiers mostly collocate with particular lexical items referring to evaluation, judgment, or attitude. Using six types of amplifiers consisting of absolutely, completely, entirely, fully, totally, and utterly, the research intends to elicit kinds of adjective collocation that follow each of the amplifiers. Three different corpora of non-native and native speakers of English are used in order to see the common pattern of amplifiers and their collocations as well as to compare their use in different contexts and among users of English. The results show that the collocations are varied in the sense that each corpus provides a number of adjectives in which some of them are similar to the ones occurring in the other corpora and some others only occur in a particular corpus. Specific evaluations of amplifiers viewed from their adjective collocations fall under three basic categories of positive, negative, and neutral values. By investigating and comparing amplifiers and collocations used in non-native and native academic writings, the findings of the present study point to the fact that each amplifier constitutes specific evaluations.

 

Keywords:  amplifiers; adjective collocations; academic writing; native speakers; non-native speakers

 

 


Full Text:

PDF

References


Bäcklund, U. (1973). The Collocation of Adverbs of Degree in English. PhD Diss. Uppsala University.

Baker, P. (2006). Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. London: Continuum.

Biber, D., Conrad, S., & Reppen, R. (Eds.). (1998). Corpus Linguistics: Investigating Language Structure and Use. Cambridge University Press.

Biber, D., Stig J., Leech G., & Quirk, R. (2000). Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Pearson Education.

Bill Louw. (2000). Contextual prosodic theory: bringing semantic prosodies to life‟ in C. Heffer, H. Sauntson and G. Fox (eds.) Words in Context: A Tribute to John Sinclair on his Retirement. Birmingham: University of Birmingham.

British National Corpus (BNC). Brigham Young University. (Online), (http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc), accessed on Feb 1, 2014.

Changhu Zhang. (2010). An Overview of Corpus-based Studies of Semantic Prosody. Asian Social Science, Vol. 6, No. 6, pp. 190-194.

Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). Brigham Young University. (Online), (http://corpus.byu.edu/coca), accessed on Feb 1, 2014.

Daniel Wiechmann & Fuhs. (2006). Concordancing Software. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistics Theory, 2-1: 109-130.

Douglas Biber. (1993). Representativeness in Corpus Design. Literary and Linguistic Computing, 8, Issue 4, Oxford University Press, pp. 243-257.

Graeme Kennedy. (2003). Amplifier Collocations in the British National Corpus: Implications for English Language Teaching. TESOL Quarterly Vol. 37, No. 3, pp. 467-477.

Granger, S. (1998). Prefabricated Patterns in Advanced EFL Writing: Collocations and Formulae, in Cowie A. P. (Ed.), Phraseology: Theory, Analysis and Applications. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 145-159.

Granger, S and Rayson, P. (1998). Automatic Profiling of Learner Texts. In S. Granger (ed.) Learner English on Computer. Longman, London and New York, pp. 119-131.

Howarth P. (1998): Phraseology and Second Language Proficiency, „Applied Linguistics”, t. XIX, Oxford, s. 24–44.

Ito, Rika and Sali Tagliamonte. (2003). Well weird, right dodgy, very strange, really cool: Layering and Recycling in English Intensifiers. Language in Society 32: 257-279.

Justyna Leśniewska. (2006). Collocations and Second Language Use. Studia Linguiastica, Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis 123, pp. 95-105.

Justyna Leśniewska. (2006a). Is Cross-Linguistic Influence a Factor in Advanced EFL Learners’ Use of Collocations? [w:] J. Arabski red. Cross-Linguistic Influences in the Second Lan-guage Lexicon, Clevedon, s. 65–77.

Katerina Skobrankova. (2006). Six English Intensifying Adverbs. Thesis. (Online), (http://is.muni.cz/th/75314/ff_b/Diplomka.pdf), accessed on Feb 4, 2014.

Leonardo Juliano Recski. (2004). “…It’s Really Ultimately Very Cruel…” – Contrasting English Intensifier Collocations Across EFL Writings and Academic Spoken Discourse. D.E.L.T.A, Vol 20:2, pp. 211-234.

Lorenz, G. (1999). Adjective Intensification – Learners versus Native Speakers: A corpus study of argumentative writing. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Michael Stubbs. (1995). Collocations and Semantic Profiles: On The Cause of The Trouble With Quantitative Studies. Functions of Language, 2, 1, pp. 1-33.

Partington, A. (1998). Patterns and Meanings. Using corpora for English language research and teaching, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Partington, A. (2004). Utterly Content in Each Other’s Company: Semantic prosody and semantic preference. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 9(1), 131-156.

Paul Rayson & Roger Garside. (2000). Comparing Corpora using Frequency Profiling. Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK.

Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985). A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Harlow, Essex: Longman.

Richard Xiao & Hongyin Tao. (2007). A Corpus-Based Sociolinguistic Study of Amplifiers in British English. Sociolinguistic Studies, Vol 1.2, ISSN: 1750-8649 (print), ISSN: 1750-8657 (online). DOI: 10.1558/sols.v1i2.241.

Sali Tagliamonte. (2008). So different and pretty cool! Recycling intensifiers in Toronto, Canada. English Language and Linguistics. 12 (2): 361-394.

Wachter, A. R.( 2012). Semantic Prosody and Intensifier Variation in Academic Speech. M.A Thesis. University of Michigan, Athens, Georgia.

Weimin Zhang. (2009). Semantic Prosody and ESL/EFL Vocabulary Pedagogy. TESL Canada Journal, Vol. 26, No 2.

Wittouck, H. (2011). A Corpus-Based Study on the Rise and Grammaticalisation of Intensifiers in British and American English. Master Dissertation. Universiteit Gent, Belgium.


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


 

 

 

eISSN : 2550-2247

ISSN : 0128-5157