Vigilancia

6.3.2.1 The node word very

Chinese learners of English take the booster very as an all-purpose intensifi er – i.e. learners overuse it several times more than the native speakers do. However, CLEC data show that collocates of very are limited. One hundred randomly chosen concordance lines indicate that the adjective collocates of very mainly fall into four semantic fi elds: evaluation and comments, emotive feelings, quali-tative characteristics and physical features. The four semantic fi elds cover 92%

of the collocates, which is a relatively higher percentage in comparison to 88%

in FLOB in and 85% in FROWN. Within the four main semantic fi elds of the adjective collocates, the fi rst category accounts for 44%, which is much higher than the 29% in FROWN and 30% in FLOB. Words of the semantic fi elds of time and place, relationships, situational descriptions are rarely found in learner English. Frequent examples of the adjective collocates of very are listed in Table 6.31 .

Different from the mixed semantic prosody of very in native English, the seman-tic prosody of very appears to be positive in learner English. A large number of adjective collocates of very express a positive meaning – for example, glad , happy , Table 6.30 Semantic preference and prosody of very , so and too in NS corpora

Boosters Semantic preference Semantic

prosody very to intensify adjectives expressing the meaning of

evaluation, qualitative feature, physical feature, and emotive feelings, time and place, relationship, etc.

mixed

so to intensify adjective collocates expressing the meaning of evaluation, qualitative feature, physical feature, and emotive feelings, time and place, relationship and situational description, etc.

mixed

too to intensify adjective collocates expressing the meaning of evaluation, qualitative feature, physical feature, and emotive feelings, time and place and situational description , etc.

negative

110 Semantic preference and semantic prosody of intensifi ers

good , nice , rich , powerful and important . Few show a negative meaning, such as angry , bad , diffi cult , dreadful and wrong . Some of them express a neutral attitude:

small , large , big , different , etc. The frequency and percentage of positive, neutral and negative adjective collocates of very are listed in Table 6.32 .

6.3.2.2 The node word so

Concordance lines for so reveal that so in the learner English has slightly dif-ferent semantic preference than in native English. Learners are more likely to use so to modify quantitative adjectives, while native speakers use so more often to modify adjectives expressing the meaning of comments or evaluations.

So in the native English is found to be able to collocate with adjectives express-ing the meanexpress-ing of relationships such as same , different and close . However, this semantic feature cannot be observed in the learner English. In addition to the aforementioned differences, learners use so to modify emotive feelings more than the native speakers. The detailed frequency of each type of semantic fi eld of the adjective collocates of so and the corresponding examples are shown in Table 6.33 .

By observing the concordance lines and analyzing the adjective collocates of so in the learner English, we detect that the semantic prosody of so is a mixed one.

The detailed frequency and percentage of the positive, negative and neutral adjec-tive collocates of so in CLEC can be read in Table 6.34 . They take similar percent-ages as those in the native English.

Table 6.31 Semantic preferences of very in CLEC

Semantic fi elds Typical adjective collocates

Comments and evaluation (44%) glad, happy, nice, important, good, wonderful, popular, powerful, bad, beautiful, useful, well Emotions and feelings (16%) angry, comfortable, glad, greatful (misspelling of

grateful), happy, sorry, surprised

Qualitative characteristics (15%) lazy, friendly, helpful, grand, poor, rich, young Physical features (17%) big, small, much, many, limited, wide

Time and place (3%) long

Relationship (1%) different

Situation description (4%) urgent, busy, hot,

Table 6.32 Frequency and percentage of positive, negative and neutral adjective collocates of very in CLEC

Collocates

of very Positive Negative Neutral in all

CLEC 53 (53%) 24 (24%) 23 (23%) 100 (100%)

Semantic preference and semantic prosody of intensifi ers 111

6.3.2.3 The node word too

Chinese learners use booster too in a similar way to that of native speakers in terms of semantic preference and semantic prosody. The adjective collocates of too in learner English share three main semantic fi elds and three minor ones with native speaker English. The three main fi elds are comments and evaluation, qualitative features and quantitative features. The three minor fi elds include emotions and feelings, time and place and situational descriptions. The semantic fi eld of the quantitative features takes the biggest percentage in learner English. Learners do not use too to collocate with adjectives expressing relationships, which is a col-locational behavior of too in native English. The adjective collocates of too in each semantic category, and the frequency and percentage of positive, negative and neutral adjective collocates of too in CLEC can be found in Table 6.35 and Table 6.36 , respectively.

6.3.2.4 Interim summary

The semantic preference and prosody of the three boosters very , so and too in the native corpora and the learner corpora were examined in this section. The investi-gation shows that learners have a similar semantic preference to that of the native speakers in using boosters very , so and too . However, learner data also display idiosyncratic features in comparison with the native data. They tend to use a nar-rower semantic range of adjective collocates – i.e. they are likely to use the all-round boosters to modify adjective collocates within a limited number of semantic fi elds. The main semantic fi elds of collocates for the boosters very and so in learner Table 6.33 Semantic preferences of so in CLEC

Semantic Fields of the Adjective

Collocates (%) Typical Adjective Collocates

Comments and evaluation (23%) abnormal, acute, bad, beautiful, good, popular, happy, unfair

Emotions and feelings (19%) tired, sad, satisfactory Qualitative features (19%) interesting, soft,

Physical features (34%) many, much, large

Time and place (1%) late

Situational description (4%) hot

Table 6.34 Frequency and percentage of positive, negative and neutral adjective collocates of so in CLEC

Collocates

of so Positive Negative Neutral in all

CLEC 45 (45%) 33 (33%) 22 (22%) 100 (100%)

112 Semantic preference and semantic prosody of intensifi ers

English are different from those in native English. Some semantic fi elds of the adjective collocates in native English cannot be found in the learner English. A summary of the semantic preference and semantic prosody of very , so and too in the learner English is shown in Table 6.37 . Items marked with an asterisk are those that are used differently by the native English speakers and Chinese learners.

6.4 Diminishers

As mentioned in Chapter 4 , downtoners are a group of intensifi ers which are sig-nifi cantly underused as a whole by Chinese learners of English. However, a little and a bit as downtoners for adjectives are among the top-twenty, most frequently used intensifi es in the Chinese learner corpus CLEC. In contrast to the underuse Table 6.35 Semantic preferences of too in CLEC

Semantic Fields (%) Typical Adjective Collocates

comments and evaluation (12%) important, bad, bright, outstanding, hard emotion and feeling (13%) nervous, anxious, disappointed, frightened, qualitative features (22%) lazy, soft, academic, cruel, foolish, kind, old,

prudent

physical features (39%) many, much, long

time and place (1%) short,

situational description (13%) busy, cold,

Table 6.36 Frequency and percentage of positive, negative and neutral adjective collocates of too in CLEC

Collocates

of too Positive Negative Neutral in all

CLEC 9 (9%) 79 (79%) 12 (12%) 100 (100%)

Table 6.37 Semantic preference and prosody of maximizers in CLEC

Boosters Semantic preference Semantic

prosody very To prefer to collocate with adjectives expressing the

meaning of comments and evaluation, quantitative features and qualitative features, etc.

positive 

so To intensify adjective collocates expressing the meaning of physical features, comments and evaluation, qualitative features, emotions and feelings, etc.

mixed

too To prefer to collocate with adjective collocates with the meaning of physical features, comments and evaluation, qualitative features, emotions and feelings, etc.

negative

Semantic preference and semantic prosody of intensifi ers 113

of most downtoners in learner English, phrasal intensifi ers a little and a bit are overused. Therefore, they are worth an investigation. The phrasal intensifi er a little bit is a close synonym for a little and a bit , so it is also examined. The frequencies of the three downtoners a little , a bit and a little bit can be seen in Table 6.38 .