Frequencies of the Spatial Prepositions AT, ON and IN in Native and Non-native Corpora

アクセス数 : 789
ダウンロード数 : 182

今月のアクセス数 : 1
今月のダウンロード数 : 1
File
Title ( eng )
Frequencies of the Spatial Prepositions AT, ON and IN in Native and Non-native Corpora
Creator
Tang Warren
Source Title
広島大学大学院教育学研究科紀要. 第二部, 文化教育開発関連領域
Bulletin of the Graduate School of Education, Hiroshima University. Part. II, Arts and science education
Issue 61
Start Page 219
End Page 228
Abstract
This paper investigates the nature of frequencies in the Nagoya Interlanguage Corpus English of spatial prepositions of AT, ON and IN. The proportions and ratios of these three prepositions, because of their grammatical characteristic, are to an extent fixed not only for native speakers but also advanced non-native speakers. The analysis is divided into three parts: a general examination of overusage and underusage of these forms, an examination of the most distinctive words in contrast to AT, ON and IN, and an examination of the distinctiveness in native speaker and non-native speaker corpora separately. The results show that 1) while there is a general tendency to underuse these forms by non-native speakers their overall proportions and ratios remain stable; 2) fluctuations occur mainly with lexical words; 3) fluctuations in AT, ON and IN may be topic driven but a minor factor as their fixed nature is governed by grammatical and communicative needs. Proportional usages of AT, ON and IN though stable show internal variations (polysemy). Non-native speakers are inclined to produce native-like proportions but miscue in their literal and metaphorical usages. The findings suggest further research into the ratios of literal to metaphorical usages is required.
Keywords
spatial prepositions
frequency
literalmeaning
metaphor
NDC
Education [ 370 ]
Language
eng
Resource Type departmental bulletin paper
Publisher
広島大学大学院教育学研究科
Date of Issued 2012-12-21
Publish Type Version of Record
Access Rights open access
Source Identifier
[ISSN] 1346-5554
[NCID] AA11618725