本文是一篇英语毕业论文，英语论文的写作，主要用于参加国际学术研讨会，促进中外学术文化交流；在国际学术刊物上发表，在国际上共享科研成果，英语论文也是达到学术交流的目的；另外英语论文还包括英语相关专业人员必要地用英语撰写学术报告或毕业论文等等。（以上内容来自百度百科）今天为大家推荐一篇英语毕业论文，供大家参考。
优秀英语毕业论文范文篇一
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background, Significance, and Necessity of the Study
In recent years, studies of foreign language teaching and learning have tended tofocus on learners’ errors, since they allow for prediction of the possible difficultiesinvolved in learning the foreign language. As far as the teachers and the learners ofEnglish as a foreign language (EFL) in China are concerned, the studies of thelearners’ linguistic errors in their applying English are of significance to both sides.For the teachers, with better knowledge of such errors made by the learners, they willpay more attention to the relevant areas, and be in a better position to make informedand conscious efforts to improve their teaching performance, and for the learners,when better informed of such errors, they will do better in applying English, reducingthe occurrences of them. Besides, for the researchers in the relevant subject, theirachievements will provide new scholarly knowledge of those errors, describe howlearning occurs by examining the learner’s output, and particularly his/her correct andincorrect use of the language he/she is learning. By analyzing the underlying causes ofthose errors, the researchers may propose more efficient pedagogical strategies forEFL teaching and learning. Thus, it is obvious that the studies of foreign languagelearners’ errors are of considerable importance. The verb of English is one of its mostimportant parts of speech. The Chinese EFL learners’ performance in translation ofChinese into English (C-E translation) represents their highest proficiency in applyingEnglish for practical purposes. According to this understanding, it is of necessity andsignificance to study the EFL learners’ errors in applying English.
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1.2 Purpose, Research Question, Object and Methodology of the Study
The present project attempts to study verb errors by Chinese EFL majors as thebasic object of study. As far as how a verb is defined is concerned, we can find manydefinitions in literature. For example, according to Oxford Concise Dictionary ofLinguistics (Matthews, 2000), “verb” is defined as ...one of a class of lexical units whose characteristic syntactic role is as apredicate or predicator and which is characteristically that of words denotingactions or processes: e.g. run, make, melt. Verbs and nouns were distinguished inantiquity as two principal parts of speech without which a complete sentencecould not be formed; often taken, for similar reasons, to be substantiveuniversals.According to Hudson (2005), verbs are used to express action, being, and statesof being. Thus, we can see that there are two main categories of verbs: action verbsand state of being verbs (also known as linking verbs). Because action verbs andlinking verbs are strong enough to be used in sentences all by themselves, they arecalled main verbs, which can act in four different ways: transitive active verbs,intransitive complete verbs, transitive passive verbs, and intransitive linking verbs.There is also a third category, that is, auxiliary verbs. An auxiliary verb and a mainverb working together make a verb phrase. S
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Relevant Studies on Verb Errors at Home and Abroad
Many foreign scholars have highlighted the importance of verb and launched a lotof researches on verb errors. Here, we just review some representative ones. George(1972) illustrates that in Chinese and also Malaysia EFL learner’s L1, the verb doesn’thave conjugation with different tense or person, which poses a big difficulty for thelearning of L2. Thus, in the process of learning English verbs, Chinese EFL learnersmust conquer the influence of L1. Nesselhauf (2003) confirms that L1 can have aninfluence over nearly all types of errors including verb errors, usage errors, noun errors,preposition errors etc. The learners have more difficulty in producing the correspondentwords in L2. From the viewpoint of Tan (2005), every EFL learner needs to grasp thefundamental grammatical knowledge so as that he or she can efficiently communicatewith each other whether in the form of written English or spoken English. However,many of the studies in this field demonstrate that it is not easy for every EFL learner todo that, especially the mastery of verb, for verb errors account for the largest proportionin all of the grammatical errors. For example, one error analysis, for the Englishcompositions of non-English Major sophomores carried out by Bhatia (1974) at NewDelhi University, demonstrates that the errors of verb conjugation account for 40percent of all the errors. In coincidence, Vongthieres (1974) selects thirty Thai studentsat Ohio State University and analyzes the errors in their English compositions, in which,she found that verb errors account for the largest part of all the errors, reaching 32.4percent of them; and among all the verb errors, the tense errors account for 44.8 percent,the most of all the verb errors.
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2.2 Error Analysis (EA)
In this section, several concepts of Error Analysis (EA) will be discussed,involving the contrast between Contrastive Analysis (CA) and EA, the definition of EA,the deficiencies of EA, and most importantly, the procedure of EA. Since early 1950s, Contrastive Analysis (CA), as a branch of applied linguistics,has been generally adopted for analyzing L2 learners errors, which claims to predict theerrors that learners made by identifying the linguistic differences between their L1 andthe target language. The CA Hypothesis assumes that errors occur mainly resulting frominterference when the L2 learners transfer native language habits into the L2.Interference is considered to take place whenever the habits of the native languagesdiffer from those of the target language. The bigger the pergence between the twolanguage systems, the stronger the interference of the L1 system with the L2 is.However, it is also evident that interference is not the only factor to result in L2 learnererrors. Thus, Error Analysis (EA) is adopted as a substitute for CA to be an appropriatestarting point for the study of L2 acquisition since EA offers a comprehensive andscientific methodology for investigating learner language.
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Chapter Three Corpus Introduction and Collection of Data......... 19
3.1 Corpus and Software Used in the Study ......... 19
3.2 Collection of Data and Preliminary Analysis.......... 24
Chapter Four Data Analysis and Results......... 29
4.1 Transitive and Intransitive Verb Errors (vp1) ......... 29
4.2 Verb Errors in the Use of Set Phrases (vp2) ........... 34
4.3 Finite/ Non-finite Verb Errors (vp3) & Non-finite Verb Errors (vp4) .... 36
4.4 Verb Errors in Terms of Mood (vp5)....... 41
4.5 Modal Verb Errors (vp6)......... 43
4.6 Auxiliary Verb Errors (vp7) .... 45
4.7 The Absence of a Main Verb (vp8) ......... 46
4.8 Verb Errors on Different Original Chinese Sentences .... 47
4.9 Possible Causes for Verb Errors...... 50
Chapter Five Pedagogical Suggestions for C-E Translation Teaching ....... 56
5.1 A Brief Introduction of C-E Translation Teaching for Chinese EFL Majors.. 56
5.2 Pedagogical Suggestions for Teaching C-E Translation ......... 59
Chapter Five Pedagogical Suggestions for C-E Translation Teaching for Chinese EFL Majors
5.1 A Brief Introduction of C-E Translation Teaching for Chinese EFL Majors
In foreign language schools in China’s universities, after two-year learning of thebasic knowledge of English, senior learners will go through the course of translationwhich aims at grasping the basic translation skills and knowledge, including usuallyE-C translation and then C-E translation, and improving their translation competencethrough translation practices. Translation represents a Chinese EFL student’s mostpractical purpose of learning English; the principal form of communication a ChineseEFL student takes; a profitable process of relearning English on an advanced level; thesources on the basis of which translation theories come. Therefore, the translationcourse is important to Chinese EFL majors (Wang Xiaonong, 2005). The C-E translationcourse is definitely indispensable and essential for the nourishment of Chinese EFLMajors, for C-E translation is their most frequent and principal form of using Englishfor practical work. The guideline requirement for the third-year English majors in translation has beenelaborated in the National Teaching Syllabus for English Majors of Institutions ofHigher Learning (2000): to learn the basic translation theories, to tell the majorsimilarities and differences between Chinese and English, to master the fundamental translation skills and be able to translate Chinese and English texts of medium level ofdifficulty. And what’s more, their translated texts should be in accordance of the basiccriteria of being faithful to the original and smooth to read. Thus, to a certain degree,translation, especially C-E translation can reflect senior learners’ proficiency level toapply English for practical purposes and also can be used as a criterion to evaluatelearners’ translation competence which is the most important ability for a qualifiedtranslator.
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Conclusion
This study is mainly concerned with all the verb errors made by the Chinese EFLmajors in their translation productions collected and marked in CEM both in thequantitative and the qualitative way. The author adopts the quantitative way to find outthe classification and proportion of those verb errors. With regard to the qualitative way,the author uses it to characterize the errors and consider the possible causes of the errorsand tentatively to provide some pedagogical suggestions for C-E translation teachingand learning.The present study has achieved the following major findings: For some senior Chinese EFL majors involved in the study, in their translationsin TEM-8, transitive and intransitive verb errors account for the largest proportion of allthe verb errors, followed by verb errors in the use of set phrase and non-finite verberrors in sequence. Thus, we can regard those three kinds of verbs as the most difficultpoints for Chinese EFL learners in the process of C-E translation with regard to their useof the English verbs. These three kinds of verbs are distinctive in English and they havenot correspondents in Chinese. Thus, it’s safe to say that these errors to a large extentreflect L1 negative transfer and the Chinese EFL majors are inclinable to committingverb errors in the process of translation from the Chinese original into the Englishversion when the verbs concerned differ greatly from each other.
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References (omitted)
优秀英语毕业论文范文篇二
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Objective of the Study
This thesis is an expository study which concerns the evaluative language in theEnglish Commercial advertisement. The main objective of this study is to reveal thelinguistic feature of commercial advertisement which aims to attract its potentialconsumers to purchase their new products. This study will adopt both qualitative andquantity methods in order to have an exhaustive explanation on the evaluative languagefeatures in English commercial advertisements.Advertisement is a kind of persuasive text which can provide us many appraisalresources to study. Therefore, nowadays, some researchers try to analyze Englishcommercial advertisement within the frame work of Appraisal theory with a purpose toprovide some useful suggestions for both advertisers and their audiences. The focus ofthis study is on the use of evaluative resources in English commercial advertisements.Previous scholars have shown great interest in revealing rhetorical devices orsocial functions of advertisement, but seldom in analyzing its evaluative languagefeature. This research attempts to explore in what kinds of advertisement, and by usingwhat evaluative language devices advertisers can realize the persuading function ofadvertisements successfully. In this sense, this thesis also can reveal how the evaluativeresources are constructed in such persuasive texts.
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1.2 Significances of the Study
This thesis tries to reveal how advertising managers show their attitude inadvertisement. Advertisement is a kind of dialogical text which attempts to align itsreaders. In this sense, the present study will draw its attention on two questions. First,by using what kind of language devices the advertising managers can express theirattitude successfully and provide themselves an opportunity to have a ‘dialogue’ withits audiences. Second, by using what kind of evaluative language resources readers canbe attracted by the advertisement easily. Therefore, the study will be useful for bothadvertising managers as well as potential consumers. Moreover, some possible findingswhich are drawn from the corpus will be more useful to advertising managers, becausethe main purpose of this study lies in how the advertisement can cater to consumingpsychology of consumer groups by using some evaluative language resources.This present study will adopt Appraisal theory as the theoretical foundation. Thistheory offers a functional view for studying the evaluative language and has proven tobe useful to the study of advertisement languages. Under this theory, we can have adeep understanding on the evaluative language from an interpersonal view and thestudy on the feature of advertisement language will be more systematically. In thissense, a more detailed study will be offered to the use of evaluative values incommercial advertisement. The theoretical significance of this study is the analysis onhow these different evaluative resources are distributed in the commercialadvertisement. Although there are some previous studies in news, fairy tales, historicalcontexts, but very little in advertisement.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Basic Concepts of Advertisements
For the discourse we chose in this study is commercial advertisement, it’snecessary for us to know what advertisement is firstly. The word ‘advertisement’ isderived from the Latin word ‘adverture’, which means a way of calling public attentionto some things and then leading them to certain directions. In old ages, the word‘advertisement’ has various forms, such as ‘advertir’ and ‘advertisen’. Until the late 17thcentury, the word ‘advertisement’ was generally accepted because of the rapid tradedevelopment.Different scholars gave their definitions in various ways for advertisement itselfis a complicated phenomenon for us to define. Stephen Butler Leacock, an English borneconomist, defines it as ‘a science of arresting the human intelligence long enough toget money from it’. Albert Lasker, the father of modern advertising, once defined‘advertising’ as ‘salesman’ in print, which is inadequate since nowadays we could readadvertisement through the radio, television, website as well as from the printed papers.According to Wiki Encyclopedia, advertisement is ‘a form of communicationthat typically attempts to persuade potential consumers to purchase or to consume moreof a particular band of product or service ’.In encyclopedia Britannica, it defines the word ‘advertising’ in anotherway—‘A commercial advertisement (abbreviated as an ‘ad’ in the U.S and ‘advert’ inGreat Britain), generally refers to a method of spreading information about acompany’s product by buying a portion of a page in a magazine/newspaper, or a 30-60second commercial (called a ‘spot’) on radio or TV (or even a banner advertising on anInternet Website).
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2.2 Previous Studies on Advertising Discourse
Advertisement, as an inpisible part of modern society, have influence our life inan unnoticeable way. Nowadays, numerous international and domestic scholars havealready made great achievements on English advertising discourse analysis fromdifferent angles. Nowadays, most foreign scholars have studied advertising discourse from fourdifferent angles: sociolinguistic, stylistics, pragmatics, systemic-functional grammar.Torben Vestergaard and Kim Schrder, two Danish linguists, study the languageusage in advertising from the sociolinguistic perspective. In 1985, they published theirbook The Language of Advertising. In this book, they examine both the explicitadvertising information and the implicit social motivation concluded in advertising.Vestergaard and Kim Schrder find that the content of the advertisement is usually betterthan the real product for the purpose of persuasion.Leech is the main representative who tries to use the stylistic approach to study theadvertising language. In his book English in Advertising (1996), he manages to analyzedifferent kinds of linguistic devices in advertisements. We should admit that Leech hassucceeded in exploring the descriptive nature in language, but it still has someshortcomings. In his book, he doesn’t answer two questions: (1) what kinds of languagedevices are welcomed by its audiences? (2) what’s the relationship between socialenvironment and advertising?
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Chapter Three Theoretical Basis......... 14
3.1 Origin of Appraisal Theory........ 14
3.2 Subsystems in Appraisal Theory ....... 15
3.3 Applications of Appraisal Theory in Discourse Analysis.......... 28
Chapter Four Methodology ......... 29
4.1 Research Questions ........... 29
4.2 Data Collection .......... 29
4.3 Instrument.......... 30
4.4 Research Procedures.......... 30
Chapter Five Results and Discussion.......... 31
5.1 General Appraisal Analysis in English Commercial Advertising...... 31
5.2 Analysis in Attitude ........... 32
5.3 Analysis in Engagement .... 45
5.4 Analysis in Graduation ...... 54
Chapter Five Results and Discussion
5.1 General Appraisal Analysis in English Commercial Advertising
As presented in Chapter 3, Appraisal system involves three sub-domains: Attitude,Engagement and Graduation. Here 50 English commercial advertisements are studiedwithin Appraisal framework. The frequency and distribution of appraisal resources areshown as the following: Figure 5.1 indicates that there is a great deal of Appraisal resources in Englishcommercial advertisements which are printed in English magazines. From this figure,we could know that attitude resources which occupy 52.6% (516 occurrences) in totaltake the highest percentage than the other two. It means that attitude is the mostimportant appraisal resource which deserves more attention on analyzing it. Graduationtakes the second place with 28.2% (276 occurrences) in total, which means advertiserslike to stress the degree of quality and quantity of their new products or services byusing graduation resource. Compared with attitude and graduation resources, thefrequency of engagement is the lowest with 188 occurrences taking up 19.2% of thetotal appraisal resources.
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Conclusion
Having studied 50 English commercial advertisements with both qualitative andquantitative methods, we could easily find that advertisers prefer to use abundantappraisal values for increasing the persuasiveness of their advertisements. Based on ourdata and statistical results, some major findings of this study can be concluded asfollows:
(1) There are a great number of appraisal values in the 50 selected Englishcommercial advertisements. In addition, almost every sample contains the value ofattitude, engagement and graduation. The distribution of these three sub-systems isquite unbalanced. Attitude takes the first place with a percentage of 52.6%, graduationranks second with a percentage of 28.1%, and engagement ranks the lowest with 19.3%.Beyond that, the distribution within attitude, engagement and graduation is alsounequal.
(2) Within attitude system, appreciation value, which accounts for 83.72%, farexceeds affect value and judgment value. So is seems that appreciation is the mostimportant evaluative resource in English commercial advertisement. Appreciation,which aims to give assessment on things, is mainly used to praise the high quality ofthe new products and services with a purpose of persuading potential consumers to buythe target product.
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References (omitted)
优秀英语毕业论文范文篇三
1 Introduct ion
1.1 Significance of the Study
Language has always been taken as an animate mirror of the whole human society. It existsjust like other living things and reflects even the tiniest changes brought about by the outsideworld. As the most essential element of language, words play a distinctly important role in its life.From the time a new word is born, it starts to undergo a Darwinian struggle of survival of thefittest. Without exception, every language and its words go through such a thing. English, as anextremely important language, changes and develops at a breakneck speed and never seems tostand still. Sometimes, even the native speakers have to be confronted with the urge to keep upwith the new words' development and avoid being obsolete. As second language learners, wemay find difficulty in comprehending some new words when we read books, magazines,newspapers or listen to radio broadcasts. Even if we have our dictionaries in hand, they do notappear to be that helpful because the one you need may not be defined yet. Though it seems thatnew words are coming up through unpredictable conversations or accidental inspirations, therestill exist some word-formation rules for us to comprehend the processes of new word building.Therefore, if you have the knowledge of word-formation, you will be able to deduce the probablemeaning of the word. It will be quite helpful when we meet new words in our daily life oracademic study. Just as the existence of new words, the patterns of word-formation also differfrom time to time. In order to grasp the dynamic tendency of word-formation, the analysis ofnew words seems to be quite necessary.
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1.2 Methods of the Research
Towards the study of neologisms, there are several directions. While, this paper mainlyfocuses on the analysis of word-formation based on both synchronic and diachronic methods.Four steps have been taken in this study including data collection, classification, analysis andcomparison.1680 neologisms have been collected from OED which aims at complete coverage of theEnglish word stock and each of these neologisms has the earliest known attestations dating from1983 to 2006. After the year of 2006, no neologism with first citation can be found in OED,since editors in OED need enough time and evidence to prove that a neologism can live longenough to be accepted by this language^. In the meantime, the year of 2006 represents the latestdate of occurrence for the neologisms in this sample and 1983 means to connect with the date ofBauer. All the neologisms have been classified into four main types of word-formation whichcan be further pided into thirteen processes of word-formation. All the detailedsubclassifications will be listed and analyzed one by one. Ultimately, as a whole，the result willbe compared with that of Bauer.
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2 Literature Review
2.1 Study Abroad
In 1902, it was Leon Mead who first proposed the research on neologisms and his book,Word-Coinage: Being an Inquiry into Recent Neologisms was thought to be the earliest seriousstudy on neologisms. Leon Mead listed a large number of words created by American writers andtheir related articles. Not only this, he also recorded the attitudes towards neologisms of thesewriters. Though one hundred years have passed, the book is still reprinted and found in sale.About forty years later, an American linguist named Dwight L. Bolinger who had beenwriting a column on neologisms with the name of The Living Language for a magazine in LosAngeles and then transferred the column to American Speech (a quarterly academic journal ofthe American Dialect Society which was established in 1925 and published by Duke UniversityPress). After that，a new name was given to this column: Among the New，Words. In this column,quite a few neologisms are elected regularly and introduced with information from both Britishand American sources in detail. What deserves to be mentioned is that, so far，this column is stillalive in this journal. Algeo (1991) used to claim that it is the longest running documentary recordof English neologisms.At the end of World War II，Majorie Taylor who was a librarian in New York collectedvarious types of neologisms that appeared during the war and each neologism was explained.Later after that, in both 1953 and 1955，two dictionaries about war and new technology weresuccessfully published: one was Dictionary of New Words in English by Paul Charles Berg andthe other was The Dictionary of New Words by Mary Reifer. Both of these two dictionaries werequite welcomed at that time.
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2.2 Study in China
At the end of 20th century, studies on English neologisms in China also became popular. Quite a lot of works started to be published including the directions of sources, trend ofword-formation, and future prospects. As one of the most influential linguists in China, ProfessorWang Rongpei has done a lot in this field. His books, An Advanced Course of English Lexicologyand An Advanced Reader of English Lexicology are considerably well-known as the teachingmaterials in universities. Furthermore, he also wrote a large number of papers about the studyand development of neologisms. However, there are also many other scholars like ProfessorWang who contribute so much in this field. Some of them studied neologisms from theperspective of phonology, morphology, semantics or pragmatics. For example, Xu Yulongpublished a paper about the morphological and semantic features of words with the type ofX-able[i4]. Some other scholars also took some certain type of word-formation like blending，compounding, or shortening as the object of study. According to the statistics of cnki.net, thereare totally 437 papers from 1978 to 2014. Among all these papers, there are only 1 doctordissertation and 31 master papers. Except these，the others are all journals or conference papers.However, in recent two years, only one master paper is published and the other 33 papers are alljournals.
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3 Theoretical Framework........11
3.1 Basic Concepts Concerning Word-formation.......11
3.2 Word-formation .......12
3.2.1 What is Word-formation .......12
3.2.2 Classification of Word-formation.......13
4 Analysis and Discussion of the Neologisms.......19
4.1 Analysis .......19
4.1.1 Compounding .......19
4.1.2 Affixation.......31
4.1.3 Shortening.......34
4.1.4 The Others.......36
4.2 Results of the Data Collected.......40
4.3 Comparison with Bauer's Study.......41
5 Conclusion.......44
5.1 Findings of the Study .......44
5.2 Limitations and Future Prospects of the Study.......45
4 Analysis and Discussion of the Neologisms
4.1 Analysis
The form classes of compounds may contain noun, verb，adjective, adverb，interjection,conjunction，preposition and pronoun，whereas no compounds have been found taking the lastthree types of form classes, and even adverb and inteijection are also quite rare among the 268compounds collected in this paper. As indicated in Tab.4.1, compound nouns possess a totalnumber of 209 including 191 single-form-class compounds and 18 multiple-form-classcompounds and rank first among the others with an absolute advantage. Compound adjectives, asthe second major category of compounds, have 30 single-form-class compounds and 18multiple-form-class compounds among which 17 compound adjectives share the form class ofnoun. Both compound verbs and compound adverbs are single-form-class compounds with thenumber of 25 and 3 respectively. In contrast, compound interjections have no single-form-classcompounds and they just share the words with compound nouns and compound adjectives.Just as mentioned before, there are various methods of subclassifying compounds. In thispaper, the analysis will follow the clue of elements with different form classes that make up thecompounds. The tables below，from Tab.4.2 to Tab.4.6，give a description about the syntacticanalysis of compounds. The left vertical column represents the form class of the left element in aword and the above horizontal line represents the right element in a word. The correspondingnumbers represent the quantity of the combination of left elements and right elements. It needs tobe indicated that all the numbers italicized in brackets represent the quantity of compounds withmultiple form classes.
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Conclusion
1680 neologisms with the earliest known attestations in OED from the year of 1983 to 2006have been classified, analyzed and discussed in comparison with the study conducted by Bauerbefore. Some conclusions can be drawn as below:Affixation, the once most frequent type of word-formation in the first three periods(1880-1982), has lost its top position to compounding after 1983, though suffixation alone, asone major part of affixation, is still the most productive one among the thirteen subclassifiedprocesses of word-formation. The descending of prefixation is directly affected by the rise ofneo-classical compounds and nowadays prefixation is less than one fifth of neo-classicalcompounds in quantity. Besides, a vast majority of prefixes are class-maintaining and only lessthan 20% prefixes tend to change the form class of prefixations. Differently, suffixes insuffixations are more powerful in determining the form class of words, whereas less obvious inrestricting the meaning of suffixation which can not meet the needs of accepting new things ornew concepts on large scales any more in the information-overloaded age.
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References (omitted)
优秀英语毕业论文范文篇四
Chapter One Introduction
1.1Research background
In the past few decades, an increasing number of researchers have conductedperse studies on the role of affective factors in second language acquisition (SLA).Much of the research has demonstrated the influence of affective variables, such asmotivation, attitudes and language anxiety, on achievement or proficiency. Oneelement of the affective factors is willingness to communicate (WTC), which isemerging as a concqrt useful in accounting for inpiduals' L2 communication. Theconcept of WTC was firstly developed in LI communication by McCroskey and hisassociates (McCroskey, 1992; McCroskey & Richmond, 1987) and was applied to L2communication by Maclntyre and Charos (1996). As the focus in second languageteaching and learning has been transferring to communication, a way to account forinpidual diflfeences in L2 communication needs to be taken into consideration.Although WTC is a relatively new concept, there have been some studiesdedicated to examining its concqjtual components and empirical outcomes in L2communication. Most L2 WTC research has been conducted in Western countries.These studies have illixstrated that students' self-perceived language competence andlack of communication anxiety are directly related to their WTC in 汪 second language(Maclntyre & Charos，1996; Baker & Maclntyre, 2000; Hashimoto, 2002; Yashima,2002; Baker，Clement, & Maclntyre，2003). Moreover, recent studies combine thenotions of perceived language competence and lack of commxmication anxiety to forma notion of linguistic self-confidence (Yashima，2002; Baker，Clement, & Maclntyre,2003).
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1.2 The purpose and significance of the study
In the present study, we try to explore the willingness to communicate in Englishamong high school students in China. The purposes of the present study are to findout to what degree high school students' are willing to communicate in English，toanalyze the relationship between English proficiency and WTC, and to give practicalsuggestions to high school English teachers on" how to improve their students'participation in the classroom activities. This study also aims to increase students'willingness to communicate so as to enhance their oral English performance andproficiency.Anotiier issue to be discussed in this study is the potential differences betweenmales and females in WTC. Recently educational statistics have indicated thatfemales are outperforming males at all levels of the school system，attaining moreschool and post-school qualifications. Besides，it is accepted that differeaces betweenmales and females show enhanced performance of women on verbal tasks and men onspatial tasks (Maccoby & Jacklin，1979，quoted from Baker and Maclntyre，2000:319).This might lead to the hypothesis that female students have greater motivation, lessanxiety as well as stronger willingness to communicate.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Definitions of Willingness to Communicate
The origins of tiie WTC construct lie in the studies on the first language (LI)communication (McCroskey & Baer, 1985). The scale was first presented as anattempt intending to measure liie respondent's tendency to approach or avoid initiatingcommunication (McCroskey & Richmond, 1987). McCroskey and Richmond (1990)treat WTC as a personality trait and define it as "variability in talking behavior，，.WTC was conceptualized as a construct referring to inpiduals' tendencies toengage in communication in the LI，when given the free choice (McCroskey & Baer，1985). In the first language，WTC is regarded as the stable predisposition to talk, apersonal trait; in particular, the degree of introversion or extroversion. McCroskey andassociates (McCroskey & Baer，1985; McCroskey & Richmond, 1987) postulated thatWTC is a personality-based construct representing such regularity in inpiduals'predisposition toward verbal communication. In their view, WTC represents aconscious intention to seek out communication and may be based on 狂 synthesis ofcommunication apprehension, perceived competence，social norms，attitudes,motivation, and other factors (Burgoon, 1976; Beatty，1987; McCroskey，Richmond,& McCroskey, 1987; McCroskey & Richmond，1987，1990).
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2.2 Development of the models on L2 WTC research
Up to this point, the mainstream studies of WTC were conducted in a firstlanguage communication setting. The development of research on WTC in LI startedto gain researchers' attention in the area of second language acquisition (SLA) in theearly 1990s. How to encourage language learners to use the language to communicateand in turn, to leam the language through the communication，has become a criticalinterest of study for many researchers in the field of SLA. The following models，to alarge degree, have set up a theoretical foundation for the research of WTC in an L2setting. The first model of WTC in L2 was modified from Maclntyre's model of WTC inLI developed in 1994. Maclntyre (1994) proposed a path model which predicted thata greater level of perceived communicative competence (SPCC) and a lower level ofcommunication anxiety (CA) combined together to influence WTC (Figure 1). It wasfound that anxiety and perceived competence were key factors in predicting WTC andself-reported frequency of communication. The model also hypothesized that anxietyinfluences the perception of competence.
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Chapter Three Research Methodology........22
3.1 Subjects......22
3.2 Research instruments...... 22
3.2.1 Questionnaire......22
3.2.2 Semi-structued interview......23
3.2.3 English proficiency test...... 23
3.3 Data collection and analysis...... 27
Chapter Four Results and Discussion...... 24
4.1 Degree of WTC among high school students...... 28
4.2 Differences in terms of WTC between high proficiency students...... 31
4.3 Differences of WTC between male and female students......34
4.4 Other related variables influencing WTC in English......38
4.4.1 Influence of attitude and motivation on WTC......40
4.4.2 Influence of situational variables on WTC......41
Chapter Five Conclusions and Implications......44
5.1 Major findings ......44
5.2 Implications for English teaching and learning......44
5.3 Limitations and suggested future study...... 49
Chapter Five Conclusion and Implications
5.1 Major findings
This study investigated the high school students' willingness to communicate inEnglish and the factors affecting their willingness to communicate. Some findings canbe summarized as follows.First, the results in the present study indicate that the overall degree of highschool students' willingness to communicate in English is low. The study reveals thatstudents are highly willing to communicate in two context-types (Group Discussion &Meetings) and one receiver-type (Friend). They are not willing to initiatecommunication in other situations.Secondly，the findings of the Pearson correlation show that there is a significantcorrelation between WTC and high school students* English proficiency level. Lowerproficient learners of English are reluctant to speak English and higher proficientlearners of English are willing to communicate in English.Thirdly, regarding the difference in WTC between male students and femalestudents, this study's results show that female students generally show moreconfidence and greater willingness to communicate in English than those of male students.
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Conclusion
Although the present study has revealed some valuable findings for both EFLteachers and students，several limitations need to be addressed here.Firstly, Only 276 subjects were involved in this study, and all subjects of thecurrent study were chosen from the same grade of the same high school. Although theparticipants were selected randomly, they could hardly represent other high schoolstudents as a whole. This exclusion may affect the generalizability of the results incurrent study. Therefore, the investigation of high school students' L2 WTC in EFLsetting needs to be examined by drawing a comparison between students of differentgrades and different schools.Secondly, self-reported data collected through interviews and questionnaire hasits limitations, since it gives the learners' perception of the issue rather than theobservable facts. Therefore, future studies should employ different data collectionmethods, such as classroom observations，in-depth interviews, think-aloud protocolduring online chat, recall protocol after communicating in English, analysis oftextbooks and materials that students use in English classrooms to examine the issuein depth in this specific situation.Finally, the current study only focused on overall degree of high school students'WTC in the classroom setting. There is no quantitative analysis of students' WTC on aparticular occasion or with specific people. It will not be beneficial to the design ofclassroom teaching activities. Therefore, willingness to communicate in a L2 could beinvestigated with language learners in different communication environments (i.e.,pair work conversation, task-based group work, class-fronted discussion, etc.). Futurestudies could also examine the willingness to communicate of language learners whenthey are facing conversation partners with different language proficiency level.
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References (omitted)
优秀英语毕业论文范文篇五
Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Objectives of This Study
The studies on categorization and decategorization play a vital role in cognitivelinguistics. Categorization means to find resemblances from persity. Whatever inpsychology or in linguistics, the research of categorization has always been inspotlight, and has also made abundant achievements. But in this thesis, we would liketo elucidate that decategorization is as equally important as categorization in cognitiveprocess and linguistic process. Unfortunately, till now not enough attention has beenpaid to this area, which attracts us concern.There are three objectives of this thesis. ①To expound the significance ofcategorization and decategorization, which makes the readers realize that decategorization is equally important as categorization. ②To redefine the notion ofdecategorization based on many linguists’ definitions. ③Try to explain that theprocess of decategorization is dynamic and evolving, and analyze the process ofcategorization. In order to achieve these objectives,, we have gathered amounts of data,especially English nouns which are the typical representatives of decategorization.
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1.2 Thesis Layout
This thesis has been pided into six chapters. Chapter one is a brief introductionof this thesis. It’s about the objectives and layout of this study. Chapter two willretrospect the studies of categorization and decategorization at home and abroad,striving to give readers an overall comprehension of the theories. In chapter three, thedefinition of categorization and decategorization would be illustrated. Furthermore,we will talk about the importance of categorization and decategorzation. Through thecomparison between categorization and decategorization, the significance ofdecategorization will be highlighted. In chapter four, we clarify the familyresemblances and the prototype theory. We believe that prototype theory is thefoundation of decategorization. The characteristics of decategorization, the emphasisof decategorization, and the mechanism of decategorization are also talked about inthis chapter. Chapter five is the key chapter in which the decategorization-basedEnglish nouns are discussed in detail. The features of English nouns indecategorization and how it works will be mentioned. We have taken so manyexamples to show the way how it works. And the last chapter, chapter six is theconclusion of this thesis, which summarizes the research results of this thesis, andpoints out the limitations and implications of this study.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Studies abroad
Though the related study abroad has mentioned the concept of decategorizationbefore, the researchers still have not begun to go deeper in it. For instance, they talkedabout categorization, but ignored decategorization or they talked aboutdecategorization, but did not refer to English nouns. Therefore, the existing studycould not reveal the essential nature of English nouns in decategorization.In 1984, the concept, decategorization, was first raised by Hopper and Thompson.They argued that categoriality, the property of being a prototypical example of acategory, is imposed on linguistic forms by discourse. The nominal features of theEnglish nouns, tend to disappear in certain context. Several instances of nouns’decategorization are listed in that article written by Hopper and Thompson (1984),such as incorporation of prepositions, compounding nouns, predict nominals and soon. However, most of the linguistic data are cited from other languages. The nouns indecategorization that are related to different contexts in which they appeared are theemphases of their articles. We could not find many discussions of English nouns intheir articles. Hunnemeyer, Claudi and Heine (1991) had also mentioneddecategorization. According to them, consequence of grammaticalization would leadto a reduction in the primary category attributes of the concrete concerned. It is clearthat a form which has been decategorized loses morpho-syntactic factors and becomesrelying on other forms. Some phenomena of nouns in decategorization are surveyed intheir books, like nominal preposition, attributive nouns and locative nouns. Based oncognitive research, their researches do not confine to the morpho-syntactic fields.
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2.2 Studies at Home
Decategorization also attracts so many scholars’ attention in China. They havewritten a lot of articles and works on it. And the representative domestic scholars areLiu Zhengguang, Liu Runqing and Cui Gang, especially Liu Zhengguang & LiuRunqing. They have published a series of articles in journals and written books incollaboration with each other: Liu Zhengguang (2003, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c, 2006),Liu Zhengguang & Liu Runqing (2005), Liu Runqing & Liu Zhengguang (2004), LiuZhengguang & Cui Gang (2005). Domestic scholars argued that decategorization inlinguistics is the whole entirety of categorization in linguistics. They even have givena more detailed definition to decategorization，which will be touched upon in chapterthree. The importance of decategorization and its theoretical motivations has beendiscussed by them, though it’s not that integral. They find out that decategorization isreally involved to the ever-developing cognitive activities. In addition, LiuZhengguang and Liu Runqing (2004) have examined the features of nouns indecategorization from different aspects, including pramatics, syntactics, and semantics.Their researches reveal that nouns might lose some of the distributional characteristicssyntactically, namely, the nouns might lose its referential meaning, becoming moreabstract and more general in semantics, then achieve some new discoursive functionspragmatically. Unfortunately, the discussion of English nouns is only the tip of theiceberg in their studies. Certainly, most of the instances are cited from Chinese.Furthermore, Liu Zhengguang and Cui Gang (2005) detect that the degree of Chinesenoun decategorization is different from the English nouns in decategorization. Onaccount of the different constructions of sentence patterns, the categorial states aredifferent between Chinese nouns and English nouns after decategorization. However,they do not focus on the original categorial state of the nouns.
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Chapter 3 Theoretical Framework.......7
3.1 Categorization ........7
3.1.1 The Definition of Categorization ....8
3.1.2 The Importance of Categorization .........9
3.2 Definition of Decategorization ........10
3.3 Categorization and Decategorization......11
Chapter 4 A Theoretical Analysis on the Evolving Process......13
4.1 Precondition: Prototype Effects .......13
4.1.1 Family Resemblances .....13
4.1.2 Prototype Category Theory....14
4.2 The Dynamic of Category Attributes......16
4.3 The Characteristics of Decategorization ........17
4.4 The Motivation of Decategorization .......19
Chapter 5 Decategorization of English Nouns
5.1 Categorial Characteristics of Nouns
According to category attributes, a noun in prototype has the characteristics ofsemantics and morphology at the same time. In semantics, it refers to concrete entity,which is referential in the real world. In morphology, it can have singular form andplural form and modifiers, such as determiner or adjective. From the level ofdiscourse, a noun can have anaphoric form. From the perspective of discourse andcommunicative function, the effect of noun is to introduce a new utterance participant.If there is a certain linguistic entity can fit all the conditions above, then it can expressthe syntactic features of the nouns sufficiently, otherwise, it cannot.This point of view is different from the referential theory in logical semantics.Du Bois (1980) and Givón (1981) propose that the codes of discourse participants donot need “referential theory” in logic semantics. Du Bois (p208) even said that nounphrases only concern about the continuous identity over time. Givón (p85) raised thatthe codes of utterance participants relied on the communicative purpose of addressorin a large degree.Chen Ping (1988) indicates the essential features of nouns from the perspectiveof time dimension, “as the most typical things, nouns and verbs always occupy somespaces, which can show different characteristics with specific types of different thingsin size, height, thickness and so on. nouns are stable in time.”
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Conclusion
When Hopper & Thompson raise decategorization for the first time, includingTaylor, they just treat decategorization as a phenomenon of linguistic, explaining theloss of syntactic characteristics. This thesis accepts this point of view. Based on it, wemake a research on the categorization and the decategorization, especially in Englishnouns. Through the investigation, we find that decategorization is not only atlinguistic level, but cognitive level. Hence, we have defined decategorization fromlinguistic level and cognitive level in this thesis.In linguistic level, decategorization is the process in which category memberslose typical attributes gradually in specific condition. During the period fromdecategorization to recategorization, category is in a state of instability. Namely,between the original category and the new creative category, it exists a fuzzy middlecategory, which forfeits some typical features of the original category and gains somefeatures of the new category meanwhile.In cognitive level, decategorization is an innovative way of thinking and aprocess of cognition. When human being conceptualize the concrete world, they don’thave the direct approaches and methods. The objective world is independent from ourconceptual system, language bridges the gap between the concrete world and ourconcept system. The means of language structure and the principles of languageorganization reflect the cognitive means of organization and its principle. In this sense,decategorization is a cognitive approach, what’s more, it’s an innovative thought andcognitive process. For instances, the meaning of linguistic entities or the ways toextend functions can indicate the interaction of the old and the new knowledge.
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References (omitted)
优秀英语毕业论文范文篇六
1 Introduction
1.1 Statement of the study
Intensifiers，words such as really and extremely are used to magnify the meaning of theadjectives，verbs，adverbs and phrases to which they are applied. They play an important rolein verbal communication and people use them to intensify the meanings and highlight theinformation center. Speaker's points of view，attitudes，and feelings are expressed viaintensifiers. Look at several specific examples of intensifiers (terribly, awfully, horribly,fearfully, dreadfully and frighlfidly), What do you find from these sentences? In these sentences, the italic words are used tomodify the adjectives after them，but words in sentence (1) to (6) have the meaning “very，，while beautifully and differently don't. There is something in common of awfully，terribly,horribly, dreadfully, frightfully and fearfully. The roots of these words like in ccwfuUy,terror in terribly，horror in horribly, dread in dreadfully, fright in frightfully and fear infearfully share the same meaning "be afraid of. But when their adjectives are added with —ly，they become intensifiers to modify words or phrases meaning "very" or “exceedingly”，whichis totally different from their original meaning. It is interesting and meaningful that they havethe effect of intensifying the adjectives they modify, but there is another very important sideto them—they are used to give specification of degree. Clearly, they must have undergonesome changes in the development. What causes the changes? And what are the mechanismsof the change? Taking the intensifiers with the same root meaning as examples, this thesistraces the history of the intensifiers under research with its aim at investigating if there is ageneral tendency in the change，and exploring the motivations of the change and，mechanismsapplied in the historical development of the intensifiers.All in all, the research questions of this thesis include (1) What changes have the theintensifiers undergone? (2) If there is regularity or patterns in the development of intensifiers.(2) What are the motivations of their development? (3) What are the mechanisms of theirdevelopment?
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1.2 Purpose and significance of the thesis
Language is always in flux. Over time new patterns can be observed from the changesthey have undergone. Intensifiers are the excellent field to explore linguistic change ⑴.Investigation of the development of intensifiers provides strong evidence for the linguisticchange from the perspective of historical linguistics. This thesis is concerned with thediachronic change of the intensifiers in question-TERIRBLY, AWFULLY, HORRIBLY,FEARFULLY，DREADFULLY, and FRIGHTFULLY, tries to trace the development of eachintensifier from various periods, and fin th d out e regularity of the change of intensifiers. Inaddition, I'm interested in finding patterns that, if not strictly predictable are at least to someextent regular. An attempt will be made to analyze the motivations and mechanisms of thesemantic change. The significance of this thesis is described below. First, the words selectedin the thesis are representative examples of intensifiers for they share some communities andpossess the general properties of the adjectives which are added with —ly and becomeintensifiers. Their function shifts from describing the features of words to intensifying thedegree of the words they modify. In addition, the findings in the thesis are expected to enrichthe studies on intensifiers from the perspective of historical linguistics with a diachronicapproach. Moreover, this thesis may provide theoretical values in historical linguistic researchas well as practical values for the language production and understanding. Hopefully theresults will throw a new light on the vocabulary learning for the English learners.
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2 Literature review
2.1 Definitions of intensifiers
As far as the terminology is concerned, there isn't unification among scholars. It appearsin the literature that different scholars have developed their own terminology from differentpoint of views. Bolinger defines an intensifier as "any device that scales a quality, whether upor down or somewhei^e between the two and a degree expression is a word or phraseexpressing a quality that can be so scaled”. In the terminology of StOffel，they are "intensiveadverbs".There are two types~intensives and downtoners. Quirk et al. also call themintensifiers and in Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language，they note that "theterm ‘intensifier, does not refer only to means whereby an increase in intensification isexpressed. Rather，an intensifying subjunct indicates a point on an abstractly conceivedintensity scale; and the point indicated may be relatively low or relatively high" Theydistinguish two subsets of intensifiers: "Amplifiers scale upwards from an assumed norm; downtoners have a lowering effect，usually scaling downwards from an assumed norm".Here, we simply refer to them as"intensifiers'- those adverbs that maximize or boost meaning. They are used to show thespeaker's views，attitudes and feelings.
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2.2 Previous studies of intensifiers abroad
For the important role of intensifiers in verbal as well as in written communication，theyare studied from different perspectives, such as semantics，collocation，syntax and pragmaticsand so on. Some scholars study the factors that influence the use of intensifiers. With theestablishment of corpus in recent years，the studies on intensifiers become more convenientand easier. Studies abroad until now can be pided into the following parties. Spitzbardt pides intensifier into "restrictive adverbs，，and "intensive adverbs,，⑶ and heestablishes as many as nineteen semantic fields for adverbs of degree. There are threesemantic categories of restrictive adverbs and sixteen semantic categories of intensive adverbsrespectively.Restrictive adverbs include (1) "approximation, shortcoming, imperfection", (2) “average，mediocrity, acceptableness" and (3) "pettiness, weakness，modesty". Intensive adverbs arepided into (4) "totality, completeness, absoluteness”，(5) "extension, bigness, abundance",(6)"specialty, astonishment, matchlessness，，，(7) “emphasis，thoroughness, decision”，(8)"correctness, reality，clearness", (9) "adequacy, plainness，smoothness", (10) "fascination,magic, wonderfUlness,，，(11) "magnificence, brightness, beauty", (12) “cordiality，warmness,sympathy”，(13) “keenness, courage, boldness，，，(14) “heat，pungency，shrillness", (15)“badness，unpleasantness, hopelessness”，(16) "absurdity, rage madness”，(17) "frightfulness,aggressiveness，painfulness", (18) "cruelty, brutality, deadliness" and (19) “curses，abusiveness，taboo-words".
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3 Historical developments of intensifiers.......... 14
3.1 Methodology......... 14
3.2 The data: general observations .........15
3.3 Historical development of the intensifiers......... 17
3.4 Changes in the development......... 26
4 Findings and discussion ......... 31
4.1 Explaining the observations .........31
4.2 Tendencies in change ......... 32
4.3 Motivations of semantic change of intensifiers......... 37
4.3.1 Principles of economy in language.......... 37
4.3.2 Psychological factors.........38
4.3.3 Social factors......... 40
4.4 Mechanisms of semantic change of intensifiers......... 40
4.4.1 Metaphorization ......... 40
4.4.2 Subjectification......... 42
4.4.3 Invited inferences......... 43
5 Conclusions......... 47
5.1 Major findings......... 47
5.2 Suggestions and implications for further study......... 48
4 Findings and discussion
4.1 Explaining the observations
As observe from Fig. 3.1，terribly and awfully are most frequently used in spokenlanguage，and horribly，fearfully, dreadfully and frightfully are most common in the fiction.The reason for this phenomenon might be that spoken language is the easier to be accepted bypeople. The communication, in fact，is a process of interaction between speakers and hearers.The purpose of speakers in communication is to exchange information and express thespeaker's feelings，attitudes and point of views. The Principle of Least Effort makes speakers"restrict their output of energy, both mental and physical, to the minimum compatible withachieving their ends" Thus speakers tend to use the word that is easier to be accepted bythe hearers. Therefore，terribly and awfully are most frequently used in spoken language.From Fig. 3.2, the general tendency of these items in question shows a decline over years.When some words decrease in number，there must be other words to replace them. In the caseof intensifiers，what are the words that usurp them to modify the degree meaning 'Very"?Surprisingly，data demonstrates that the use of really and so increase in recent years，whichmeans that they are the words that take the place of these intensifiers.
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Conclusion
From a diachronic approach, the above section shows the historical development of theintensifiers in questions, more specifically，the process of semantic change of each intensifieris demonstrated in detail. The general development tendency of these intensifiers can be seenin the process.The results reveal that the shift in semantic change process includes Stage I contentmeaning/describing meaning; Stage II transition from content meaning to intensifyingmeaning; Stage III intensifying meaning. This process sees the subjectification of intensifiersfor the speaker's involvement becomes increasingly evident. And it is reflected in the fouraspects: (1) from propositional function to discourse function; (2) from objective meaning tosubjective meaning; (3) from syntactic subject to speaking subject; (4) from free form tobonded form.In general, there are three kinds of shifts along the cline: (1) non-subjective>subjective;(2) content > content/procedural > procedural; (3) description domain > ftinction domain(degree domain).Then it comes to the reasons why these changes take place. Evidence indicates thatvarious factors contribute to the change of intensifiers. Firstly，the principle of economy is ofsignificance in language use where people try to reach the maximum interaction effects withthe minimum efforts. Secondly，the language change is largely dependent on the cognitivepsychological factors which include (1) the creation of speakers，(2) the conformity of thehearers. Thirdly，as a social factor，communication media plays an important role in thechange.
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References (omitted)
优秀英语毕业论文范文篇七
Part 1 Introduction
1.1 Research Background
The existential sentence is a common grammatical phenomenon which exists inalmost every language all over the world. As a kind of universal and special structure,English existential sentence has always been the hot topic of linguistic schools. Inhistory, the descriptive linguistics, generative linguistics and the functionallinguistics all have made the thorough discussion. Descriptive linguistics devoted tosummarizing the characteristics, functions and classification of English existentialsentences, so it only solves what is this while it doesn’t solve why this is. Althoughthe current research of English existential sentences in generative grammar has someexplanatory power, there are still many deficiencies, such as, “no source”(sourcelessness), regarding meaning as an objective language level which iscompletely different with grammar, etc.The research of English existential sentence needs cross-cultural comparison ofsimilar sentence patterns. Although western scholars have conducted a lot ofresearches on English existential sentences, the researches are often limited to onelanguage. For example, Milsark (1974) studied many other related problems aboutEnglish existential sentences and his book provides the foundation for later studies.Hanny (1985) studied some important problems about embedded prediction, definiteelements and predicate placement constraint by means of the predicate (topic, focus,etc.) framework of functional grammar. Lumsden (1988) adopted an overalltheoretical framework which consists of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic to studythe relationship between the structure and meaning of English existential sentences.
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1.2 Research Questions and Objectives
1.2.1 Research questions
This dissertation regards the classic questions of English existential sentences as amain thread and attempts to study the following research questions:
(1) From the perspective of cognitive grammar, what are the structural characteristicsof English existential sentence?
(2) How to explain agreement and disagreement between the noun phrases andpredicate verb of English existential sentence in cognitive grammar?
(3) How to use the theory of cognitive linguistics to explain the one-wayphenomenon of English existential sentence?
(4) How to explain the definiteness restriction of English existential sentence fromthe angle of cognitive linguistic?
1.2.2 Research objectives
The purpose of this paper is mainly focused on the following four aspects: to studyEnglish existential sentence systematically by use of cognitive linguistics approach;to reveal the cognitive motivation behind English existential sentence; to inspire andpromote the methods’ update of English study. The paper regards the systematiccognitive study of English existential sentence as the main line in order to reveal thecognitive rules and cognitive style of English. At the same time, it will provide theempirical case for the interactive interfaces between the language interfaces.
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Part 2 Theoretical Framework and RelatedLiterature
2.1 Theoretical Framework
Empirical Realism or empiricism is the philosophical foundation of cognitivelinguistics. They belong to the objectivism whose essence is to deny the truth. Theformation and development of Cognitive linguistics is on the basis of absorbing theimportant results of some significant subjects, such as philosophy, cognitivepsychology, artificial intelligence, anthropology and neuroscience and so on.Cognitive linguistics is not only a simple theory but a kind of paradigm of research.The tropism about this paradigm of research is cognitive, explanatory, semantic anduniversal. The methods of studying language are on the basis of people’sembodiment and experientialism of the world, the perception of the world, theconceptualization of objects and things and different cognitive ways. Cognitivelinguistics emphasizes the inseparable relationship between language and generalcognitive ability of people. The basic theories of cognitive linguistics, such as: theempirical view of language, the interaction epistemology, and the basic theory ofcategorization, the prototype theory, all kinds of cognitive patterns, and the cognitivegrammar and so on, all reflect this kind of contact.In this section, we will focus on introducing basic theories of cognitive linguisticswhich are related with English existential sentences. Some of them are derived fromcognitive semantics, but the most are the important basic theories of cognitivegrammar.
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2.2 Related Literature
Existential sentence is a ubiquitous phenomenon in all languages in the world (Frezz,1992). Existential sentence is also a kind of complex and special sentence pattern. This particularity is mainly showed in definiteness restriction, the intransitive verband the semantic restrictions, the consistent and inconsistent of NP - be, thedirectivity of the sentence and the reality and unreality of existential sentences and soon. The particularity and the complexity and semantic restrictions of the existentialsentences had aroused the interest of many linguists abroad and at home. The overseas studies of English existential sentences began in the 1880s. The Englishgrammarian Brown (1884:666) quoted the researches of Murray, Webster andPriestly, thinking there has no meaning. But Mr. Brown is different from other pastgrammarians, and he vaguely realized that there has a loosely sense which is relatedto places. He pointed out that existential there is related to location but refers touncertainty place, just like other adverbs or noun of place. He thought that thereexistential sentences can be converted into “NP + take place” and this take placemeans “emerge in some places or any places”. So whether the place in this sentencepattern refers to location .This is the first idea of the there in existential sentenceshaving meaning.B
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Part 3 Method.........21
3.1 Methodology......... 21
3.2 Materials and Resources....... 22
3.3 Procedure...... 23
Part 4 Results..........24
4.1 Introduction...........24
4.2 Findings........ 24
4.2.1 The structure of EES...... 24
4.2.2 The subject-predicate agreement and disagreement in EES.......... 25
4.2.3 The direction of EES......25
4.2.4 The definiteness restriction of EES........25
4.3 Implications...........26
Part 5 Discussion.... 28
5.1 A Cognitive Study on the Structure of English Existential Sentence........... 28
5.2 A Cognitive Study of the Subject-Predicate Agreement..... 34
5.3 A Cognitive Study about the Direction of EES.....48
5.4 A Cognitive Explanation of the Definiteness and Indefiniteness.......... 50
Part 5 Discussion
5.1 A Cognitive Study on the Structure of English Existential Sentence
Before we begin to study the cognitive structures of English existential sentences, wemust know the views of new grammar and part of speech very well so that it justhappens that way. Langacker (1987, 1991) thought that linguistic knowledge is partof human cognition and it is not autonomous. Language is symbolic and each symbolunits of language has phonological pole and semantic pole. The Linguisticexpression reflects the cognitive experience and it is motivated between the linguisticsigns and meanings to a certain extent; Semantics is the basis of language andsemantic exists in the structure of concept. Grammar is the recombination and thesymbol of semantic content, so the grammatical structure depends on the perceptiveand understanding mode of semantic content. Semantic structure is often representedin the form of imagery and image has a variety of construal relationship (facetselection, scene perspective, salience, level of specificity, etc.), so the interactionalrelationship between grammatical structure and construal is formed and thisrelationship is dynamic and creative. The linguistic phenomenon is a matter ofdegree and has no absolute boundaries. The cognitive ability of imagination(metaphor, metonymy) is also an important aspect of language and should also begiven a reasonable explanation.
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Conclusion
In this dissertation, the author has studied English existential sentences based on thetheoretical framework of cognitive linguistics. The theories of cognitive linguisticsbeing used here mainly include the trajector and landmark in cognitive grammar, thesearch domain, boundedness and unboundedness, mental space, mental contact,syntactic iconicity and conceptualization and so on. The corpora adopted in thisdissertation mainly include three parts: a part of the classical examples in EES, somecorpora of existential sentence in the Corpus of Contemporary American English andsome corpora of English existential sentences created by the author. This dissertationused the research method of qualitative and quantitative combination. It mainly usedin qualitative explanation on the basis of illustrative examples and assist inquantitative argument. This dissertation consists of six chapters: introduction,literature review and theoretical framework, methodology, results, discussion andconclusion. This dissertation has studied English existential sentences from thefollowing four aspects, respectively the relation between the structure of EES andtrajector/landmark & schema conversion; the cognitive study of the subject-predicateagreement or disagreement from the angle of iconicity &boundedness/unboundedness, including subject-predicate agreement: thecombination of quantity iconicity and marked iconicity and subject-predicatedisagreement: the perspective transformation of cognition domain of physical spaceand quality space; the relation between conceptualization and the direction of Englishexistential sentence; the cognitive explanation of the relation between thedefiniteness and the indefiniteness in EES and search domain &unique mentalcontact. In this part, the author will draw a comprehensive conclusion about the fullcontent and the deficiencies and suggestions of this research.
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References (omitted)
优秀英语毕业论文范文篇八
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
With the rapid development，China is playing a more and more important role inglobalization. In the process of international communication, English listening，whichis the premise of communication, is of great significance. Many studies show thatforeign language listening proficiency is significantly correlated to the overall targetlanguage skill. It is necessary to carry out more and more studies on Chinese learners'English listening skill concerning both its theoretical and practical significance.The motivation for learning English for most Chinese students before enteringthe universities is mainly to get a high score in entrance examinations so that they canenter the key senior schools and universities. After entering college，there are alsosome competency examinations, such as CET4 and CET6, in which English listeningis included. Students who want to get certificates often study English hard before theexaminations. Some college students continue learning English because they want goabroad to pursue a further study and passing the TOEFL or lELTS is a must. Few ofthem keep learning English for their internal interest. Others may just pay less andless attention to learning English. Whether it is for the purpose of acquiring a betterunderstanding in academic studies，studying abroad, promoting internationalbusiness or exchanging cultural ideas, learning English is becoming more and morevalued in China. Different learners have different motivation for English listening andtheir listening performance also varies.
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1.2 Purpose of the Study
Although there has been some research on foreign language listening motivationand foreign language listening anxiety, little of the research has focused on themotivation and anxiety of Chinese English majors in English listening. Besides，foreign language researchers ignore the interrelationship between those affectivefactors in foreign language learning, for instance, listening motivation and listeninganxiety may be correlated to each other and have a combined influence on Englishlistening.The purpose of this study was to examine (1) whether English majors in Chinahave different types of motivation for improving English listening skill; (2) the effectsof different types of English listening motivation on English listening achievement; (3)whether English majors in China experience different levels of anxiety in the processof English listening; (4) the effects of anxiety on foreign language listening; (5)whether English listening anxiety is correlated to English listening motivation; (6)teachers' influence on students' listening motivation and listening anxiety. This studywill provide teachers and researchers of English as a foreign language (EFL) with abetter understanding of these two affective factors, namely, motivation and anxiety, inrelation to foreign language learning. EFL teachers can modify their teaching methodsand encourage students to develop facilitating motivational types. Once learners areproperly motivated and have a proper attitude toward English listening, they can havea better performance in English listening, which，in return，reinforces learners'motivation for practicing English listening.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Listening Comprehension
According to Morley，listening comprehension is "everything that impinges onthe human processing which mediates between sound and the construction ofmeaning". Wolvin and Coskley also described listening as "the process of receiving，attending to，and assigning meaning to aural stimuli".Buckpointed out that a spoken massage is gone, never to be heard again, assoon as the stream of speech reaches the listener. Thus, the hearer is impossible tohear again the message conveyed by speaker in a normal conversation. The hearer hasto accommodate to the speaker's speed at any time so as to catch what the speakermeans. A face-to-face communicative listening may allow for opportunities to hearthe speaker's utterance，but in some specific listening situations, for example,listening to a real time broadcast, listeners can but hear only once the voice. In thiscase, they must retain information in the memory about what they thought was said，organizing the meaning with the incoming information and their prior knowledge.
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2.2 Foreign Language Learning Motivation
A large amount of research showed that learners' motivation is closely related toforeign language learning and education. Rod Ellis [i9] mentioned in his book thatthere can be no doubt that motivation is a powerfiil factor in SLA Chomsky indicated that the importance of stimulating learners' motivation: ‘The truth of the factis that about 99 percent teaching is making the students feel interested in the material'.Motivation involves the learners' reasons for attempting to acquire the secondlanguage. Wen argued that what precisely activates motivation is the crux of thematter. Masgoret & Gardner pointed out that motivation is a crucial element ineducation which should be taken into consideration.Many social psychologists and sociolinguists tried to identify the nature oflanguage learners' motivation. Gardner and Lambert define motivation in respectof the L2 learner's overall goal or orientation to learn a L2.From the cognitive perspective, Domyei pointed out that the psychologicalneed for achievement is a sufficient motivating factor of language proficiency. Hereferred to cognitive theories in educational psychology in which motivation is seen tobe a function of a person's thought processes. He mentioned three major conceptualsystems which -were later referred to as attribution theory, learned helplessness andself-efficacy. Motivation is also identified as a person's state of cognitive arousal.Williams and Burden pointed out that motivation arouse learners' action.
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Chapter Three Research Design and Methodology........ 19
3.1 Research Design and Methodology of Quantitative Study........ 19
3.2 Research Design and Methodology of Qualitative Study........ 22
Chapter Four Results and Discussion ........25
4.1 Results and Discussion of Quantitative Study........ 25
4.2 Results and Discussion of Qualitative Analysis........ 46
Chapter Five Conclusions........ 54
5.1 Major Findings and General Discussion........ 54
5.2 Implications........ 60
5.2.1 Theoretical Implications........ 60
5.2.2 Practical Implications ........62
5.3 Limitations ........63
5.4 Suggestions for Future Research........ 64
Chapter Four Results and Discussion
This chapter reports the results of the study in sequence of the following researchquestions: (1) what is the underlying structure of motivation for practicing Englishlistening in terms of English majors in China? (2) Do Chinese English majorsexperience different levels of anxiety in English listening? (3) What are thecorrelations between English listening motivation and English listening anxietyconcerning Chinese English majors? (4) What are the effects of different types ofEnglish listening motivation on English listening performance? (5) What is the effectof English listening anxiety on English listening performance? (6) What are theeffects of English listening teacher on students' listening motivation and listeninganxiety? To answer these questions, quantitative experiments and interviews werecarried out with inpiduals. The research questions will be respectively discussed indetail with the results from the experiments. The ELMS consists of 14 items scored by the way of five-point Likert Scale,with a theoretical score range of 14 to 70. From table 4-1，we can see that the highestand lowest reported scores that respondents received in this study were 55 and 38，themean of the total score was 47.41 and the standard deviation was 20.38. These datashowed that most subjects have strong motivation for practicing English listening.
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Conclusion
The objective of this study was to probe into the relationship between listeningmotivation, listening anxiety and listening performance concerning English majorswho learn English as a foreign language in China. The data of this study werecollected and analyzed by both quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitativeanalyses aimed to examine the internal structure of English listening motivation,whether English majors experienced anxiety in English listening, the effects of thesetwo affective factors on listening performance and the correlation between theselistening motivation and listening anxiety. On the other hand，the qualitative analysesprovide more information for the quantitative analysis. Moreover, it further examinesthe influences of listening teachers on students' motivation, classroom anxiety andlearning results. This study used Pearson Product-Moment correlations to examine therelationship between English listening motivational factors and English listeningperformance. There was a significant negative relationship between intrinsicmotivation and English listening performance (r= -.246). Achievement motivation wasthe most significant predictor of listening performance (r= -.266).
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References (omitted)
优秀英语毕业论文范文篇九
Chapter OneIntroduction
1.1 Rationale of the Research
Research Article, an academic genre, attempts to report researchers' originalstudies which have been completed or are being conducted (Pang, 2011; 3). With theeconomic globalization and internationalization of science and technology,international academic exchanges and cooperation is increasing. English has beenchosen as the official language in most international academic publications. In recentyears, an increasing number of English Research Articles written by Chinese scholarshave been published in international journals. In addition, masters in China arerequired to present their theses' “Abstract” in English. What's more, masters inEnglish major are required to produce their theses in English, which are a kind ofresearch articles.“Discussion”，indispensible to Research Article, is a complex and functional partfor the author “to deliver research achievements, reach to experimental results, statethe conclusion of the present study, and put forward suggestions for furtherstudy ”(Meyer, 1994: 23). However, Chinese scholars and students are very weak inwriting “Discussion”.This study is significant both at theoretical and practical levels.Theoretically, this study，firstly, employing Rhetorical Structure Theory toanalyze the "Discussion" of Research Articles in Applied Linguistics, broadens theresearch range of Rhetorical Structure Theory; secondly, in this study, the macro RSTdiagram generated from the “Discussion” of Research Articles in leading internationaljournals in Applied Linguistics is considered as reference to analyze English-majormasters' theses' “Discussion” in Applied Linguistics, which enriches the study onChinese masters' theses writing.
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1.2 Objectives and Research Questions
Based on W. C. Mann and S. A. Thompson's Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST)，the present study at first employs the mixed research method to generalize therhetorical structure of "Discussion" of Research Articles in Applied Linguistics inleading international journals. Taking these results as reference，the paper intends tomake an analysis on the macro rhetorical structure and micro rhetorical relationsusage of "Discussion" of English-major masters' theses in Applied Linguistics.This study attempts to answer the following research questions:
(1) What are the problems in the macro rhetorical structure in "Discussion，，ofEnglish-major masters，theses in Applied Linguistics?
(2) What are the problems in the micro rhetorical relations usage in “Discussion”of English-major masters' theses in Applied Linguistics?
(3) What are the reasons attributing to those problems both in the macrorhetorical structure and the micro rhetorical relations in “Discussion’，ofEnglish-major masters' theses in Applied Linguistics?
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.l A Previous Studies on Research Articles
Research Articles are studied in the following two ways. The first group focuseson the macro generic structure as a whole or on the generic structure of a particularpart of Research Articles，such as "Introduction", “Abstract”，etc. (from genre analysisperspectives) Another group is interested in exploring the particular linguistic featuresof Research Articles, such as modality, hedging, tense, reporting verbs, and so on.(from systemic function linguistics perspective and other linguistic perspectives) Studies on generic structure of Research Articles can be traced back to 1980s. Some scholars study the macro genre structure of Research Articles as a whole(Swales, 1990; Yang & Allison, 2003). They claim that the Research Articles containan IMRD structure (Introduction — Method - Results — Discussion). Others hold thatResearch Articles contain "Move — Step” pattern (Swales, 1990) from the macroperspective. After an in-depth analysis into the writing structure and linguistic featuresof “Introduction”，Swales (1990) generalized a CARS (Creating a Research Space)pattern finally. Based on "Move — Step’，and CARS, many researchers, both at homeand abroad, began to study the separate parts of Research Articles, including“Abstract，，，"Introduction", “Acknowledgement”，and so on. Ayer (1994) analyzed theconstruction, components and features of Research Articles; Ge and Yang (2005)compared the generic structures of “Abstract” of Research Articles in differentdisciplines and found that all kinds of “Abstract” existed move cycles. What's more，Swales (1981，1990) claimed again that the organization of “Abstract” was consistentwith IMRD pattern of the whole Research Articles. Following Swales' pace, Ju (2004)carried out a comparative study on “Abstract，，between 20 Chinese and 20 EnglishResearch Articles and found that step I, step M, step R, and step D have differentfrequencies in English and Chinese data. In 20 pieces of “Abstract” in EnglishResearch Articles, frequencies of IMRD are 100%, 95%, 100% and 85% respectively.However, in 20 pieces of “Abstract” in Chinese data, frequencies of IMRD are 35%，100%，90%, and 35% respectively.
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2.2 Previous Studies on "Discussion" in Research Articles
“Discussion”，indispensible to Research Article, is a complex and functional partfor the author "to deliver research achievements, reach to experimental results, statethe conclusion of the present study, and put forward suggestions for further study，，(Meyer, 1994: 23). What's more，the author or the researcher can provide somefeasible suggestions or ideas for the application of the achievements reached byhis/her study, supported by solid and sufficient arguments.Compared with topical studies on such parts as “Introduction”，"Abstract", and"Acknowledgement"', “Discussion” was rarely studied.Most researches on “Discussion” have been done in a generic perspective.Influenced by Swale's IMRD pattern, most English research articles are often endedby “Discussion’，. As the pioneer in making genre analysis on “Discussion”，Swalessuggested a list of eight moves in the Research Articles, that is, “Backgroundinformation - Statement of results - (Un)expected outcome - Reference to previousresearch - Explanation — Exemplification - Deductionand hypothesis -Recommendation" (Swales, 1990，qtd. in Gao, 2007).
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Chapter Three Theoretical Foundation........ 10
3.1 Rhetorical Structure Theory....... 10
3.2 Cohesion and Coherence....... 20
3.3 RST and Coherence....... 22
Chapter Four Analysis Framework Construction with Reference....... 25
4.1 Data Collection....... 25
4.2 RST Treebank Building Tool....... 26
4.3 RST Treebank Building of "Discussion" .......29
4.4 Micro Distribution of Rhetorical Relations in "Discussion’....... 37
4.5 Macro RST Diagram of “Discussion”....... 40
Chapter Five Criticism on English-Major Masters44.......
5.1 Data Collection ....... 44
5.2 Procedure of Analyzing "Discussion"....... 45
5.3 Criticism on English-Major Masters....... 46
5.4 Reasons for Problems ....... 65
Chapter Five Criticism on English-Major Masters' Theses' "Discussion"in Applied Linguistics
This chapter tries to answer the third and fourth research questions about themacro RST diagram and the specific features of rhetorical relations in Chinesemasters' “Discussion，，in their theses. Firstly, the data for "Discussion" in masters'theses in applied linguistics will be briefly described. Secondly，the distribution ofrhetorical relations involving correct relations and wrong relations will be presented.Thirdly, the macro analysis on masters' theses，“Discussion”，concerning the generalstructure of the "Discussion" based on the usage of rhetorical relations, will beconducted from the following three aspects: Appropriateness in the Organization ofDiscussion, Relevance in Statement, and Sufficiency in Discussion. Fourthly，microanalysis on masters' "Discussion", with respect to specific rhetorical relations,will be carried out focusing on the Appropriateness in the Organization of ElementaryDiscourse Units, the Usage of Relations, the Logic of Elementary Discourse Units andthe Appropriateness in Topic Shift between Elementary Discourse Units. Finally, ihtreasons attributing to masters’ misuse of relations in writing their theses will bediscussed in the end of this chapter.
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Conclusion
In the framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory, the rhetorical relations areindispensible elements to link non-overlapping text spans, so as to build up thehierarchical structure of a text and maintain its coherence. The present study isconducted to make a rhetorical structure analysis into English-major masters' theses'“Discussion” and intends to find out their macro and micro rhetorical featuresrespectively. 20 pieces of "Discussion" of Research Articles published in leadinginternational journals in the discipline of Applied Linguistics are selected to constitutethe standard data，from which the macro rhetorical structure and the micro rhetoricalrelations distribution of Research Articles' “Discussion’，in Applied Linguistics aregeneralized based on the framework of RST. Taking these results as reference, themacro and micro rhetorical features of the experimental data consisting of 20 piecesof “Discussion” in English-major masters' theses are thoroughly analyzed. Threemacro features and four micro features are presented, categorized and discussed at lastbased on 163 cases of deficiencies collected from the experimental data.
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References (omitted)
优秀英语毕业论文范文篇十
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background
With the aid of computers, Corpus Linguistics has enjoyed a rapid progress, and a lot ofcorpora have been compiled for different purposes in different countries over the years,especially a few influential large scale corpora, such as BROWN, LOB，BNC，COLLINS，etc.They are frequently used for the study of English language. As Kennedy ⑴ points out "corpuslinguistics is not an end in itself but is one source of evidence for improving descriptions ofthe structure and use of languages, and for various applications including the processing ofnatural language by machine and understanding how to leam or teach a language". Corpuslinguistics in China has become popular in recent years. Nearly in all other branches oflinguistics and even teaching methodology, the role that Corpus Linguistics plays is ofincreasing importance.The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)⑵ is the largest freely-availablecorpus of English, and the only large and balanced corpus of American English. The corpuswas created by Mark Davies of Brigham Young University, which is used by tens ofthousands of users every month (linguists, teachers，translators，and other researchers). COCAis also related to other large corpora that we have created. The corpus contains more than 450million words of text and is equally pided among spoken, fiction，popular magazines,newspapers，and academic texts. It includes 20 million words each year from 1990-2012 and eCOCA is also updated regularly (the most recent texts are from Summer 2012). Because of itsdesign，it is perhaps the only corpus of English that is suitable for looking at current, ongoingchanges in the language, thus a wonderful choice for researchers who are conducting thediachronic and synchronic studies in related fields. COCA provides five registers forinvestigation, respectively Spoken，Fiction，Popular Magazines, Newspapers, and Academic.
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1.2 Significance and Objective of the Study
With theoretical support from metaphor studies and technological support from corpuslinguistics and the Internet, the paper begins with interesting language phenomenon: thepopularity of military combat words extension in other registers. By doing this, we probe intothe working mechanism of metaphor under the curtain, and make a reasonable analysis oflanguage use，providing some guidance in certain areas of linguistic norms. And in return,those materials we cited from our daily life could further enrich the practical applications ofthe related theories. Another important objective of paper is to find out causes of arbitrarylanguage use of military combat words in sports and economy so as to promote the publicawareness of linguistic norms by listing the adverse effects of the language overuse. Throughresearch we may also make the general evaluation of military combat words extension, andhopefully we can know more about the working mechanism of metaphor, the reason for thosemilitary combat words extension, and even make some predictions of military combat wordstrend in the future.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Generation and Definitions of Metaphor
The English metaphor derives from the 16th century old French metaphore, coming fromthe Latin metaphora, which means "carrying over". Henry George Liddell ⑶ suggests it isalso linked to the Greek laexacpopd (metaphora), "transfer". A metaphor is a figure of speechthat describes a subject by asserting that it is，on some point of comparison, the same asanother otherwise unrelated object.⑷ To put it simply，it is a figure of speech that comparestwo unlike things without using words “like，’ or “as”，etc. Metaphor is a type of analogy andis closely related to other rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via association,comparison or resemblance including allegory, hyperbole, and simile ⑶.Through OnlineEtymology Dictionary,[石]we obtain the word origin and history of metaphor: "late 15c.，fromMiddle French metaphore (Old French metafore，13c.), and directly from Greek metaphora "atransfer，” especially of the sense of one word to a different word，literally "a carrying over，，，，.From New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy，[？] we obtain the definition of metaphor; “Thecomparison of one thing to another without the use of like or as. In The Philosophy ofRhetoric, Richards [8], describes a metaphor as having two parts: "the tenor and the vehicle".The tenor is the subject to which attributes are ascribed; the vehicle is the object whoseattributes are borrowed. Words used in their original meaning are always used literally，whilewords used in their extended meanings for the purpose of making comparisons betweendifferent things or awaken memories in the reader's or listener's mind are usedmetaphorically.
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2.2 Corpus-based Approach
A corpus can be defined as a collection of texts assumed to be representative of a givenlanguage put together so that it can be used for linguistic analysis.With the development of corpora and computer linguistics in recent years. CorpusLinguistics provides a more objective view of language. Vmious linguistic phenomena can beinvestigated with the help of the corpus, such as collocation (lexis); colligation (grammar);semantic preference (semantics); semantic prosody (pragmatics) and so forth.网 This paperaims to investigate the collocation and concordance line of chosen military combat words，andthrough which we can probe into their extension in related registers.A corpus-based approach, as a new research method in modem linguistics, is becomingan indispensable supplement to traditional methods. As we have noted that，comprehensivestudies of use cannot rely on intuition, anecdotal evidence，or small samples; rather, theyrequire empirical analysis of large databases of authentic texts, as in the corpus-basedapproach, [s。] By adopting the corpus-based approaches and combination of qualitative andquantitative methods, this paper analyzes the concordance lines of these selected militarycombat words. By doing this, we could easily find the allocation of these words in differentregisters. We can also have the idea of the tendency and latest use of these once exclusivelyused words.
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Chapter Three Research Methodology......... 12
3.1 A General Introduction to the Corpus of Contemporary ........ 12
3.2 Corpus-based Collection and Procedures of Data Analysis ........13
Chapter Four Case Studies........ 14
4.1 Military Combat Words ........14
4.2 Research Procedures........ 15
4.3 Military Combat Words Extension ........23
4.4 Explanations of Military Combat Words Extension........ 45
4.5 Adverse Effects of Military Combat Words Extension........ 56
4.6 The Future of Military Combat Words Extension........ 58
Chapter Five Conclusion ........ 61
5.1 Maj or Findings of the Research........ 61
5.2 Limitations of the Study........ 62
5.3 Suggestions for Further Studies........ 62
Chapter Four Case Studies
4.1 Military Combat Words
The first recorded use of military in English，spelled militarie, was in 1585.⑵ It comesfrom the Latin militaris (from Latin miles meaning "soldier") but is of uncertain etymology.The word is now identified as denoting someone that is skilled in use of weapons，or engagedin military service or in warfare. The term combat (French for fight) typically refers to armedconflict between military forces in warfare, whereas the more general term "fighting" canrefer to any violent conflict between inpiduals or nations. Combat violence can be unilateral,whereas fighting implies at least a defensive reaction. However，the terms are often usedalong with the term ‘‘battle” ( a large-scale fight is often known as a battle). Combat may takeplace under a specific set of rules or be unregulated. Combat in war fare involves two or moreopposing military organizations, usually fighting for nations at war (although guerrillawarfare and suppression of insurgencies can fall outside this definition). Warfare falls underthe laws of war，which govern its purposes and conduct, and protect the rights of soldiers andnon-combatants. Combat may be armed (using weapons) or unarmed (not using weapons).Hand-to-hand combat (melee) is combat at very close range, attacking the opponent with thebody (striking, kicking, strangling，etc.) and/or with a melee weapon (knives, swords, batons，etc.)，as opposed to a ranged weapon.
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Conclusion
Bearing the limitations in mind，I would like to put forward some suggestions in the fieldthat I have studied. Further studies of metaphors extension in related corpora could coverother genres like Magazines, Spoken，Fiction, etc.. For those who are interested in thecorpus-based researches in war metaphors could pay more attention to the limitations of thisstudy. Another suggestion is that later scholars could adopt comparative approaches betweendifferent corpora. For example，through comparative approaches，we could find thedifferences of specific war metaphor extensions in BNC and COCA. What's more，to makethe research more accurate，later studies could adopt other options, such as T-score, Z-scoreand Mi-score, etc.. And a combination of the diachronic and synchronic study in linguisticshas become popular in recent years. Through more thorough-going analyses，there surelywould be more novel discoveries and findings in corpus-based studies.
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References (omitted)