Patterns and Meanings of Intensifiers in Chinese Learner Corpora

by Chunyan Wang

Overview

Intensification plays a major role in spoken and written interaction, enabling the writer or speaker to express different levels of commitment. This book explores the patterns and meanings of intensifiers in Chinese learner English by ways of comparison with native English. The study is conducted within the theoretical framework of Firthian contextual theory of meaning, Sinclairian model of Extended Units of Meaning (EUM) and Hunston's pattern grammar. The method of contrastive inter-language analysis (CIA) is adopted and the intensifier collocations in learner English and native English are explored by means of quantitative and qualitative analyses of corpora data. This book is the first attempt to investigate the patterning and meaning features of intensifiers systematically with the corpora data in Chinese learner English. Readers will obtain a relatively complete picture of how Chinese learners use intensifiers to realize their attitudinal meanings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138202535
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/13/2016
Series:	China Perspectives
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Chunyan Wang is an associate professor at the School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Her research interests include data-driven learning, second language acquisition, language teaching and language testing.

Table of Contents

List of diagrams. List of tables. Acknowledgement. List of abbreviations. Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Literature Review Chapter 3 Research Design and Methodology Chapter 4 Data Distribution Chapter 5 Patterning Features of Intensifiers in Chinese Learner Corpora Chapter 6 Semantic Preference and Semantic Prosody of Intensifiers Chapter 7 Conclusions and Implications Appendices. References. Index