Lexicogrammar
Abstract
Modality refers to the expression of speakers’ opinion or attitude towards the proposition that the sentence expresses or the situation that the proposition describes, or the speakers’ judgment of the likelihood of the proposition being true. While modal auxiliaries are “helping words”, functioning as helpers to make up verb phrases, they are prohibited from being used independently. The present study attempts to conduct a corpus-based study on three modal auxiliaries should, ought to and must with regard to their collocations, colligations, as well as semantic features in Chinese learners’ oral productions.
This study reveals that Chinese learners overused should and must a great deal as compared against the native speaker data, while they used ought to much less frequently than native speakers. As for collocations, the observed frequencies of the collocates of these three modal auxiliaries, as shown in the two corpora, are different, but those frequently co-occurring words of the three modal verbs, as have appeared in the two sets of data，are more or less the same.
Key Words: Deontic modal meaning, Epistemic modal meaning, Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis, Colligation, Semantic features, nativelikeness，modal auxiliaries
Introduction
Medals, known as small words, perform particular functions in both written and oral communication. This thesis is devoted to an analysis of three modal auxiliaries, namely should, ought to and must. It aims to find out how Chinese learners use these three medals and their differences from native speakers in four aspects: frequency, collocation, colligation and semantic features.
Significance:
Modal auxiliaries belong to a group of small words yet performing particular functions. Present study may be of some help in two ways. Firstly, it may help students notice their shortcomings in using those modal auxiliaries compared with native speakers and think over the reasons, thus to help them improve their
Modality refers to the expression of speakers’ opinion or attitude towards the proposition that the sentence expresses or the situation that the proposition describes, or the speakers’ judgment of the likelihood of the proposition being true. While modal auxiliaries are “helping words”, functioning as helpers to make up verb phrases, they are prohibited from being used independently. The present study attempts to conduct a corpus-based study on three modal auxiliaries should, ought to and must with regard to their collocations, colligations, as well as semantic features in Chinese learners’ oral productions.
This study reveals that Chinese learners overused should and must a great deal as compared against the native speaker data, while they used ought to much less frequently than native speakers. As for collocations, the observed frequencies of the collocates of these three modal auxiliaries, as shown in the two corpora, are different, but those frequently co-occurring words of the three modal verbs, as have appeared in the two sets of data，are more or less the same.
Key Words: Deontic modal meaning, Epistemic modal meaning, Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis, Colligation, Semantic features, nativelikeness，modal auxiliaries
Introduction
Medals, known as small words, perform particular functions in both written and oral communication. This thesis is devoted to an analysis of three modal auxiliaries, namely should, ought to and must. It aims to find out how Chinese learners use these three medals and their differences from native speakers in four aspects: frequency, collocation, colligation and semantic features.
Significance:
Modal auxiliaries belong to a group of small words yet performing particular functions. Present study may be of some help in two ways. Firstly, it may help students notice their shortcomings in using those modal auxiliaries compared with native speakers and think over the reasons, thus to help them improve their