A Corpus-based Contrastive Study on the Semantic Prosody of HAPPEN

Dalian Maritime University,Dalian,China Email:fuke922@dlmu.edu.cn

[Abstract]This paper,by using a contrastive approach,examines the idiosyncrasies of HAPPEN with positive,negative,and neutral prosodies used by Chinese learners and the native speakers in two corpora CLEC and FLOB.The results reveal the prevalent usage and misuses of the semantic prosodies of HAPPEN in Chinese learners’compositions.Pedagogical suggestions are further proposed for Chinese EFL learners.

[Keywords]Semantic Prosody;Corpus-based;Contrastive Study;HAPPEN

Introduction

Collocational behavior study dates back to Cruden’s observation of the repeated co-occurrence of certain words in the Bible 250 years ago.Kennedy(1998,p.108)observes that since the late 1960s,computer-assisted anal⁃ysis of corpora has made it possible to forward collocation studies and to reveal“previously unrecognized patterns of word use in everyday language which do not fit easily into either of the traditional categories of lexis or grammar...they seem to straddle lexis and grammar”.

With the advent of corpora of unprecedented large size and the efficient software packages,more linguistic mys⁃teries are resolved,which demands a comprehensive explanation with lexical grammar.Fruits yielded from the Co⁃build project in 1980s prove to be a good manifestation of“all theories are invented to be discarded”:as the project leader,Sinclair(1991,pp.74-75)observes that the phrasal verb SET IN primarily occurs with subjects that“refer to unpleasant states of affairs,… such as rot,decay,malaise,despair,ill-will,decadence...”,which is the primitive ex⁃emplification of semantic prosody.As the monitor corpora are developed and updated,researches(Louw,1993,2000; Partington,1998,2004; Sinclair,1991,1996,2003; Stubbs,1995a,1995b,1996,2001a,2001b)show that some words have a tendency to co-occur repeatedly and habitually with positive,neutral or negative lexical items,which forms a specific prosodic behavior of the node words.With corpus-driven approaches,the present prosodic re⁃searches are particularly concerned with verb phrase collocation as node words.Another promising area of prosodic studies proposed by Partington(1998,p.77)is“adverb-adjective and adjective-noun head phrases in which the first word of the pair is an intensifier”.

This research,using Contrastive Analysis approach,analyzes and compares semantic prosodies ofHAPPENin CLEC and FLOB.

Theoretical Background

Sinclair(1991)first notices that the item SET IN is habitually associated with unpleasant events and coins the term semantic prosody.

Louw(1993,p.158)uses the term of semantic prosody in the Firthian sense of prosody,which refers to“phono⁃logical colouring which was capable of transcending[the]segmental boundaries[words]”.In this paper,we adhere to the universal features of the term semantic prosody drawn from these definitions(Louw,1993;Stubbs,1996;Parting⁃ton,1998;Hoey,2000;Sinclair,2003;Hunston,2007;Bednarek,2008;McIntyre,2018):

1.Semantic prosody deals with meaning.

2.Semantic prosody is not confined to one word.

3.Semantic prosody expresses the speaker’s attitude.

4.Semantic prosody is beyond collocation.

5.Collocates of the node word may share certain kinds of meaning.

Semantic prosodies are typically classified as positive,neutral,negative,or mixed.Alternative terms“good or favorable”for“positive”,“bad or unfavorable”for“negative”are advocated by some researchers to adjust to their scope of studies.

Sinclair(2003)conducts a case study of regime,for he notices an interesting legal trial:A journalist using the word regime in reference to some of the governments of the region(without naming any)was arrested and accused of libel by the government of the country where he lived.Despite the journalist’s claim that the word regime was not so derogatory as to justify a libel suit,the government pursued its case and won a conviction.The result deduced from the corpora data provided by Sinclair(2003)proves that the greatest number of significant collocations of regime,which refer to political systems and dictators with extremely unpopular reputations in the western world,concern the violent use of power.Sinclair(2003,p.124)also observes the main orientation ofHAPPENas“the prospection of an unfortunate event happening”.

Sinclair(2003)emphasizes that semantic prosody carries pragmatic meaning of an emotive or attitudinal nature.According to Louw(2000),the primary function of semantic prosody is to express speaker/writer attitude or evalua⁃tion.Hunston and Thompson(2000,p.5)define its evaluative function as“the speaker or writer’s attitude or stance towards,viewpoint or feelings about the entities and propositions that he or she is talking about”.Semantic prosodies are typically negative,only a few of exceptions carry positive meaning.Partington(2004,p.133)gives a vague vision that“humans have a greater tendency or need to communicate to each other the‘bad things’which happen in life and this could be reflected in texts”.

In our research,the pragmatic feature of the lexis-semantic prosody in the obligatory categories is examined.Contrastive analysis is made accordingly to validate whether there are significant differences of the usage of semantic prosody ofHAPPENbetween CLEC and FLOB.

Data Presentation and Processing

In this research,Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis(CIA)approach is used to conduct contrastive studies on the usage of the semantic prosody ofHAPPENin CLEC.The CIA approach(NL vs.IL)in this research helps to un⁃cover different features of the usage of semantic prosody of HAPPEN between CLEC and FLOB.

In this research,semantic prosodies in two corpora are explored:Chinese Leaner English Corpus(CLEC),and the Freiburg-LOB Corpus of British English(FLOB).The descriptive data of CLEC and FLOB are listed in the fol⁃lowing table.

Table 1.A Description of the Corpora CLEC and FLOB

WordSmith 4.0 is used to extract concordances ofHAPPENin CLEC,and the online concordance produces rele⁃vant data of FLOB.Among the statistical tests,the MI(mutual information)score is measured to show the collocation⁃al strength.According to Xiao & McEnery(2006),based on the size of the comparable corpora used,the minimum co-occurrence frequency is set to 3.

Data Analysis and Discussion

Among the 417 instances ofHAPPENin CLEC,four were discarded from the research for in these cases the Chinese learners misuseHAPPENfor happy.The other 413 examples were closely examined,among which 150 ex⁃amples were used to express something bad,41 something good.And in 197 cases there was no evidence of any pros⁃ody,either because what was happening was totally neutral or the referent ofHAPPENwas very general or indetermi⁃nate.It can be inferred thatHAPPENis more towards the negative side on the positive-negative continuum since it is primed to occur with“something bad”.And in the meantime,it has a handful of occurrences of good events.The findings on the usage of the semantic prosody ofHAPPENin CLEC conform to Partington’findings.

To investigate the usage ofHAPPENin terms of overuse and under-use,the frequencies ofHAPPENin CLEC and FLOB were calculated and the results were listed in Table 2.

Table 2.Overall Frequencies of HAPPEN in CLEC and FLOB

As is shown in Table 2,the total frequency of HAPPEN is 413 in CLEC and 305 in FLOB.The proportion ofHAPPENin CLEC is 0.00039%,which is higher than 0.00030% in FLOB.Chi-square tests were performed with SPSS in order to find out whether the differences in frequencies were significant at the five percent significance level and the results are shown in Table 3.

Table 3.Chi-square Tests on Total Frequency of HAPPEN in CLEC and FLOB

As is shown in Table 3,the calculated Chi-square value is 10.312,much greater than the critical value.The correction value is 10.074,also much greater than the critical value.And the significance value is 0.001,much smaller than 0.05.Thus we may conclude that the frequencies ofHAPPENin CLEC and FLOB are significantly dif⁃ferent and Chinese learners use moreHAPPENthan the NS do,suggesting an overall overuse ofHAPPENin Chinese learners’compositions.

Table 4 shows the distribution ofHAPPENwith different semantic prosodies in CLEC and FLOB.(Pattern“HAPPEN+infinitive to”is beyond our consideration becauseHAPPENin this pattern does not impose any aura on its collocates.)

Table 4 Distribution of Different Semantic Prosodies of HAPPEN in CLEC and FLOB

Based on the raw data in Table 4,Chi-square tests were performed to find out whether the distributions ofHAPPENwith different semantic prosodies differ significantly between CLEC and FLOB at the five percent significance level.Table 5,Table 6,and Table 7 show the results of Chi-square tests of the comparison of different semantic pros⁃odies of HAPPEN between CLEC and FLOB produced after running SPSS programs.

Table 5 Chi-square Tests on Positive Semantic Prosodies of HAPPEN in CLEC and FLOB

Table 6 Chi-square Tests on Negative Semantic Prosodies of HAPPEN in CLEC and FLOB

Table 7 Chi-square Tests on Neutral Semantic Prosodies of HAPPEN in CLEC and FLOB

In Table 5,degree of freedom is 1.The critical value of chi-square for 1 df-at the 5 percent level is 3.84.The calculated value is 7.883,greater than the critical value.The correction value is 7.089,also greater than the critical value.And the calculated significance value is 0.005,smaller than 0.05.Thus there is a significant difference of the positive semantic prosodies ofHAPPENbetween CLEC and FLOB.The Chinese learners tend to use more positive semantic prosody than NS.In Table 6,the critical value of chi-square for 1 df at the 5 percent level is 3.84.The cal⁃culated value is 2.466,smaller than the critical value.The correction value is 2.265,also smaller than the critical value.And the calculated significance value is 0.116,greater than 0.05.Thus there is no significant difference of the negative semantic prosodies ofHAPPENbetween CLEC and FLOB.In Table 7,the critical value of chi-square for 1 df at the 5 percent level is 3.84.The calculated value is 0.815,smaller than the critical value.The correction value is 0.684,also smaller than the critical value.And the calculated significance value is 0.367,greater than 0.05.Thus there is no significant difference of the neutral semantic prosodies ofHAPPENbetween CLEC and FLOB.

Positive semantic prosody ofHAPPENconstitutes a low proportion both in CLEC and FLOB.Examples of posi⁃tive semantic prosody ofHAPPENoccur 41 times(10.077%of the total occurrences)in CLEC and 12 times(4.255%of the total occurrences)in FLOB.According to the Chi-square tests in Table 5,there is a significant difference in the use of positive semantic prosody ofHAPPENbetween Chinese learners and NS.Fifty-three examples of positive semantic prosodies are examined and analyzed as below.

In FLOB,12 examples ofHAPPENhave positive semantic prosody.They are further classified into two sub-cat⁃egories:five examples indicate the use ofHAPPENexpresses the semantic preference for fortuity;four examples are conscious violation of the expected semantic prosody to express irony or humor in the author’s attitude.Another three examples are discarded for they are difficult to be categorized due to lack of context.

In CLEC,41 examples ofHAPPENwith positive semantic prosody are observed.Among them,referents ofHAPPENin 19 examples are“decrease of infant mortality in developing countries”.All these examples are taken from compositions named“Health Gains in Developing Countries”.At N-4 position,the interrogative pronoun what oc⁃curs 8 times and the interrogative pronoun why once.At N-3 position,the interrogative pronoun why occurs 5 times and the interrogative pronoun how once.At N-2 position,the interrogative pronoun which occurs once.We see that Chinese learners use rhetorical questions to further illustrate the reasons for the great change.However,the sharp de⁃crease of infant mortality should be an advancement of the society,which is definitely not a fortuity.Nor do the Chi⁃nese learners intend to create an ironic or humorous atmosphere.Thus we may conclude Chinese learners misuseHAPPENin this sense.

In other examples ofHAPPENwith positive semantic prosody in CLEC,the referents ofHAPPENwith positive semantic prosody are“good things”(1),“the(most)impressive thing(s)”(7),“a new solution to the problem”(1),“an interesting story”(1),“great changes brought by the reform and open policy”(1),“a romance story”(1),“a vic⁃tory”(1),“the Spring Festival”(1),“the Mid-autumn Festival”(3),“the Dragon Boat Festival”(1),“becoming proud of each other”(1).Among them,“great changes brought by the reform and open policy”,“the Spring Festi⁃val”,“the Mid-autumn Festival”,and“the Dragon Boat Festival”definitely do not occur fortuitously;“the most im⁃pressive thing”,“an interesting story”,and“a romance story”may occur fortuitously;and the other referents are not specified to indicate fortuity.

In summary,HAPPENwith positive semantic prosody in FLOB either expresses fortuity of events or is used against the expected negative semantic prosody ofHAPPENintentionally to create an ironic or humorous atmo⁃sphere; whereasHAPPENwith positive semantic prosody in CLEC hardly expresses fortuity of the referents,nor do Chinese learners violate the expected negative semantic prosody to create an ironic or a humorous effect.Thus we may conclude Chinese learners misuse the positive semantic prosody ofHAPPENin CLEC.

Negative semantic prosody ofHAPPENconstitutes a high proportion both in CLEC and FLOB.Examples of neg⁃ative semantic prosody ofHAPPENoccur 150 times(39.063% of the total occurrences)in CLEC and 96 times(34.043%of the total occurrences)in FLOB.According to the Chi-square tests in Table 6,there is no significant dif⁃ference in the use of negative semantic prosody ofHAPPENbetween Chinese learners and NS.Thus we may con⁃clude that Chinese learners use the negative semantic prosody ofHAPPENefficiently.

Neutral semantic prosody ofHAPPENconstitutes a high proportion both in CLEC and FLOB.Examples of neu⁃tral semantic prosody ofHAPPENoccur 193 times(50.260% of the total occurrences)in CLEC and 174 times(61.702%of the total occurrences)in FLOB.According to the Chi-square tests in Table 7,there is no significant dif⁃ference in the use of neutral semantic prosody ofHAPPENbetween Chinese learners and NS.Thus we may conclude that Chinese learners use the neutral semantic prosody ofHAPPENefficiently.

Implications and Conclusion

In this thesis,we conducted a contrastive study on the usage of semantic prosody ofHAPPENin CLEC and FLOB; and meanwhile explored the possible reasons for the findings.From both quantitative and qualitative analy⁃sis,the following conclusions are drawn:1.The semantic prosody ofHAPPENin CLEC is more towards the negative side on the positive-negative continuum.2.There is a significant difference in the usage of the positive semantic prosody ofHAPPENbetween CLEC and FLOB.NS tend to express the fortuity of the events or violate the semantic prosody intentionally to achieve an ironic or humorous effect while Chinese learners misuse the positive semantic prosody ofHAPPEN.3.There is no significant difference in the usage of the negative and neutral semantic prosodies ofHAPPENbetween CLEC and FLOB.Chinese learners use the negative and neutral semantic prosody efficiently.

The present study uncovers the complicated nature of the semantic prosody ofHAPPEN.The typological differ⁃ences of Chinese and English lead to Chinese learners’confusion in the usage of the semantic prosody ofHAPPENin English.Thus teachers should observe and investigate the impediment posed for Chinese learners to fully master the usage of the intricate verbs,such asHAPPENdiscussed in this study.Only with such awareness can the teachers help the students to avoid the jeopardizing pitfalls of misusing the semantic prosody of English words,which may cause pragmatic failure and easily frustrate the Chinese learners.Encouraging students to use bi-lingual dictionaries and using a corpus-driven approach in vocabulary teaching are proposed by Wang and Wang(2005):the former may provide Chinese learners with idiomatic use of the English language while the latter,which has been adopted in Chi⁃nese EFL classroom,may expose students to the very fresh,authentic language from which they may draw the gener⁃al rules of the usage of the words,and accordingly abide by them faithfully.To raise students’awareness about the pragmatic failure is proposed to help them to achieve the idiomatic uses of target language.

Acknowledgments

The research work reported in this article was supported by“the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities”(Grant No.3132020272),and partially supported by“Education Reform Project”(Grant No.2020Y83).