Abstract:
Semantic prosody refers to a certain semantic preference formed by the typical collocates of node words in the language environment which exists beyond one’s consciousness. This study adopted CIA method and very much as an example to investigate the differences between Chinese learners and native speakers in using commonly-used words from the perspective of semantic prosody. Through careful investigation, the author found out that very much tends to bear mixed semantic prosody in Chinese learners’ corpus as compared to the fact that very much is likely to bear positive semantic prosody in native speakers’ corpus. This difference shows that Chinese learners deviate far from the target model. The author tried to discuss the reasons from three aspects: negative influence of L1 transfer, lack of authentic language input and insufficient information in dictionaries. The implications are as follows: explaining semantic prosody to learners, introducing corpus into classroom, supplying semantic prosody information into dictionaries, and using corpus-driven linguistics for lexicography. This study aims to help Chinese English learners to understand the mechanism of semantic prosody, strengthen their awareness of correct usage of semantic prosody so as to facilitate the accuracy and nativeness of their language output.

Key words: semantic prosody; corpus; very much

摘要：
语义韵是指在一定语言环境中由关键词的典型搭配所形成的一种语义倾向。语义韵隐藏在人们的意识之外。本文采用中介语对比分析方法，以very much为例，从语义韵的角度调查中国学习者对英语常用词的掌握情况，及与本族语者存在的差异。研究发现，very much在中国学习者语料库中呈错综语义韵，在本族语者语料库中呈积极语义韵。该差异显示中国学习者使用该常用词总体偏离目标语范式较远。本文试从以下三方面探讨导致以上差异的原因：母语负迁移的影响、真实语料输入的缺乏以及词典信息的不足。作者从四方面探讨了该研究的启示：向学习者讲授语义韵知识、在课堂教学中引入语料库、词典编纂中加入语义韵方面信息、把语料库语言学驱动的方法引入词典编纂。本文旨在帮助中国学习者了解语义韵机制，增强语义韵意识，从而提高语言输出的准确性和地道性。

关键词： 语义韵；语料库；very much

1 Introduction
Sinclair, one of the most notable linguists, once argues that the essential point of vocabulary learning should focus on the core usage and typical collocation of frequently-used words and phrases. Consistent with this view, Lou Baocui suggests two important aspects in vocabulary learning: the increase of the number of vocabulary and the mastery of commonly-used words. However, for learners, how to acquire accurate English is a tough nut to crack. In recent years, semantic prosody, a relatively new field of inquiry based on corpus linguistics, has been used in solving this difficult problem. Semantic prosody shows not only the associations and connotations embodied in lexical items, but also the accuracy and nativeness of learners’ interlanguage.