Abstract:
 With a corpus-based Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis method, this paper aimed to investigate the use of semantic prosody of delexicalized adverbs of degree (terribly, awfully and highly were chosen as targets) in Chinese learners’ English writings through a comparison of Chinese Learners English Corpus, Spoken and Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners and British National Corpus. The result shows that Chinese learners are strikingly different from native speakers in the use of the semantic prosody of delexicalized adverbs of degree. There is an underuse of the positive prosody of terribly and awfully, and the negative prosody of highly. Meanwhile, Chinese learners are in a low level of understanding the phenomenon of delexicalization: they have not mastered the typical collocations of delexicalized adverbs of degree. Four leading possible reasons were analyzed for the above problems: (1) negative influence of L1 transfer; (2) insufficient knowledge of delexicalization and semantic prosody; (3) misuse of learning strategy; (4) lack of instruction in dictionaries. Based on the findings of the study, the author proposed some suggestions to vocabulary teaching and learning so as to improve accuracy and nativeness in learners’ English writings.

Key words: delexicalization; corpus; adverbs of degree; semantic prosody; collocation

摘 要：
本文以terribly，awfully和highly为例，采用基于语料库的“中介语对比分析法”，通过对比中国学习者语料库、中国学生英语口笔语语料库和英国国家语料库，考察中国英语学习者使用非词汇化程度副词的语义韵特点。研究结果表明，中国英语学习者在使用此类非词汇化程度副词过程中，语义韵倾向同本族语者相比存在较大偏差，具体表现为: terribly和awfully的积极语义韵明显少用，highly的消极语义韵明显少用。同时，中国学习者非词汇化副词的含义掌握明显不足，对其典型搭配的使用程度低。本文探讨了导致以上问题的原因：(1)母语迁移；(2)学习者对非词汇化现象和语义韵缺乏了解；(3)学习英语时通常采取规避策略；(4)字典中非词汇化现象和语义韵无明确标注。最后，本文对非词汇化和语义韵研究在外语词汇教与学中的应用提出建议，旨在帮助中国学习者习得准确、地道的英语。

关键词：非词汇化；语料库；程度副词；语义韵；词语搭配   

1 Introduction
Since corpus approach was introduced as a new research method into modern linguistics, many phenomena hidden in languages can be searched, and the change or development of them can even be traced in corpora. Among many linguistic phenomena, delexicalization has drawn increasing attention from researchers. Wei Naixing (2007:17) proposes that “the phenomenon of delexicalization makes some words lose their original semantic content and displays typical structural and semantic patterning”.