A corpus-based analysis of adjective-noun collocations in the academic writing of native and non-native speakers of English

Mgr. Farah Naddaf

Master's thesis

Abstract:

Studies have shown that collocation use is a source of difficulty for language learners even at advanced levels. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to investigate the use of one type of collocations, that is adjective-noun collocations, in the academic writing of non-native speakers of English and to compare it with that of native speakers of English based on the frequency-based tradition to the study of collocations. For this reason, two corpora were compiled consisting of 30 essays each, and all adjective-noun combinations were extracted with the help of the Sketch Engine. The comparison was carried out by calculating the association scores of the extracted combinations using frequency information from a reference corpus (SkELL). Two association measures were used, namely Mutual Information and t-score: t-score emphasizes very frequent combinations, while Mutual Information emphasizes less frequent but strong collocations. In addition, statistical measures were used in order to determine whether there is a statistically significant difference between the two corpora. The findings of the research shed some light on the characteristics of the students’ language and the difficulties they face in the use of collocations, which can have important implications for language teaching.

Keywords

collocations, adjective-noun, SkELL, The Sketch Engine, learner corpus, association measures

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 23. 5. 2017

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 16. 6. 2017
• Supervisor: Mgr. Linda Nepivodová
• Reader: PhDr. Jarmila Fictumová

Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Master programme / field:
Philology / English Language and Literature (Eng.)