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A Comparative Analysis of Present and Past Participial Adjectives and their Collocations in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)

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Date Issued:
2013
Abstract/Description:
ESL grammar books have lists of present and past participial adjectives based on author intuition rather than actual word frequency. In these textbooks, the (-)ing and (-)ed participial adjectives derived from transitive verbs of state and emotion are presented in pairs such as interesting/interested, boring/bored, or surprising/surprised. This present study used the Corpus of Contemporary American English http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/ (COCA) to investigate the overall frequency of participial adjectives in use as well as their frequency within certain varieties of contexts. The results have shown that among most frequently used participial adjectives there are not only the participial adjectives derived from transitive verbs of psychological state, such as interesting/interested, but also the participial adjectives derived from transitive verbs of action with their intransitive equivalents, such as increasing/increased. The data also revealed that many participial adjectives lack corresponding counterparts and thus cannot be presented in (-)ing/-ed or -en pairs (e. g., existing, ongoing, concerned, supposed). Finally, a majority of the differences between participial adjectives, including the differences between present (-ing) and past (-ed or -en) participial adjectives, are reflected in their collocations. This study suggests that a new approach of teaching participial adjectives along with their collocations in relation to their frequencies in particular contexts can help second language learners develop awareness of how and when these participial adjectives should be used to convey an individual's intended meaning in a native-like manner.
Title: A Comparative Analysis of Present and Past Participial Adjectives and their Collocations in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA).
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Name(s): Reilly, Natalia, Author
Folse, Keith, Committee Chair
Mihai, Florin, Committee Member
Vitanova-Haralampiev, Gergana, Committee Member
, Committee Member
University of Central Florida, Degree Grantor
Type of Resource: text
Date Issued: 2013
Publisher: University of Central Florida
Language(s): English
Abstract/Description: ESL grammar books have lists of present and past participial adjectives based on author intuition rather than actual word frequency. In these textbooks, the (-)ing and (-)ed participial adjectives derived from transitive verbs of state and emotion are presented in pairs such as interesting/interested, boring/bored, or surprising/surprised. This present study used the Corpus of Contemporary American English http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/ (COCA) to investigate the overall frequency of participial adjectives in use as well as their frequency within certain varieties of contexts. The results have shown that among most frequently used participial adjectives there are not only the participial adjectives derived from transitive verbs of psychological state, such as interesting/interested, but also the participial adjectives derived from transitive verbs of action with their intransitive equivalents, such as increasing/increased. The data also revealed that many participial adjectives lack corresponding counterparts and thus cannot be presented in (-)ing/-ed or -en pairs (e. g., existing, ongoing, concerned, supposed). Finally, a majority of the differences between participial adjectives, including the differences between present (-ing) and past (-ed or -en) participial adjectives, are reflected in their collocations. This study suggests that a new approach of teaching participial adjectives along with their collocations in relation to their frequencies in particular contexts can help second language learners develop awareness of how and when these participial adjectives should be used to convey an individual's intended meaning in a native-like manner.
Identifier: CFE0005051 (IID), ucf:49967 (fedora)
Note(s): 2013-12-01
M.A.
Arts and Humanities, Modern Languages
Masters
This record was generated from author submitted information.
Subject(s): participial adjectives -- corpus linguistics -- collocations -- TESOL
Persistent Link to This Record: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005051
Restrictions on Access: public 2013-12-15
Host Institution: UCF

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