한국해양대학교

Detailed Information

Metadata Downloads

Syntactic and Semantic Patterns of Domain-specific Multiword Units in Marine Accident Investigation Reports

DC Field Value Language
dc.contributor.advisor 장세은 -
dc.contributor.author QI YILIAN -
dc.date.accessioned 2019-12-16T03:12:43Z -
dc.date.available 2019-12-16T03:12:43Z -
dc.date.issued 2019 -
dc.identifier.uri http://repository.kmou.ac.kr/handle/2014.oak/11916 -
dc.identifier.uri http://kmou.dcollection.net/common/orgView/200000186421 -
dc.description.abstract The present study is a systematic corpus-based investigation of the domain-specific multiword units (henceforth MWUs) in marine accident investigation reports (henceforth MAIR), with a view to characterizing their most prominent syntactic, semantic and functional features. To achieve these principal objectives, the target MWUs were first identified by applying a new approach, which incorporates the notion of ‘meaning’ into statistical-based measures. This method ensures the domain-specific MWU extraction to the largest extent and provides valid data for the subsequent analysis. Through proposing a three-dimensional analytical framework, this study has obtained the following findings: First, the domain-specific MWUs are largely composed of two-word sequences, while the occurrences of 4- and 5-word MWUs are relatively rare. Among all the target MWUs, only 1.10% of the expressions occur very commonly within the genre (˚1,000 times). By contrast, the majority of the expressions (70.97%) occur with the frequency less than 100 times. The skewed distribution indicates that MAIR genre tends to employ a wide variety of domain-specific MWUs rather than repetition of a small number of common expressions. Second, in terms of the syntactic features of the domain-specific MWUs, NP structure is the most commonly employed grammatical type. The abundant use of this structure implies that the domain-specific meaning of MAIR genre is largely carried in the nominal group. Apart from NP structure, there is also a marked prevalence of VP structures among the domain-specific MWUs in MAIR genre and these MWUs present structural variation. Of all the VP-based patterns, the ‘verb phrase with active verb’ pattern stands out since it incorporates a large number of action verbs, which are used to describe the actions done by people. The wide use of these phrases implies that MAIR genre tends to highlight the people’s roles during the accidents, with particular attention to the information about what or who caused or performed the activity. Similarly, PP structures were also frequently adopted by the domain-specific MWUs, especially the pattern beginning with preposition of. This pattern was mostly used to specify possessions. It thus can be inferred that the information that provided in MAIR genre tends to be concrete and specific. Third, by conducting a functional analysis of the target MWUs, it was found that the primary function of the domain-specific MWUs is to express referential meanings and contribute to the thematic development. Furthermore, due to their multifunctional nature, some referential MWUs also perform the function of stance and discourse organizing. When expressing stance, most MWUs express impersonal epistemic stance, with the purpose of minimizing the imposition of the reporters’ opinions. Other word sequences appear to be deontic in nature, as they are mainly realized by the MWUs incorporating with require or modal verbs. The primary function of these MWUs is to set out the obligations and issue suggestions for the agents according to certain norms and regulations. When functioning as discourse organizer, the domain-specific MWUs usually adopt the pattern of ‘that-clause controlled by main verbs in active voice’ to introduce the topics. Unlikely, when using for elaborating the topics, they tend to clarify the logical relationships, especially the causative-resultative relation, rather than providing additional information in MAIR genre. Fourth, the distinctive semantic features of the domain-specific MWUs can be best reflected when these MWUs perform the functions of activity identification and specification. For instance, most domain-specific MWUs used for describing activities are of general nature, but they convey specialized meaning in MAIR genre. Similarly, when domain-specific MWUs are used to provide tangible or intangible frames for specifying certain attributes, the use of these MWUs in MAIR genre is significantly deviant from their use in general English register. In all, by gaining insights into the salient features of the domain-specific MWUs in MAIR genre, the present study may make contributions and implications in the following aspects: the construction of extraction method for domain-specific MWUs, the compilation of maritime-specific MWU list, the teaching and learning of maritime English, especially the maritime-specific MWUs, and providing reference for writing MAIR to the experts who are from non-native English speaking countries. -
dc.description.tableofcontents Abstract i List of Tables v List of Figures vii Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1. Background of this study 1 1.2. Objectives of this study 3 1.3. Significance of this study 4 1.4. Terminological issues 5 1.5. Organization of this dissertation 6 Chapter 2 Theoretical background 8 2.1. Understanding the notions of phraseology 8 2.2.1. An overview of influential notions of phraseology 9 2.1.2. Parameters of defining MWUs 13 2.1.3. Operational definition of MWUs 17 2.1.4. An overview of influential taxonomy of phraseology 19 2.2. Theoretical discussion of MWUs 23 2.2.1. Theoretical framework of this study 23 2.2.2. Nature of multiword units 25 2.2.3. Previous studies of phraseology 29 Chapter 3 Analytical framework and research design 37 3.1. Analytical framework 37 3.1.1 Analytical framework for syntactic features of domain-specific MWUs 38 3.1.2. Analytical framework for semantic features of domain-specific MWUs 40 3.1.3. Analytical framework for functional features of domain-specificMWUs 42 3.2. Research questions 43 3.3. Corpora used in this study 44 3.3.1. Corpus of Marine Accident Investigation Reports (COMAIR) 44 3.3.2. British National Corpus Baby (BNC Baby) 47 3.4. Tools and procedures for data analysis 48 3.4.1. Tools for data processing 48 3.4.2. Procedures for data analysis 49 3.4.3. Inter-rater reliability 50 3.5. Summary 51 Chapter 4 Identification of domain-specific MWUs in the COMAIR 52 4.1. Current approaches to MWU extraction 52 4.2. My proposed approach to domain-specific MWU extraction 53 4.3. The detailed process of domain-specific MWU extraction 55 4.3.1. Step 1: N-gram retrieval 55 4.3.2. Step 2: Keyword-gram extraction 56 4.3.3. Step 3: Measuring the association strength of keyword-grams 58 4.3.4. Step 4: Filtering out process 66 4.3.5. Step 5: Domain-specific MWU identification 70 Chapter 5 Frequency distributions and syntactic features of domain-specific MWUs 72 5.1. Frequency distributions of domain-specific MWUs 72 5.1.1. Frequency distributions of domain-specific MWUs in various lengths 72 5.1.2. Overall frequency distribution across different frequency bands 74 5.2. Syntactic features of domain-specific MWUs 76 Chapter 6 Functional and semantic features of domain-specific MWUs 80 6.1. Distributions across primary discourse functions 80 6.2. Multiple functioning 82 6.3. Stance MWUs 84 6.3.1. Notion of stance MWUs 84 6.3.2. Stance MWUs in COMAIR 84 6.4. Discourse organizing MWUs 90 6.4.1. Notion of discourse organizing MWUs 90 6.4.2. Discourse organizing MWUs in COMAIR 90 6.5. Referential MWUs 96 6.5.1. Notion of referential MWUs 97 6.5.2. Referential MWUs in COMAIR 97 6.6. Summary 112 Chapter 7 Conclusions and implications 113 7.1. Summary of the major findings 113 7.2. Implications of this study 116 7.3. Limitations of this study 117 References 118 Appendix 132 -
dc.format.extent 174 -
dc.language eng -
dc.publisher 한국해양대학교 일반대학원 -
dc.rights 한국해양대학교 논문은 저작권에 의해 보호받습니다. -
dc.title Syntactic and Semantic Patterns of Domain-specific Multiword Units in Marine Accident Investigation Reports -
dc.type Dissertation -
dc.date.awarded 2019-02 -
dc.contributor.department 대학원 영어영문학과 -
dc.contributor.affiliation Department of English Language and Literature Graduate School of Korea Maritime and Ocean University -
dc.description.degree Doctor -
dc.contributor.specialty 영어학 -
dc.identifier.holdings 000000001979▲200000001028▲200000186421▲ -
Appears in Collections:
영어영문학과 > Thesis
Files in This Item:
Syntactic and Semantic Patterns of Domain-specific Multiword Units in Marine Accident Investigation Reports.pdf Download

Items in Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Browse