코퍼스 기반 중학교 영어 교과서 be 동사 부정 축약 분석

Abstract

When be-verb negation is contracted, either verb contraction or negative contraction can be selected, based on the types of preceding subjects. Thus, a pronoun subject tends to be with verb contraction more frequently (e.g. She’s not/They’re not), while a full noun subject is more likely to occur with negative contraction (e.g. The classroom isn’t). In this regard, the current study aims to investigate if middle school English textbooks provide sufficient examples of English native speakers’ preference in using be-verb negative contraction. To this end, a small corpus was compiled, comprising all the listening materials from 14 middle school English textbooks. From this corpus, all the sentences including verb contraction and negative contraction each were extracted using a concordancer program to see what type of subject each contraction form occurs with more frequently. The results of this analysis showed that when the subject is a pronoun, verb contraction is favored over negative contraction, whereas negative contraction is more likely to be with a full noun phrase, suggesting that the English textbook present language input similar to English native speakers’ preference in using be-verb negative contraction.