A Corpus-Based and Fuzzy Assessment-Based Study of Labels in Spoken English

Abstract

Label English is common in spoken English, but for most English learners, it is difficult to use and express labels correctly and appropriately. This is mainly due to their lack of understanding of this expression. Label English is equivalent to Chinese grammar, using different markup components to form a complete sentence. In this paper, five tags commonly used by native English speakers, namely, or something, or something, and so on, and that, and everything, will be studied. Through the method of fuzzy evaluation, it illustrates the use of labels by Chinese English learners and the similarities and differences between Chinese English learners and native English speakers. Corpus is a product of language research and corresponding computer technology. It is a model of the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods in language research. It makes its due contribution to revealing the essence of language and can provide scientific basis for language research. Based on the above background, the purpose of this paper is to study tags in spoken English through corpus and vague evaluation. And the top five tags are retrieved in CLEC and LOB. Then, the frequency of occurrence is counted. Finally, the variance of each label is calculated by using the method of fuzzy evaluation, to determine whether there are significant differences between the two corpuses. The fuzzy evaluation method can make the results clear and systematic, can better solve the vague and difficult to quantify problems, and is suitable for solving various non-deterministic problems. The results show that besides “and so on,” Chinese English learners use labels less frequently than native English speakers. In terms of structure, both of them adopt the prototype of tags, but most Chinese learners misuse some of their own tags. The main reasons for this phenomenon are mother tongue transfer and inadequate pragmatic competence. In contrast, native English speakers use tags more frequently. In terms of usage form, the prototypes of the above five tags are used, but there are also variants, mainly in the form of expansion and lexical variants. The 106 tagged words found in CLEC were searched one by one in COLSEC. It was found that only 19 expressions appeared in the corpus, with a total frequency of only 271 and a standard frequency of 371. The total frequency of this type of expression in LOB is 11072 times, and the standard frequency is 1055 times. In addition, these expressions also have the pragmatic functions of inference, reinforcement, and compliance.