A Study of Adjective-Noun Collocations in Chinese English

Abstract

This study explores the collocational patterns of ten high-frequency adjectives in the Written Corpus of China English (abbreviated to WCCE) with a focus on its collocations with nouns. A corpus-based comparative methodology was adopted to investigate the differences between China English and British English in the use of adjective and noun collocational patterns. The major findings of the study can be stated as follows: 1) Some collocational structures only occur in the Chinese context, such as economic rebalancing, economic belt, and international airspace. 2) Some collocational structures, like economic corridor, economic construction, new energy, are used more frequently in China English than in British English. 3) The frequencies of some collocational structures in BNC are much greater than those in WCCE, in particular, Old Testament, local election. The reasons for these different uses of collocational structures with distinct Chinese features might include (but not limited to), i. the development of China’s economy (e.g. economic belt, economic corridor); ii. the differences between China and Britain in politics and society (e.g. Old Testament, local election); iii. the influence of the development of science (e.g. new energy); iv. linguistic transfer (e.g. old Yao, economic take-off). The findings show that China English has its distinctive collocational patterns which may suggest that English used in China has undergone a process of nativization.