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(4.13) English Departments can always enrich their knowledge on literature in
“Litdiscussion”. (NCCU_E030008)
The non-solid tendency can also be observed in Sense 14 ―involvement or participation‖ and Sense 17 ―reason, ground, or basis‖, in which the grounds are usually concerned with issue, topic, position, etc. Through investigating into the semantic features, we can have a better understanding of learners‘ command of the meanings of preposition on. In the following section, apart from looking into learners‘
correct productions of preposition in and on, we examine learners‘ errors, though not many, which may also be worth exploring.
4.3 Error Analysis
The learner corpus reveals how English learners use these prepositional phrases, and through analyzing the senses and semantic features within these constructions, the errors were also identified. These errors were further categorized into two types, namely the substitution (i.e. in or on is substituted by other prepositions) and misuses of prepositions (including the redundant and incorrect usages of the prepositions), and they are discussed respectively in the following paragraphs.
In the data of in, 18 errors could be identified, in which they were further categorized into two types, namely The majority of substitution cases occurs with on (6 cases, e.g. *in [on] a Sunday afternoon) and at (8 cases, e.g. *in [at] the start line), which are both possibly be translated into zai4 ―在‖ in Chinese which shows the location of an entity. As emphasized, the choice of a preposition involves the
consideration of the features of ground noun and its interaction with the figure noun.
Therefore, learners‘ misconception of the features of ground might be a factor for the
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inappropriate use of preposition in, as in (4.14).
(4.14) *In [on] a Sunday afternoon, you sit in a coffee shop in the campus and read your favorite novel. (NCCU_E003004)
In this instance, the preposition in is used as the indication for the time; however, as in usually goes with a longer period of time and Sunday afternoon is considered to be relatively shorter than the length of time denoted by Sunday, the preposition on would be a more appropriate choice in this sentence.
In the data, we can also observe that learners might use in to substitute the preposition at in some cases, such as in home, in the start line, in sixteen (age), as in the sentences in (4.15).
(4.15) a. Parents afraid that their children will lose *in [at] the start line, so they require children to learn a lot of talents or go to cram schools, don‟t care whether children agree or not. (NCCU_E009005)
b. However, male and female can be engaged *in [at] sixteen and fourteen.
(NCCU_E049001)
In (4.15a), the ground noun start line in this sentence metaphorically refers to a flat line which does not connote the sense of inclusion; therefore, it would be more appropriate to use the locative preposition at than in. The substitution of at with in in (4.15b) may be explained by imaging the passing of time as a line on which there is a lot of points for people to stay at a time. Hence, it would be more appropriate to state at sixteen, at fourteen because these ages are simply a small part in a person‘s whole
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life. Though these inappropriate matches of prepositions and nouns may not bring about the comprehension breakdown, clarifying these misconceptions toward the features of ground nouns to the students may still be helpful in raising students‘
awareness of the types of nouns that co-occur with a particular preposition.
Some other cases are misuse of the preposition in or misuse in the construction of prepositional phrases, as in (4.16).
(4.16) *In [?] their hand, compare and contrast are also the ways that teachers may use. (NCCU_E034013)
In (4.16), a prepositional phrase of in with its meaning unknown to the reader is used, which may be the result of students‘ conception of hand; being able to grasp
something in one‘s hand means having the ability to do something. However, as instances like these do not occur frequently in the learner data, further exploration is needed if we would like to examine how these misuse phrases were constructed.
For the learner data in preposition on, 12 erroneous constructions were identified by the current researcher, including the substitution of in, at, and to with preposition on and some other misuse cases. First, let us take a look at the cases of substitution, as shown in (4.17).
(4.17) a. *On [at] the bus station, there are several people waiting for the bus coming.
(NCCU_E012007)
b. 7-eleven is like a magnet, attracts more and more consumers to meet their necessity *on [in] 7-eleven… (NCCU_E006008)
c. Actually ''Cool boy'' is a description of one kind of characteristic who pay
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attention *on [to] his own outlook, and easy to get alone with.
(NCCU_E026004)
In these examples in (4.17), most of the errors seem to come from the influence of ground nouns. In (4.17a), learners may view the bus station as a place constructed of a surface. In (4.17c), learners may consider one‘s own outlook as a surface which is the focus of one‘s attention; however, attention is a mobile abstract concept that goes with a directional particle to show its end-point on the path of moving and pay attention to is almost a fixed expression as a phraseological unit, so it would be more appropriate to use pay attention to than pay attention on. As for (4.17b), learners seemed to regard 7-eleven as a platform where people can gain satisfaction in
shopping. However, 7-eleven in Taiwan is usually seen as a store within a building, so it would be more appropriate to use in 7-eleven (focusing on people inside this place) or at 7-eleven (indicating the location of the people).
In addition to the cases of substitution, misusing on was also observed in the data, as in (4.18).
(4.18) *No matter which character he is on [?], it is the personality make him a “Cool Boy”. (NCCU_E026004)
In this instance, the learner might want to express the presence or possession of a particular character, so he/she also added on as reinforcement of meaning, which seems to be rarely seen in native speaker‘s use of on.
From these presentations of erroneous constructions, the source of error may come from the misconception of distinctive features of each ground noun and
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mismatching of the meanings of a particular preposition with figure and ground nouns.
These errors may also come from the result of learners still reforming the construction of prepositions, since in some other cases, the nouns in the erroneous constructions here may be observed to be used correctly with the prepositions. Though most of the errors mentioned in this section do not cause comprehension breakdown and may be accidentally misused by the learners, choosing the more appropriate preposition and nouns is an essential part that should be highlighted in helping learners learn the construction of prepositional phrases. Evidencing how the surrounding nouns may influence the choice of a particular preposition, pedagogical suggestions will be further discussed in 6.2.
4.4 Summary of the Chapter
In this chapter, we first presented the results of the sense analyses of in and on.
We counted the sense distributions of in and on, grouped the senses according to the semantic clusters, and listed the hypothesized prominent features for each cluster, which would be checked in the follow-up semantic feature analysis. We also
compared the sense distributions between the data from BNC and NCCU. Then, we displayed the results of the semantic feature analysis with the data compared between the prepositions in and on and between BNC and NCCU. In the end of this chapter, learners‘ errors were also examined.
Summing up from what we found in this chapter, some points could be specially addressed. First, from the sense analyses we found that the sense distributions for the preposition in are similar in both the native speaker data and the learner data. For the sense distributions in on, more data of senses that belong to the metaphorical part can be found in BNC than in NCCU. Second, in the comparison of semantic feature
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analyses for in and on, we found that the major distinction in the literal expressions of in and on is the higher frequency of animate and human nouns and the figure being smaller than the ground in the data of in, while in the data of on, the animate feature is not that prominent, and the interaction between the figure and the ground becomes the figure having contact with the ground. As for the grounds, the concrete and solid features are more prominent in the data of on, which is not the case in literal in. In metaphorical expressions, the results were further discussed according to the semantic clusters, and for different clusters we can observe different distributional patterns of these semantic features. Therefore, the contrast may exceed the difference between in and on to the difference in these semantic clusters.
On the other hand, for the comparison of the results of semantic feature analysis between the data of BNC and NCCU, in both literal and metaphorical data of in, human beings were used more often by the learners as the figures in the
in-constructions than native speakers, though other features did not differ so greatly between these two groups. As for the ground nouns, fewer solid ground nouns can be found in NCCU in literal data; for metaphorical expressions, activity and solid ground nouns account for higher percentages in BNC, while in NCCU there were more temporal nouns as the ground. With regard to the data of on, as in the case of in, human beings were again used more often by the learners as the figures in literal on-constructions. In the metaphorical on, though a lot of nouns of human beings can be found in the learner data, we can also observe many non-human nouns which are influenced by the distinctive sense with the requirement of inanimate or non-human figures. As for the ground nouns, in literal on, learners tend to use concrete, mobile, and solid nouns more frequently (which may not necessarily be animate), but more nouns of animate entities can be observed in the native speaker data. In the
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metaphorical data set of on, a variety of nouns can be observed in distinctive senses.
For example, in the sense that refers to ‗active involvement in a condition‘, the ground tends to be an activity noun; in the sense of ‗with respect to‘, the ground is more inclined to relate to an issue. From these results, we can conclude that the distribution of semantic features in some way may reflect the different types of nouns used in the construction of a particular sense, and some differences may indeed be observed in the native speaker and learner data. Therefore, in the last section of this chapter, we also provide an investigation into the errors in the learner data, from which we can mainly categorize these errors into several types, that is, substitution, redundant use or misuse of the prepositions in and on.
In Chapter 5, we would discuss and synthesize the findings of the analyses of sense and semantic features so as to provide an interpretation for the complex senses of prepositions in and on and clarifying the formation of the senses.
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CHAPTER 5 DISCUSSION
The issue of distinguishing the meanings of in and on through semantic feature analysis in combination with sense analysis has been the focus of this thesis. This chapter will discuss these findings with the support of related theories, organized as the following. First, a summary of the major findings in Chapter Four is provided in 5.1. Then, in Section 5.2, research findings are discussed against the research questions based on the results obtained herein.