미국영어 코퍼스자료에 근거한 ¨think of¨와 ¨think about¨의 분석

• 영문명: A Corpus-Based Investigation of think of and think about in American English
• 발행기관: 한국외국어대학교 영미연구소
• 저자명: 서경희(Kyung-Hee Suh)
• 간행물 정보: 『영미연구』제17집, 137~172쪽, 전체 36쪽
• 주제분류: 사회과학 > 지역학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2007.12.30

영문 초록

The two verb phrases, think of and think about, have been generally regarded as interchangeable, and no serious attempt has been made to discover potential differences between these two verb phrases in terms of meaning and function in discourse context. The present study aims to present a corpus-based examination of think of and think about, focusing on the differences in their use and distribution in spoken and written American English. An analysis of tokens from the Michigan Corpus and the Brown Corpus leads to the observation that think of and think about show different skewings in collocations and co-occurring patterns, which in turn contributes to defining their meaning and function in discourse. A close examination of data reveals the following. First, think of is four times more frequent than think about in written discourse while think about is more frequent thanthink of in spoken discourse. Second,think of favors an indefinite reference as its object while think about favors a definite reference. Third, think about is used to mark a prolonged action, hence durative, whereas the action denoted by the expression 'think of' takes place instantly, hence punctual. Based on these observations, I propose that think of denotes an instant/spontaneous action such as the display of a fleeting thought whereas think about denotes a planned and prolonged action, which requires a more active thinking process than in the case of think of. As such, think of can be paraphrased as "imagine, remember, or bring to one's mind" while think about can be paraphrased as "reflect upon or consider seriously."

목차

1. 들어가기

2. 자료 및 방법론

3. 가설

4. 분석

5. 맺음말

인용문헌

Abstract

키워드

verb phrases corpus [in]definite reference durative event punctual event