초록 열기/닫기 버튼
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of pretty synchronically and diachronically (1810-2000) through COCA/COHA, and discuss its implications. The main findings of the corpus-based study on pretty are as follows: (i) The total frequency of pretty is 69570, the frequency of adverb pretty 55702 (about 80% of the total frequency), and the frequency of adjective pretty 13840 (about 20%). (ii) Pretty as an adverb is most used in SPOKEN(24811) of 5 genres, while it as an adjective is most used in FICTION (6575). (iii) The frequency of pretty as a modifier is in the order of adjective modifier (38303) > adverb modifier (13427) > noun modifier (6186). (iv) Since 1910s, the use of pretty as an adverb rather than an adjective has been much more dominant. (vi) The expression pretty boy had been used since 1820s, and has shown a rapid rise in frequency in recent decades. (vii) The paper examined Korean college students' familiarity with 'pretty+human noun' expressions. There were some differences between the corpus analysis and the subjects' responses. According to COCA, the nouns with which petty combines very frequently are girl, lady, woman, boy. baby, wife, daughter, while the subjects' responses are girl, woman, baby, child, wife, daughter, mother. This result shows that Korean EFL learners' study of vocabulary should be based on frequently occurring fixed expressions(i.e., chunk), not on individual words.
