Kang, T., & Luo, H. (2020). A Corpus-driven Contrastive Study of the Top 100 Content Words in English and Chinese. Journal of Technology and Chinese Language Teaching, 11(1), 36-56.
[康婷婷, & 骆涵. (2020). 中英最常用100个内容单词：一项基于语料库的对比研究. 科技与中文教学 (Journal of Technology and Chinese Language Teaching), 11(1), 36-56.]

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Abstract/摘要：

This corpus-driven study examines the construction and frequency distribution of the top 100 most frequently used content words in American English, Chinese, and American and Chinese first-year students’ compositions. First, this paper presents the top 100 most frequently used content words in American English and Chinese from two comparable corpora, i.e., the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the Chinese National Corpus (CNC). Second, the top 100 most frequently used content words were drawn from two specific corpora consisting of American and Chinese freshmen’s English compositions. Linguistic similarities and differences in terms of the usage of content words across the two sets of comparable corpora were identified. For example, the results showed that people from both American and Chinese cultural backgrounds relied heavily on verbs and nouns in their languages. However, Chinese people tended to prefer using direction-oriented nouns and food-related words, which were nearly absent in the COCA and American freshmen’s compositions. The cultural implications associated with the linguistic similarities and differences are discussed and pedagogical implications of the findings are also offered.

本文研究了当代美国英语语料库（COCA）、中国国家语料库（CNC）以及大一中美学生写作语料库中前100个最常用内容词的比例和分布，并详细分析了常用内容词在不同文化背景和语境中的相似和不同之处。结果表明，美国英语和汉语都大量使用动词和名词，但中国人更倾向于使用与方向相关的名词和与食物相关的内容词，而这在COCA和美国新生的作文中却很罕见。本文还讨论了中英内容词使用中的相似性和差异性的相关文化内涵，以及研究结果对教学实践的指导性意义。