AN INVESTIGATION ON ADJECTIVAL NEGATED PREFIXES: CORPUS-BASED APPROACH

Abstract

The concerns with English negative prefixation for learners of ESL or EFL have been noticed; meanwhile, very fewer guidelines have been so far released for deeper understandings or generalizations. Over-generalized rates have been found and the under-generalization has still inherited in learners' perceptions. These would impede the learners' creativeness by means of word formations and uses. The present research's aim is to fill this gap, finding out the specificities of each negated prefix and to streamline for practical generalizations. Corpus-based method was considered as the rationale approach to this implementation with several advantages. The famous data bank , BNC corpus , was placed to access for exploring new findings. The results were found that some negative prefixes tended to take some certain starting consonants while some were not and some adjectives were able to attach with more than one negative prefixes. Moreover, it suggested that the spirits or the conveying meanings of those preceding negators had inherited their own uniqueness and origins and the matter of borrowing left skeptic.