ABSTRACT

The word AS is one of the most frequently used functional words in political literature. It can function as a subordinate conjunction followed by clauses of reason, concession and time, and it can be used as adverb, frequently used in as.as.pattern. When used as a preposition, it can collocate with nouns and nominal phrases. Due to it plays a complicated grammatical role, it seems necessary to explore the word in detail. By building two self-directed corpora of English version of Chinese Government Work Report(CGWR) and The State of the Union Address (SUA)from 2012 to 2016, the author explores the frequency of conjunction as, adverb as and preposition as and collocations in two corpora, and finally concludes the differences. Results show that Chinese English translators prefer to use the preposition as most frequently, while English native speakers would like to use conjunction as most frequently. Moreover, the three-word-cluster of preposition AS like as a nation or as a country are presented more in SUA than CGWR. And native English speaker use adverb as and conjunction as less often in AS.AS.pattern than Chinese English translators, which means they use the word as in it’s different part of speech with more freedom and flexibility. Through the analysis of the use of the word as in English versions of CGWR and SUA from 2012 to 2016, this study enriches the perspective of the researches on English versions of CGWR and SUA, which is of realistic significance and of great value.

Key words: Government Work Reports  The State of the Union Address  The word as  Corpus

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

ABSTRACT

中文摘要

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION-1

1.1 RESEARCH BACKGROUND-1

1.2 PURPOSE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS STUDY-1

1.3 THE STRUCTURE OF THE PAPER-1

CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW-3

2.1 STUDIES ON THE ENGLISH VERSION OF CGWR-3

2.2 STUDIES ON THE SUA-4

2.3 THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE ENGLISH VERSION OF CGWR AND SUA-4

2.4 STUDIES ON THE USE OF WORD AS-5

2.4.1 Studies from dictionaries-5

2.4.2. Studies from grammatical books-6

2.4.3. Studies from periodicals-6

2.5 SUMMARY-7

CHAPTER THREE A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ENGLISH VERSION OF CGWR AND SUA-8

3.1 RESEARCH SUBJECT AND DATA COLLECTION-8

3.2 RESEARCH METHODS-8

3.3 ANALYSIS AND RESULTS-8

3.3.1 Definitions of AS in dictionaries-8

3.3.2 Overall frequency of word AS-9

3.3.3 Study on the preposition as-11

3.3.4 Study on the conjunction as-11

3.3.5 The use of as.as. Pattern-12

3.4 SUMMARY-13

CHAPTER FOUR CONCLUSION-15

4.1 SUMMARY-15

4.2 LIMITATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS-15

BIBLIOGRAPHY-17

APPENDIX-19