Abstract
It is known that some preferences for verb subcategorization structures are observed in native English speakers’ language use. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether such preferences are reflected on English textbooks, which are arguably one of the main sources of input for Japanese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. In this study, we analyze to what extent 56 different verbs are used with (1) direct objects, and (2) sentential complements (with and without the complementizer that) in a textbook corpus, which consists of 15 series of Japanese senior high school English textbooks. After calculating the frequency of each structure, comparisons are made with the results of Roland et al.’s (2007) study, which analyzed the British National Corpus. The results show that although the distribution of the verb subcategorization structures in the textbooks is strongly correlated with that in BNC, differences in the use of some verbs between the two corpora are also revealed. Additionally, it is indicated that compared to BNC, the textbooks contain a lower percentage of sentential complement structures and include more sentential complement structures with the complementizer that. Some pedagogical implications toward vocabulary instruction in Japanese EFL classrooms are also discussed.
