미국영어 코퍼스자료에 근거한 ¨think of¨와 ¨think about¨의 분석

A Corpus-Based Investigation of think of and think about in American English

The two verb phrases, think of and think about, have been generally regarded as interchangeable, and no serious attempt has been made to discover potential differences between these two verb phrases in terms of meaning and function in discourse context. The present study aims to present a corpus-based examination of think of and think about, focusing on the differences in their use and distribution in spoken and written American English. An analysis of tokens from the Michigan Corpus and the Brown Corpus leads to the observation that think of and think about show different skewings in collocations and co-occurring patterns, which in turn contributes to defining their meaning and function in discourse. A close examination of data reveals the following. First, think of is four times more frequent than think about in written discourse while think about is more frequent thanthink of in spoken discourse. Second,think of favors an indefinite reference as its object while think about favors a definite reference. Third, think about is used to mark a prolonged action, hence durative, whereas the action denoted by the expression 'think of' takes place instantly, hence punctual. Based on these observations, I propose that think of denotes an instant/spontaneous action such as the display of a fleeting thought whereas think about denotes a planned and prolonged action, which requires a more active thinking process than in the case of think of. As such, think of can be paraphrased as "imagine, remember, or bring to one's mind" while think about can be paraphrased as "reflect upon or consider seriously."