Therefore, maritime is closely related to the lives of many people and it is necessary for them to get first-hand maritime information。 Naturally, maritime news pours into people's daily life and maritime English learners and shipping related workers can be served with the latest information of the shipping industry and armed with related knowledge by reading maritime news via different methods, newspapers, broadcasts, magazines or the Internet。 For one thing, reading maritime news occasionally for the public can help people learn about current situations of shipping industry; for another thing, the industry focuses on changes and prospects of shipping industry by reading maritime news regularly so as to respond timely and appropriately to these changes。 However, owing to the specialized quality of maritime English and maritime information, it is not easy for some readers to read and understand all the maritime English news texts。

In addition, with the combination and development of language research and computer, the corpus-based study is more objective and persuasive to combine language studies and related corpus and make it quantification, which is favored by language researchers。 Gui Shichun (2009) points out that with the rapid development of computer science, corpus linguistics has become a dramatically growing discipline。 This thesis adopts the corpus-based research method and builds up a Maritime English News Corpus (hereinafter referred to as MENC) to analyze its lexical features。 MENC is composed of news of the official websites of the world leading classification society, maritime organizations and shipping companies for their typical and authoritative maritime news language。 Besides, BROWN is the first computer-readable general corpus of texts in the field of corpus linguistics and is chosen as the reference corpus to represent the Standard English。 Therefore, this thesis adopts the corpus-based research method and establishes the Maritime News Corpus (hereinafter referred to as MNC) to analyze its lexical features。文献综述

Maritime English news covers all aspects of the work and life of seafarers and related maritime organizations, marine events and accidents including disasters on sea, piracy, maritime pollution etc。, checklists, logs and reports writing。 There is no doubt that the studies on maritime English news lexicon can help the concerning readers know and grasp the language features of maritime English news so that they can better understand。 The results are also beneficial for the design of relevant Maritime English dictionary and teaching materials as well as the promotion of Maritime English teaching。 Thirdly, with the detailed analysis, the thesis can be some realistic meaning for guidance on maritime news (MN) writing。 What's more, considering that the comparative research is carried out in the thesis, the study can show readers how the usages of determiners reflect stylistic features of MN。 In addition, lexical study plays an important position in the actual language learning with lexicon being a key concept in applied linguistics as well as in corpus linguistics。 The thesis thus takes a view on the maritime English news, aiming at investigating its lexical features including vocabulary size, word length, lexical density and lexical coverage。

Ⅱ。 Literature Review 

2。1 Lexical Studies 来.自^优+尔-论,文:网www.chuibin.com +QQ752018766-

Vocabulary is the foundation in the process of learning any language。 Wilkins (1972) states that without grammar very little can be conveyed but without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed。 The importance of vocabulary is thus obvious。 For those who fail to master the usage of different words, there is no doubt that they have great difficulty in effective and efficient communications with others, even though they are good at grammar。 It can be even concluded that vocabulary is the carrier of one’s thought; without vocabulary mastering, language skills including listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating cannot work well。 Apparently, vocabulary acquisition is the central and primary task in any language acquisition。 Language learners are asked for sufficient vocabulary and lexical knowledge in the first place so that they can lay a solid foundation for further improvement of all the other language skills。