INFINITIVE AND GERUND COMPLEMENT

CONSTRUCTIONS WITH THE VERBS LIKE AND LOVE

IN CORPUS-BASED ENGLISH

BY

MS. ONNICHA WATTANASIRIBUTH

AN INDEPENDENT STUDY PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL

FULFILLMENT OF

THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF ARTS IN

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

LANGUAGE INSTITUTE

THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY

ACADEMIC YEAR 2017

COPYRIGHT OF THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY

Ref. code: 25605921042296ZFT

INFINITIVE AND GERUND COMPLEMENT

CONSTRUCTIONS WITH THE VERBS LIKE AND LOVE

IN CORPUS-BASED ENGLISH

BY

MS. ONNICHA WATTANASIRIBUTH

AN INDEPENDENT STUDY PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL

FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE

OF MASTER OF ARTS IN

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

LANGUAGE INSTITUTE

THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY

ACADEMIC YEAR 2017

COPYRIGHT OF THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY

Ref. code: 25605921042296ZFT

(1)

Independent Study Paper Title INFINITIVE AND GERUND COMPLEMENT

CONSTRUCTIONS WITH THE VERBS LIKE

AND LOVE IN CORPUS-BASED ENGLISH

Author Ms. Onnicha Wattanasiributh

Degree Master of Arts

Major Field/Faculty/University English Language Teaching

Language Institute

Thammasat University

Independent Study Paper Advisor Assistant Professor Supakorn Phoocharoensil,

Ph.D.

Academic Years 2017

ABSTRACT

This research study investigated the frequencies of like and love in

infinitive and gerund to analyze the differences of complement constructions of these

words. The data were collected from authentic American English in the Corpus of

Contemporary American English (COCA). The findings indicate that the verb like is

more frequent than love, especially like + V infinitive is the most frequent

construction. Although like and love could both be followed by an infinitive and

gerund and the two verbs provide similar meanings as they refer to the notion of

enjoyment, the occurrences of these words are different. The findings, therefore, offer

some useful data for teachers to prepare an infinitive or gerund lesson with authentic

English and help students become aware of verbs with similar meanings followed by

an infinitive and gerund.

Keywords: like, love, infinitive, gerund, verb complementation, COCA

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to my advisor, Assistant

Professor Dr.Supakorn Phoocharoensil, for his kindness and great support during the

period of my research study which helped me to successfully complete this research.

In addition, I am very thankful to all teachers and staff of English

Language Teaching at Language Institute Thammasart University who have taught

me and given me suggestions throughout two years of my study.

Lastly, I do express my appreciation to my beloved family for their love

and support and all of my classmates for their encouragement.

Ms. Onnicha Wattanasiributh

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT (1)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (2)

LIST OF TABLES (5)

LIST OF FIGURES (6)

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background and Rationale 1

1.2 Research objectives 2

1.3 Research questions 2

1.4 Scope of the study 2

1.5 Significance of the study 3

1.6 Organization of the study 3

CHAPTER 2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE 4

2.1 The verbs like and love 4

2.1.1 Like 4

2.1.2 Love 4

2.2 Studies of infinitives and gerunds 5

2.3 Corpus 7

2.4 Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) 7

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CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 9

3.1 Data Sources 9

3.2 Data Collection Procedure 9

3.3 Data Analysis 9

CHAPTER 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 11

4.1 General overview 11

4.2 The frequencies of like/love + V infinitive and like/love + V ing

in the five sections of COCA 12

4.3 The frequencies of like constructions 14

4.4 The frequencies of love constructions 15

4.5 The frequencies of like and love constructions 16

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 23

5.1 Conclusion 23

5.2 Limitations 23

5.3 Recommendations for further studies 24

5.4 Pedagogical Implications 24

REFERENCES 25

BIOGRAPHY 27

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LIST OF TABLES

Tables Page

1. The five sections of data in COCA 8

2. Most common verbs in the structure like/likes/liked + V infinitive and

like/likes/liked + V ing 17

3. Most common verbs in the structure love/loves/loved + V infinitive and

love/loves/loved + V ing 19

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figures Page

1. Frequencies of the lemmas like/love + V infinitive and like/love + V ing 11

2. Frequencies of like/love + V infinitive and like/love + V ing

in the five sections of COCA 12

3. Frequencies of like/likes/liked + V infinitive and like/likes/liked + V ing 14

4. Frequencies of love/loves/loved + V infinitive and love/loves/loved + V ing 15

5. Frequencies of like/ likes/ liked/love/loves/loved + V infinitive and

like/likes/liked/love/loves/loved + V ing 16

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background and Rationale

In recent years, corpora have become growing instruments which researchers

have used to analyze the English language and teachers have applied to language

teaching. Dazdarevic, Zoranic and Fijuljanin (2015) refer to corpora as the databases

containing the electronic authentic language stored on computers and available on the

Internet. In language teaching, the use of corpora in classrooms started to develop in

the last 30 years, employed in such approaches as using the authentic and real-life

examples in teaching.

The infinitive and the gerund are among the most important points which

teachers should consider when creating appropriate lessons for students. A lot of

corpus-based research has been conducted to investigate the comparison of infinitive

and gerund. An infinitive is a verb which is formed with the to + base form of the

verb, while a gerund is a verb in its -ing form. Some verbs could be followed by an

infinitive or gerund with no change of meaning, such as continue or start, while some

could be followed by either an infinitive or gerund with a change in meaning such as

hate, love, like, etc (Seaton, 2012, p.271). As for like and love, these words are used

with both infinitive and gerund form with changing meanings. In general, the two

verbs provide similar meanings; they refer to the notion of enjoyment (Duffley, 2004).

Moreover, these are included in S1 (the 1,000 most frequent words in spoken English)

and W1 (the 1000 most frequent words in written English), which indicates that these

words are important to know, according to Longman dictionary of contemporary

English (2005). Thus, teachers should consider these as important words when they

teach them with the infinitive and gerund forms.

Some studies have indicated that there are some slight differences in the use of

verbs in the infinitive and gerund forms. Some previous studies investigated like

followed by the infinitive and gerund. Huddleston and Pullum (2002) claimed that

like+ V infinitive is associated with change, while like + V ing is associated with

actuality (as cited in Dubská, 2013, p.10). In contrast, some point out differences of

love when followed by the infinitive and gerund. The verbs followed by the to

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infinitive form emphasize the results of the action while the -ing form emphasizes the

experience or action. (Carter, McCarthy, Mark & O’Keeffe, 2011). For example, I

love learning new skills. (= I enjoy learning.) and I love to learn new skills (= I often

choose to learn.) provide subtle differences in meanings (Seaton, 2012, p. 271).

The study of like and love with the infinitive and gerund form using COCA, a

corpus which contains data from American English could help teachers in teaching

English. For example, it could help them highlight how native speakers of English use

these words when followed by the to infinitive and -ing forms. Moreover, this study

would be beneficial to teachers creating appropriate infinitive and gerund lessons for

students and helping to offer better explanations of the differences of these words in

an infinitive and gerund to students. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the

frequencies of like and love in infinitive and gerund with a corpus-based method using

COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) to analyze the differences of

complement constructions of these words.

1.2 Research objectives

1.2.1 To examine the occurrences of like and love followed by an infinitive in

different genres in American English

1.2.2 To examine the occurrences of like and love followed by a gerund in

different genres in American English

1.3 Research questions

1.3.1 What are the occurrences of like/love + V infinitive found in different

genres in American English?

1.3.2 What are the occurrences of like/love + V ing found in different genres in

American English?

1.4 Scope of the study

The aim of the study was to examine the occurrences of like and love in

infinitive and gerund to analyze the differences of complement constructions of these

words in corpus-based English by using COCA. The researcher collected the data

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from 500 concordance lines of like and love in both infinitive and gerund

constructions. The occurrences of the two verbs in the infinitive and gerund

constructions in different genres were investigated.

1.5 Significance of the study

The findings of this study reveal the frequencies of like and love followed by

an infinitive and gerund in different genres of American English. Furthermore, this

study would be beneficial to further studies on verbs with similar meanings followed

by the infinitive and gerund. In addition, teachers will be able to create corpus-based

infinitive and gerund lessons for students and offer better explanations of like and love

in an infinitive and gerund to students.

1.6 Organization of the study

The study has been structured to reflect the information on analyzing the

differences of complement constructions of like and love in an infinitive and gerund.

In this first chapter, the background of the study is provided to introduce and

contextualize the study: an overview of verbs followed by the infinitive and gerund;

the objective of this study; research question; scope and significance of the study. The

second chapter deals with the definitions of like and love and the previous studies

related to verbs followed by the infinitive and gerund. In the third chapter, research

methodology will be revealed, i.e. data sources, data collection procedure and data

analysis. Chapter 4 presents the corpus-based results of like and love followed by an

infinitive and gerund, as found in different genres of COCA. In addition, this chapter

also discusses the findings in relation to the previous related studies. Chapter 5

concludes the study and offers recommendations for future studies.

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CHAPTER 2

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

2.1 The verbs like and love

Like and love were the verbs which were examined in this study. Each word

has different meanings. However, there are times when they share some similar

meanings. Longman dictionary of contemporary English (2005) provides the meaning

of like and love as follows:

2.1.1 Like

- THINK SOMETHING IS NICE: to enjoy something or think that it is nice

or good.

- LIKE A PERSON: to think that someone is nice or enjoy being with them

- APPROVE OF SOMETHING: to approve of something and think that it

is good or right

- DO SOMETHING REGULARLY: to try to do something regularly or

make something happen regularly

- WANT: used to say that you want something or want to do something/

used to ask someone if they want something or want to do something

(Longman dictionary of contemporary English, 2005, p. 936-937)

2.1.2 Love

- ROMANTIC ATTRACTION: to have a strong feeling of /affection for

someone, combined with sexual attraction

- CARE ABOUT: to care very much about someone, especially a member of

your family or a close friend

- LIKE/ ENJOY: to like something very much or enjoy doing something very

much

- LOYALTY: to have a strong feeling of loyalty to your country, an

institution etc.

(Longman dictionary of contemporary English, 2005, p. 368)

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When considering the meanings of verbs like and love, there is a similar

meaning. Like means to enjoy something or think that it is nice or good and love

means to like something very much or enjoy doing something very much. The similar

meaning of them is the notion of enjoyment (Duffley, 2004).

2.2 Studies on infinitives and gerunds

In English, there are some verbs that are usually followed by an infinitive (V +

V infinitive) or gerund (V + V ing). Some verbs are only followed by V infinitive,

e.g. ask, agree, want, choose, etc. Some verbs are normally followed by the -ing form,

e.g. admit, avoid, miss, consider. Interestingly, some are followed either by V

Infinitive or V ing with different meanings, e.g. stop, try, remember (Carter,

McCarthy, Mark & O’Keeffe, 2011).

(1) We stopped to buy some water at the motorway service area.

(2) She stopped crying as soon as she saw her mother.

When considering the meanings of stop in (1) and (2), they provide different

meanings. In (1), it means we were travelling and we stopped for a short time in order

to buy some water at the motorway service area. On the other hand, stop in (2) means

that she was crying, and then she stopped and did not cry anymore. Stop has different

meanings when followed by an infinitive or gerund as in stop in (1) that we stopped

for a short time before doing another thing, and stop in (2) that she did not cry

anymore. Stop followed by V infinitive indicates that someone stops doing something

in order to do something else while stop followed by V ing indicates that an action or

event is no longer continuing (Carter, McCarthy, Mark & O’Keeffe, 2011). This

exemplifies how some researchers have investigated particular verbs followed by an

infinitive and gerund to examine the meaning differences between them.

Huddleston and Pullum (2002) investigated the differences between the

infinitive and the –ing form complement after the verb like. The results showed that

like + V infinitive is associated with change while like + V ing is associated with

actuality (as cited in Dubská, 2013, p.10), as in (3) – (4).

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(3) I like being married.

(4) I like to be married.

(Huddleston and Pullum, 2002, p. 1242)

Smith (2009) made a comparison between the verbs followed by V infinitive

and V ing. The emotive verbs like like/love followed by V ing were accepted because

“they evoke some kinds of overlap in one of their senses between the matrix and

subordinate processes” (p.11). In contrast, the emotive verbs followed by V infinitive

“evoke more sense that the matrix subjects love/like “the idea of doing” the

subordinate process in its entirety” (as cited in Dubská, 2013, p. 11), as in (5) – (6).

(5) We love/like walking to the lake.

(6) We love/like to walk to the lake.

Similarly, Wang (2014) also studied the use of some verbs followed by an

infinitive and gerund. The findings showed that some verbs, e.g. hate, like, love,

prefer, start, etc., which could take two patterns as V + V infinitive and V + V ing,

had a slight difference in their meaning. When using to with V infinitive, it implied an

action happening in the future. On the other hand, an action happening during the

process of the matrix verb was represented by V + ing (p. 150-151), as in (7) – (8).

(7) We managed to put the fire out.

(8) Do you enjoy teaching English?

There have been more researchers who found some differences between verbs

followed by an infinitive and gerund. They have revealed that the verbs followed by

an infinitive implied the results of the action or event, while those followed by a

gerund implied the action or experience. Moreover, an infinitive is used to express

habits or preferences while a gerund is used to suggest enjoyment. (Carter, McCarthy,

Mark & O’Keeffe, 2011), as in (9) – (10).

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(9) I love cooking Indian food.

(10) I like to drink juice in the morning, and tea at lunchtime.

2.3 Corpus

Corpus is one of the most recent tools which researchers use to enhance their

studies in various respects, e.g. linguistic analysis or language pedagogy. The term

corpus has been defined differently by many researchers. Sinclair (1996) defined a

corpus as “a collection of pieces of language that are selected and ordered according

to explicit linguistic criteria in order to be used as a sample of the language.” (as cited

in McEnery, Xiao, & Tono, 2006). Likewise, a corpus is a collection of written or

spoken transcription data, which can be used as a means of verifying hypotheses

about a language (Crystal, 1991). In language pedagogy, McEnery and Wilson (2001)

revealed that when using a corpus in language teaching, the empirical data is one of

the strengths of corpus data which provides the intuitions of speakers and makes

linguistic analysis more objective (as cited in McEnery & Xiao, 2010, p. 364).

Therefore, in this study, the corpus is the principled collection of data which the

researcher used to obtain the data for the verbs like and love to analyze the differences

of complement constructions of these words.

2.4 Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)

Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) was used to obtain the

data for the verbs like and love. COCA is the largest freely available corpus of

American English. It was created by Mark Davies. This corpus consists of more than

560 million words in 220,225 texts. The texts in the corpus come from a variety of

sources. It is divided into five sections: spoken, fiction, popular magazines,

newspapers, and academic journals as follows:

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Table 1. The five sections of data in COCA

Sections Numbers of words The sources of data

1. Spoken (SPOK) 109 million words Transcripts of unscripted

conversation from more than 150

different TV and radio programs

2. Fiction (FIC) 105 million words Short stories and plays from literary

magazines, children’s magazines,

popular magazines, first chapters of

first edition books 1990-present, and

movie scripts.

3. Popular magazines

(MAG)

110 million words Nearly 100 different magazines,

with a good mix between specific

domains (news, health, home and

gardening, women, financial,

religion, sports, etc).

4. Newspapers

(NEWS)

106 million words 10 newspapers from across the US;

there is a good mix between

different sections of the newspaper,

such as local news, opinion, sports,

financial, etc.

5. Academic journals

(ACAD)

103 million words Nearly 100 different peer-reviewed

journals.

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CHAPTER 3

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Data Sources

COCA or Corpus of Contemporary American English is a large currently

available corpora including more than 560 million words. This study used COCA to

collect data on the verbs like and love in authentic American English.

3.2 Data Collection Procedure

The principal source of data was COCA. The data were randomly drawn from

500 concordance lines of like/love + V infinitive and 500 concordance lines of

like/love + V ing in authentic American English. Then the data was analyzed manually

to count the frequencies of like and love in three verb forms, i.e. in like/likes/liked + V

infinitive, like/likes/liked + V ing, love/loves/loved + V infinitive and love/loves/loved

+ V ing.

To obtain the data for like/love + V infinitive and like/love + V ing from

COCA, the search string for like + V infinitive/V ing were [like]_v* and [love]_v* for

love + V infinitive/V ing. The lemmas, the basic form of a word, e.g. the infinitive

form of a verb, of like and love could be presented by putting the square brackets

around like and love: [like] and [love]. For searching the verbs after [like] and [love],

_v* was used to specify that the searcher wanted a verb. After getting the right data,

the frequencies of like/love + V infinitive and like/love + V ing were counted manually

to classify them into groups as like/likes/liked + V infinitive, like/likes/liked + V ing,

love/loves/loved + V infinitive and love/loves/loved + V ing.

3.3 Data Analysis

The study was aimed at investigating the occurrences of like/love + V infinitive

and like/love + V ing found in COCA. The data were classified into groups. The

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researcher then counted the frequencies and investigated differences between

occurrences of like and love + infinitive and gerund in different genres.

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CHAPTER 4

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

4.1 General overview

Figure 1. Frequencies of the lemmas like/love + V infinitive and like/love + V ing

Figure 1 shows the frequencies of like/love + V infinitive and like/love + V ing.

The different results indicate that the most frequent construction is like + V infinitive.

The numbers of occurrences of like + V infinitive and like + V ing are tremendously

different (like + V infinitive with 126 tokens and like + V ing with 19 tokens). As for

the construction of love, the number of occurrences of love + V infinitive is higher than

love + V ing (love + V infinitive with 45 tokens and love + V ing with 33 tokens).

This result is similar to Duffley (2004) in the frequencies of using like + V

infinitive/ V ing. Duffley (2004) stated that like + V infinitive was more frequent than

like + V ing in American English. Moreover, the numbers of occurrences of like + V

infinitive and like + V ing differ greatly; 115 tokens of like+ V infinitive and 8 of like

+ V ing in the data. Dubská (2013) also made a comparison of love + V infinitive and

love + V ing, which showed that love + V infinitive was more frequent than love + V

ing.

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

like + V

infinitive

like + V ing love + V

infinitive

love + V ing

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The findings of the present study therefore confirm the previous results that

like + V infinitive is more frequent than like + V ing, while love + V infinitive is more

frequent than love + V ing. In summary, the verb like is more frequent than love.

4.2 The frequencies of like/love + V infinitive and like/love + V ing in the five

sections of COCA

Figure 2. Frequencies of like/love + V infinitive and like/love + V ing

in the five sections of COCA

As can be seen in Figure 2, the frequencies of like/love + V infinitive and

like/love + V ing in the five sections of COCA are different. Related to the data from

Figure 1 in which like + V infinitive is the most frequent, the Magazine section has the

highest frequency. There are 36 tokens of this structure in Magazine, 32 tokens in

Spoken, 29 tokens in Fiction, 17 tokens in Academic and 11 tokens in Newspaper

respectively.

As regards like + V ing, the highest frequency was in the Fiction section with 9

tokens, followed by Spoken (4 tokens), Magazine (3 tokens), Newspaper (2 tokens)

and Academic (1 token).

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

like + V infinitive like + V ing love + V infinitive love + V ing

Magazine Spoken Fiction Academic Newspaper

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The most frequent section of love + V infinitive is Spoken (15 tokens). The

second most frequent is Newspaper with 12 tokens, followed by Academic with 10

tokens, Magazines and Fiction with 4 tokens each.

As shown in Figure 2, the most frequent section of love + V ing is Magazine

(13 tokens) followed by Academic with 9 tokens, Spoken with 6 tokens and

Newspaper with 3 tokens. Surprisingly, there is no occurrence of love + V ing in

Fiction.

In terms of frequency of like/love + infinitive, like appeared most frequently in

the Magazine section which represents written texts, whereas love is used most

frequently in Spoken. The following frequencies of these words in each section are

also different. It implies that the occurrences of like and love + V infinitive are

different in different genres. However, when the frequencies of written data in 4

sections, i.e. Magazines, Fiction, Academic and Newspaper, were compared with

Spoken, the average frequency in written data in 4 sections of like was 23.25 while in

Spoken it was 32. Moreover, the average of love in written data is 7.5 but that in

Spoken is 15. Thus, it is interesting that both like + V infinitive, and love + V infinitive

are similar in that both occurred most frequently in the spoken section.

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4.3 The frequencies of like constructions

Figure 3. Frequencies of like/likes/liked + V infinitive and like/likes/liked + V ing

Figure 3 presents the frequencies of like/likes/liked + V infinitive and

like/likes/liked + V ing, where the highest number of occurrences of like is like + V

infinitive (105 tokens). The other constructions of like as liked/likes + V infinitive are

lower in frequency: liked + V infinitive with 12 tokens and likes + V infinitive with 9

tokens. The number of occurrences of like + V infinitive (105 tokens) is for more than

the number of occurrences of liked+ V infinitive (12 tokens) and likes + V infinitive (9

tokens). In contrast, the differences in the number of occurrences between like + V ing

and liked + V ing are smaller, i.e. 11 tokens in like + V ing and 7 tokens in liked + V

ing. However, likes + V ing shows the lowest number of occurrences, i.e. only 1 token.

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

110

120

like + V

infinitive

likes + V

infinitive

liked + V

infinitive

like + V ing likes + V ing liked + V ing

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4.4 The frequencies of love constructions

Figure 4. Frequencies of love/loves/loved + V infinitive and love/loves/loved + V ing

As for the verb love, love + V infinitive is the most frequent construction.

When the constructions of love are examined separately, the number of occurrences of

loves/loved + V infinitive is far lower than that of love + V infinitive (love + V

infinitive with 32 tokens, loved + V infinitive with 8 tokens and loves + V infinitive

with 5 tokens). As for love + V ing, love + V ing is the most frequent construction (21

tokens), followed by loved + V ing (11 tokens) and loves + V ing (1 token)

respectively.

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

love + V

infinitive

loves + V

infinitive

loved + V

infinitive

love + V ing loves + V ing loved + V

ing

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4.5 The frequencies of like and love constructions

Figure 5. Frequencies of like/ likes/ liked/love/loves/loved + V infinitive and

like/likes/liked/love/loves/loved + V ing

Figure 5 shows the frequencies of like/ likes/ liked + V infinitive,

like/likes/liked + V ing, love/loves/loved + V infinitive and love/loves/loved + V ing.

For all the constructions of like and love, like+ V infinitive has the highest number of

occurrences. When looking at the constructions of like and love separately, it is

interesting to note that like + V infinitive and love + V infinitive are the most frequent

constructions. As for like, the numbers of occurrences of like + infinitive are higher

than the other constructions. On the other hand, there are differences in the numbers of

occurrences between love + V infinitive and loves/loved + V infinitive/V ing. Love + V

infinitive occurs more frequently than loves/loved + V infinitive/V ing.

105

912 11

17

32

58

21

1

11

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

110

120

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Table 2 presents the most common verbs in the infinitive and -ing forms in the

structures like/likes/liked + V infinitive and like/likes/liked + V ing.

Table 2. Most common verbs in the structure like/likes/liked + V infinitive and

like/likes/liked + V ing

like + V

infinitive

likes + V

infinitive

likes + V

infinitive

like + V

ing

likes + V

ing

liked + V

ing

1. see (7) talk (2) drink (1) be (4) know (1) dress (1)

2. take (6) go (1) see (1) bring (1) get (1)

3. be (6) take (1) take (1) go (1) do (1)

4. thank (4) do (1) eat (1) talk (1) watch (1)

5. know (3) work (1) say (1) put (1) help (1)

6. use (3) say (1) meet (1) hang (1) sleep (1)

7. ask (3) play (1) lie (1) kill (1) pay (1)

8. do (2) enter (1) keep (1) think (1)

9. work (2) invoke (1)

10. hear (2) party (1)

11. acknowledge

(2)

test (1)

12. make (1) admit (1)

13. sell (1)

14. go (1)

15. speak (1)

16. call (1)

17. stay (1)

18. play (1)

19. skip (1)

20. finish (1)

21. invite (1)

22. read (1)

23. cook (1)

24. buy (1)

25. tell (1)

With regard to the most frequent construction like + V infinitive, one thing that

is interesting is about the nature of the top ten verbs in the structure like + infinitive.

The results show that 6 of them are dynamic verbs, i.e. take, thank, use, ask, do, and

work, while others are stative verbs. Moreover, the verbs occurring in other

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constructions of like are more dynamic verbs than stative verbs. To be more specific,

take is frequent in the 3 constructions of like/likes/liked + V infinitive as in (11) – (13):

(11) I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our friends in PSA who

generated hundreds…. [COCA:2008:ACAD: PSA Journal]

(12) I even told him all about my car, Bonkers, and how he likes to take baths.

Mickey had me believing that he was interested in everything!

[COCA:2013:FIC:BK:Jump Gun Annabelle]

(13) Didn't mean I liked to take any crap about it, though.

[COCA:2012:FIC:BK:Stay At Home Dead]

While take occurs only in the infinitive structures, there are some verbs

appearing in both V infinitive and V ing: do in like/likes + V infinitive as in (14) and

(15) and liked + V ing as in (16) and go in like + V infinitive and like + V ing as in

(17) and (18).

(14) Mr SMITH: And what I like to do...

ROKER: I love this trip you've got. [COCA:SPOK: NBC_ Today]

(15) I have two older sisters, and our entire family likes to do a lot of things

together. [COCA:2010:ACAD: SPA Journal]

(16) We took turns rolling our cast. We both liked doing it.

[COCA:2010:FIC:Bk:Extra]

(17) I like to go to dinner with people. [COCA: 2011: MAG: Harpers Bazaar]

(18) Listen, if you like going to the DMV, and you think they do a great job,...

[COCA:2009: SPOK: PBS_ Newshour]

As Table 2 shows, the common verbs in the construction like/likes/liked + V

infinitive and like + V ing, the verbs in the constructions like/likes/liked + V ing, are

different. There is no common verb in like/likes/liked + V ing constructions.

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Table 3 presents the most common verbs in the structure love/loves/loved + V

infinitive and love/loves/loved + V ing. The common verbs which appears in more than

3 constructions of love are be, play, and do.

Table 3. Most common verbs in the structure love/loves/loved + V infinitive and

love/loves/loved + V ing

love + V

infinitive

loves + V

infinitive

loved + V

infinitive

love + V

ing

loves + V

ing

loved + V

ing

1. be (3) perform

(1)

dance (2) be (2) watch (1) be (2)

2. have (2) go (1) read (1) play (1) learn (1)

3. watch (2) come (1) be (1) write (1) read (1)

4. do (2) do (1) do (1) give (1) tell (1)

5. hear (2) hang (1) photograph

(1)

see (1) see (1)

6. play (2) risk (1) hear (1) play (1)

7. buy (1) travel (1) use (1) cuddle (1)

8. work (1) swim (1) visit (1)

9. cook (1) work (1) scoop (1)

10. laugh (1) perform (1)

11. get (1) fight (1)

12. hire (1) google (1)

13. talk (1) learn (1)

14. love (1) have (1)

15. know (1) wear (1)

16. eat (1) serve (1)

17. teach (1) tour (1)

18. live (1) hang (1)

19. practice

(1)

surf (1)

20. thank (1)

21. interview

(1)

22. walk (1)

23. suck (1)

24. listen (1)

25. listen (1)

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As for love, the verbs which come after love in all structures are similar. In

particular, the top ten verbs in the structure love + infinitive are more dynamic verbs

than stative verbs. Likewise, the verbs occurring in other constructions of love are also

more frequently dynamic verbs than stative verbs.

Dubská (2013) also revealed these findings with the most common verbs of

love. It was shown that there were more dynamic verbs than stative verbs occurring in

the top ten verbs after love in all structures, i.e. love/loves/loved + V infinitive and

love/loves/loved + V ing. These findings therefore confirm previous results that the

verbs occurring after love in all constructions are dynamic verbs more than stative

verbs.

As can be seen in Table 3, the most common verb is be. This verb appears

more frequently than the other verbs in four structures, i.e. love/loved + V infinitive

and love/loved + V ing, as in (19) – (22):

(19) He's so incredibly knowledge, and others love to be around him to learn

from him. [COCA:2009:NEWS:SanFranChron]

(20) ...even though she had that typical teenager self-consciousness, she also

loved to be dramatic. [COCA:2009:NEWS:SanFranChron]

(21) I love being with my kids and my grandkids.

[COCA:2006:MAG:Smithsonian]

(22) He gained this confidence he didn't have before. He loved being a

fireman. [COCA:2001:MAG:RollingStone]

The verb play is used frequently in the structures followed by both V infinitive

and V ing as in love + V infinitive and love/loved + V ing, as in (23) – (25):

(23) Conklin said. And Texas guys reportedly love to play with rattlesnakes.

[COCA:2007:NEWS:Houston]

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(24) When he asks about them, say you love playing chef but hate cleaning up

too. [COCA:2011:MAG:Cosmopolitan]

(25) He loved playing in the pool and holding hands with his friends on hiking

trails and was... [COCA:2008:MAG:Redbook]

The verb do is another verb that appears more frequently in the constructions

love/loves/loved + V infinitive, as in (26) – (28):

(26) That's just something I personally love to do.

[COCA:2015:ACAD:MusicEduc]

(27) He loves to do everything that's active, but he just doesn't like books,...

[COCA:2008:SPOK:NBC_Today]

(28) What Coach loved to do more than anything else in the world was to sit

around and listen... [COCA:2014:NEWS:Austin]

However, do does not appear in any structures of love/loves/loved + V ing.

The results show that both like and love occur more frequently with the to

infinitive than the -ing form. This finding is similar to that of Duffley (2004)’s studies

which showed that like + V infinitive (115 tokens) was more frequent than like + V ing

(8 tokens). Dubská (2013) also compared the numbers of occurrences of love + V

infinitive and love + V ing, which showed that love + V infinitive was more frequent

than love + V ing. Therefore, the to infinitive is the frequent form which most often

follows the verbs like and love.

Like and love have many different meanings; however, they provide a similar

meaning which refers to the notion of enjoyment. When considering the V infinitive

followed by like and love, the numbers of occurrences of these words differ greatly;

105 tokens of like+ V infinitive and 32 of love + V infinitive. This implies that people

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use like more frequently than love followed by V infinitive, although both verbs have

similar meaning.

As for the most common verbs of like and love followed by the infinitive and

gerund, Dubská (2013) revealed the findings of the most common verbs of love which

showed that the top ten verbs after love in V infinitive and V ing were more dynamic

verbs than stative verbs. Through analyzing the common verbs occurring in like/love +

V infinitive and like/love + V ing from Table 2 and 3, it is interesting that all of them

appeared with dynamic verbs more often than stative verbs. This implies that both like

and love followed by the infinitive and gerund are frequently used with the verbs

which describe an action to give information to other people. According to the results

of this study, the data could be beneficial to English teaching as offering better

explanations to students when they learn the use of like and love followed by the

infinitive and gerund. Because the data were analyzed from native speakers, it reflects

how the English language works. As Duffley (1990) claimed in referring to English

grammar: "grammar has to be seen as more than just a collection of rules, of do' s and

don't's, in order for it to reflect the way native English speakers really speak and to

become a positive factor for stimulating the student' s curiosity and desire to learn" (as

cited in Arseneau, p. 5).

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CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

5.1 Conclusion

In COCA, the verb like is more frequent than love. In particular, the most

frequent construction is like + V infinitive, followed by like/love + V infinitive and

like/love + V ing. Furthermore, like + V infinitive has higher frequencies than like + V

ing, and the numbers of occurrences of love + V infinitive are higher than love + V ing.

When considering the occurrences of the target verbs in the five COCA sections, the

occurrences of like + V infinitive in all sections are high and those in the Magazine

section are the highest. However, both like + V infinitive and love + V infinitive occur

with high relative frequencies in the spoken section. In all constructions of like and

love, they are followed by dynamic verbs more than stative verbs.

When teachers introduce and teach the infinitive along with the gerund, some

students find them easier to understand. However, students could become confused

about the differences in using each one (Lubin, 2018). Thus, teachers should

understand the differences between the infinitive and gerund, especially using the

verbs which could provide similar meanings, e.g. like, love. For example, teachers

need to define the gerunds and infinitives clearly and provide authentic examples for

the differences between to infinitive and -ing form. As for the results in this study,

they indicate it would be beneficial to consider the importance of verbs like and love

followed by the infinitive and gerund in teaching because of the similar meanings and

provide a better explanation of like and love in an infinitive and gerund to students

with appropriate lessons.

5.2 Limitations

Although this study has reached its aims, there were some limitations. First, the

numbers of concordance lines used in this study are small. It would be difficult to find

significant relationships from the data. It would be better if it was analyzed with more

concordance lines of data to ensure the results of like and love followed by the

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infinitive and gerund. Furthermore, the data were collected only from COCA which is

an American English database. The comparative data from these words looking at both

British and American English could provide different results.

5.3 Recommendations for further studies

Like and love can have different meanings and both contain a similar definition

as the notion of enjoyment. However, the verb like is more frequent than love.

Therefore, the comparison of the infinitive and the gerund can be studied further to

analyze the difference in details between like and love by increasing the number of

concordance lines of data to increase generalizability. Moreover, the occurrences of

these verbs in British and American English might not be the same and it would be

interesting to investigate any differences between them. Therefore, the comparison

between the two varieties could be addressed in further studies.

5.4 Pedagogical Implications

5.4.1 This study would be useful to help students become aware of verbs with

similar meanings followed by an infinitive and gerund.

5.4.2 This study may be beneficial to teachers, helping preparation of an

infinitive or gerund lesson with authentic English. Although corpus-based data are

useful, teachers should select items carefully and prepare an appropriate lesson for

students’ proficiency level, because some corpus-based vocabulary which is from

authentic English may be too difficult for some lemmas with low proficiency. Thus,

teachers should select the corpus-based data that fits their students’ English

proficiency level.

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REFERENCES

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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Davies, M. (2008) The corpus of contemporary American English (COCA): 520

million words, 1990-present. Available online at https://corpus.byu.edu/coca/.

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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282186652_BENEFITS_OF_CORPU

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Dubská, K. (2013). Verb complementation of emotive verbs (love, hate) by infinitive

and -ing forms in British and American English: A corpus based study.

Retrieved October 26, 2017, from https://theses.cz/id/q9vvrs/00167525-

612327486.pdf

Duffley, P. J. (2004). Verbs of liking with the infinitive and the gerund. English

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Lubin, M. (2018). How to teach gerunds and infinitives to ESL students without

confusing them. Retrieved from https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator-

english/esl-gerunds-and- infinitives.

McEnery, T., & Wilson, A. (2001). Corpus linguistics: An introduction. Edinburgh:

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McEnery, T., & Xiao, R. (2010). What corpora can offer in language teaching and

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McEnery, T., Xiao, R. & Tono, Y. (2006). Corpus-based language studies: An

advanced resource book. Routledge.

Oxford advanced learner's dictionary of current English (2010). London: Oxford

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Seaton, A. (2012). Focus on grammar. Singapore: Learners Publishing Pte Ltd.

Sinclair, J. (1996). Preliminary recommendations on corpus typology. Retrieved from

http://www.ilc.cnr.it/EAGLES/corpustyp/corpustyp.html.

Wang, D. (2014). Verbs taking “to+v” or “v+ing” as their complements: A cognitive

grammar account. International Journal of Linguistics, 6, 358-380. doi:

https://doi.org/10.5296/ijl.v6i5.6492

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BIOGRAPHY

Name Miss Onnicha Wattanasiributh

Date of Birth August 23, 1990

Educational Attainment

2014: Bachelor of Education,

Silpakorn University

Work Position English teacher

Anuban Nakhonpathom School

Work Experiences English teacher

Sukhondheerawidh School

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