1 Introduction

Expanding words, as adverbs of magnitude, can personalize the encoding of semantic intensity, enhance subjective emotions and cognitive experiences. They enhance semantics, mark the strength or degree of the modified component upwards, and are divided into extreme quantifiers and high quantifiers. Expanding the meaning of words by modifying adjectives can more accurately describe the degree of attributes of the modified subject, and classify and scalar the modified adjectives to determine their semantic level. In interpersonal interaction, expanding words and adjectives can indicate the intensity of emotional attitudes or behavioral actions, achieving linguistic intentions. In discourse, expanding words and adjectives help to understand the strength and weakness of the characteristics of things, highlight the meaning of discourse, and enhance interactivity and participation. This study takes the construction of expanding words and adjectives as the starting point to explore the discourse activity characteristics of constructing disciplinary knowledge in different disciplinary discourses. Referring to the classification framework of expanded words, this study focuses on 8 expanded words and their collocations. Through corpus retrieval, the study systematically analyzes the collocation characteristics and semantic interaction mechanism of expanded words and adjectives in academic English, revealing the relationship between their semantic features and disciplinary culture.

2 Literature Review

Reviewed the research history and current status of the construction collocation of "expanding words+adjectives". Since the 1990s, corpus based research has become mainstream, and its objectivity, universality, and stability have been recognized. Huang Ying and other scholars have analyzed the semantic characteristics of the collocation of expanded meaning words with adjectives from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives, and found that the internal modifications of adjectives in different expanded meaning words exhibit diverse development and dynamic changes. In addition, expanded meaning words have also achieved certain results in fields such as second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, and language comparison. In academic English, the usage characteristics of expansion words have received attention, and research has found that there are differences in the use of expansion words and adjectives among different disciplines. However, existing research has shortcomings, such as limited research subjects, lack of analysis of written language, and in-depth exploration of semantic collocation interaction mechanisms. This study selects four extreme quantifiers and four high quantifiers, focusing on the distribution characteristics in academic terminology texts, to further explore the relationship between semantic interaction models and disciplinary culture.

3 Research Design

Introduced the research design, including corpus sources, research methods, and analysis tools. The corpus is sourced from the British Academic Written Language Corpus (BAWE), which contains 6.5 million words covering academic writing articles from different majors and grades, and is representative and professional. The research method is based on Quirk et al.'s classification of expanded words, using LancsBox 6.0 to search for the "expanded words+AJ" sequence, and selecting the top 4 quantifiers and high quantifiers as the research objects. Adopting the contingency frequency analysis method to examine the distribution characteristics of disciplines, using the construction collocation analysis method to calculate collocation strength, especially the multiple specific co-occurrence word position analysis method to reveal collocation differences and adjective preferences. Finally, data visualization was performed using the GraphColl tool and corresponding analysis in LancsBox 6.0 to demonstrate the semantic selection of expansion words and adjectives.

4 Results and Discussion

This study used LancsBox 6.0 to search for the sequence of "expansion words+adjectives" in the BAWE database and found that "much+AJ" was used the most frequently, while "severe+AJ" was used the least. The collocation of different expansion words and adjectives shows that deep, severe, and much do not share high-frequency adjectives with other expansion words, while high shares the most high-frequency adjectives with extreme, total, and complete, indicating a high degree of similarity between these expansion words. The use of "expansive words+similar" and "expansive words+different" in academic writing reflects specific expressions and language strategies shared by the academic community.

5 Conclusion

This study is based on corpus data and uses construction collocation analysis to explore the use of "expansion words+AJ" in academic English. Research has found that: (1) high shares the most high-frequency adjectives with extreme, total, and complete, indicating a high degree of correlation; (2) There are differences in the preference for "expanding words+AJ" among different disciplines, such as "total", "deeply", and "severe", which have no significant differences in some disciplines; (3) The semantic features of expanding words and adjectives affect their mutual selection, such as deeply often being used in conjunction with important and ideological adjectives, and highly often being used in conjunction with possibility or material adjectives. Research has shown that the semantic categories of expansion words and adjectives in academic discourse are important factors affecting their mutual selection. Based on different discourse tones and meaning trends across disciplines, the combination of expansion words and adjectives presents different ways.