A Quantitative Study of English Verbs Conveying Falling Stock Market Situations

This paper aims to investigate both the diverse verbs that convey falling stock market situations and the environments in which these English verbs occur on the basis of real data extracted from the corpus of English stock market news. This quantitative study first shows that eighteen simple verbs and twenty-one phrasal verbs are used in describing bear markets and that there are nine types (rate, amount, level, temporal adverbial, reason, degree adverbial, spatial adverbial, conjunct, and participle construction) of expressions with which these verbs co-occur in sentences of stock market news. In addition, the study reveals that there is wide variation in the occurrence environments of these verbs. Moreover, it demonstrates that some verbs are restricted even in the range of rates with which they co-occur. The restrictions on the occurrence environments of the verbs can be used as guidelines for Korean reporters writing or translating sentences for English articles about falling situations in Korean markets. Such collocational information can also help English learners use more appropriate verb phrases.