This study investigates the grammatical behavior of English country names based on corpus linguistic evidence. An overview of the basic patterns of definite article use with country names as commonly described in English reference grammars and of the morphological structures of English country names is presented. Against this backdrop, the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) is used to explore which (groups of) country names occur more or less frequently with a definite article. The data analysis reveals that virtually all of the English country names examined are, to some extent, used in the syntactic position following a definite article. It is shown that certain grammatical constructions call for the use of a definite article in connection with country names. However, the morphology of the country names also has a strong influence on how often they are used with a definite article. Furthermore, it is argued that the minority of English country names that do not fit this morphological pattern may differ because they derive from other place name types that generally take a definite article.

这项研究基于语料库语言证据调查英语国名的语法行为。本文概述了英语参考语法中通常描述的使用国名的定冠词的基本模式以及英语国名的形态结构。在这种背景下，当代美国英语语料库（COCA）用于探讨哪些国家名称（或各组）在定冠词中或多或少地频繁出现。数据分析表明，在一定程度上，几乎所有被检查的英语国家名称在一定程度上都用于句法位置。结果表明，某些语法构造要求使用与国名相关的定冠词。然而，国名的形态对定冠词的使用频率也有很大的影响。此外，有人认为，不符合这种形态模式的少数英语国家/地区名称可能会有所不同，因为它们源自其他通常采用定冠词的地名类型。