A Corpus-based Research on Synonym Discrimination: Exemplified by “Finish”, “Complete” and “Accomplish”

Pengbiao Ding

doi:10.54097/br7e1c38

Authors

Pengbiao Ding

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54097/br7e1c38

Keywords:

Synonyms, Word Discrimination, Corpus Analysis, COCA

Abstract

The emergence of corpus has provided a new perspective for the identification and distinguishing of synonyms, and the linguistic facts contained in the corpus can be relied on to provide a strong support for lexical analysis. Based on the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and its vocabulary retrieval tool JustTheWord, this paper adopts a research method combining quantitative and qualitative analysis, and discusses the synonyms “finish”, “complete” and “accomplish” as the research objects from the aspects of registers, word frequency, colligation, collocates, and semantic preference, and explains the significance of this research for vocabulary teaching at the end of the article.

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