A Study On Synonym Discrimination Under Frame Semantics And Its Implications

Synonymy is a common linguistic phenomenon, but the so-called absolutesynonyms are extremely rare in natural languages; most of the synonymousexpressions can only be defined as near-synonyms. Generally speaking, synonymousexpressions have both their sameness and differences, but how to use them correctlyand properly is always a puzzling and difficult problem for both students and teachers.As for the distinctions between synonyms, scholars both at home and abroad haveproposed many theories and standards to discriminate them, such as the lexical fieldtheory proposed by Jost Trier, componential analysis led by L. Hjelmslev, truthconditional semantics and the Chinese multi-dimensional standards, etc. However,these approaches have their own deficiencies and limits in discriminating synonyms;they are mostly structuralism driven and neglect people’s cognitive construal inmeaning construction.In view of the above mentioned facts, this thesis tries to discriminate synonymsunder frame semantics, which provides us with a new perspective to analyze thesameness and differences of synonyms. By using the profile-frame organization,frame semantics defines synonyms as concepts denoting the same thing in the worldbut profiling it against different frames. As frames are based on people’s cognition, orempirical life, they usually have such characteristics as perspectivalized, evaluative, stylistic, dynamic, prototypical and hierarchical, etc. The study shows that thesedifferent characteristics often give rise to different framing effects and it is thesedifferent framing effects that formed the differences between synonyms. Therefore,supported by sufficient examples as its sound evidence, this thesis tries to discriminatesynonyms by analyzing what kind of framing effects certain terms involve and then totell the distinctions between them. Having solved the problem of synonymdiscrimination, this thesis also explores several implications of synonymdiscrimination under frame semantics, such as the implications for learning andteaching synonyms, synonym translation and thesaurus compilation, etc. The researchfinding shows that such kind of study based on frame semantics provides us with acognitive way to construe synonyms, which is an attempt worthwhile to make and atthe same time it lays certain foundation for further related study on senses and senserelations.