A Corpus - Based Study Of Synonyms In Nouns

During the process of second language learning, learners always feel confused about the distinctions of synonyms. The traditional methods of synonym distinction rely on dictionary, language intuition and language experience. These methodologies were effective before the advancement of science and technology; however, since the advancement of science and technology, synonym distinction research has become more reliant upon corpora based material.This thesis applies the Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis method aiming to discuss the data differentiation between the two corpora BNC and CLEC from the perspectives of word frequency, colligation, collocation and semantic prosody. This study has obtained major findings as follows:(i) Concerning word frequency, native speakers tend to use more synonyms than Chinese English-language learners;(ii)From the aspect of typical colligation, there’s no distinct differentiation between the two corpora; however, as to the use of Adj+N and V+N, Chinese learners tend to overuse them;(iii)Compared with native speakers, Chinese learners tend to use typical collocates which have vague meanings and whose quantity is less than native speakers;(iv)Chinese learners misuse semantic prosody, especially effect and impact. At the same time, this present study has pointed out that the main factors that may influence Chinese learners’ synonym distinction might include L1 negative transfer, misleading of CE dictionary and so on. Based on the conclusions above, a collection of synonym differentiation data and some valuable experience and methods for synonym distinction can be found in the two corpora.