A Contrastive Study Of Behavioral Profiles Of English And Chinese Near-synonymous Nouns

The study focuses on making a contrastive analysis of the behavioral profiles of near-synonymous nouns.With their ubiquity in language,it is of great importance to discriminate them for both theoretical linguistics and applied linguistics.However,because of their complexity in semantic and stylistic features,the discrimination and application of near-synonymous nouns has been the difficulty in vocabulary learning and language use.As the previous researches show,with difficulty in distinguishing the fine-grained semantic meanings of near-synonymous nouns,Chinese EFL learners have trouble in selecting proper collocation and lack awareness of semantic prosody of EFFECT,INFLUENCE and“影响”.Based on the previous semantic discrimination theories,the traditional approaches generally make use of the explanations in the dictionary or human intuitive experience with context seldom taken into account,which makes it hard to understand and master the semantic nuances of near-synonymous nouns.With the construction and application of corpora,it is possible and convenient to do the context research,and the study attempts to discover the similar and different behavioral profiles of near-synonymous nouns EFFECT,INFLUENCE and their common equivalent“影响”from the point of view of context.For this purpose,based on the Extended Units of Meaning,the study applies the Behavioral Profile approach to the contrastive analysis of the behavioral profiles of the pre-nominal adjectives of EFFECT,INFLUENCE,and“影响”and that of verbs collocating with them,with two comparable corpora,CLOB and Torch2009,providing empirical support.And two research questions are to be answered:(1)Compared with“影响”,what are the behavioral profiles of the pre-nominal adjectives of EFFECT,INFLUENCE?(2)Compared with“影响”,what are the behavioral profiles of the verbs collocating with EFFECT,INFLUENCE?The research results show that:(1)the behavioral profiles of the pre-nominal adjectives of EFFECT,INFLUENCE,“影响”are a bit similar with respective distinctive features.For semantic preference,Evaluative/emotive and Relational/classificational/restrictive are the common semantic groups shared by them,and a few pre-nominal adjectives are modifying all of them,such as detrimental,profound,positive.EFFECT tends to be with Classifiers,while影响tends to be with Descriptors and INFLUENCE has no significant tendency.For semantic prosody,EFFECT and影响are inclined to be mixed,while INFLUENCE is inclined to be positive and neutral.(2)The verbs collocating with them are all inclined to be Activity Verbs and Verbs of Existence/Relationship,and a few verbs are collocating with all of them,such as EXERT,HAVE,TAKE.EFFECT tends to be with Verbs of Existence/Relationship,while INFLUENCE and影响tends to be with Activity Verbs.Therefore,the research findings show that the behavioral profile isas observable in Chinese as they are in English,and the near-synonyms not only share something in common but also own their distinctive features and are normally not interchangeable in either language.