Discrimination of English Synonyms Based on Corpora近义词辨析.doc

Discrimination of English Synonyms Based on CorporaAbstract: Discrimination of English synonyms has become an indispensable part of our English learning. But it is of great difficulty for numerous EFL and ESL learners to grasp the nuances of different English synonyms when only several isolated illustrative sentences are available. While based on the abundant examples provided by corpora, we can have a clearer picture of the meaning, collocation and semantic prosody of those synonyms. This paper cites an example of synonym discrimination between “dreary”, “dull” and “boring” from the TEM-4 exam paper in 2013, and analyzes the subtle differences of the three words based on COCA. Key words: English synonyms; corpora; COCA; dreary; dull; boring1. IntroductionApart from the words and expressions derived from Anglo-Saxon, English borrowed largely from other languages like French, Latin and Greek. On the one hand, the extensive number of loanwords enriches English vocabulary and diversifies the means of expression for British. On the other, a great many synonyms occur as a result of the loanwords. Close as the synonyms are in the meaning, there exist great distinctions in their semanteme and other aspects. Therefore, to figure out the discrimination of English synonyms will contribute to our understanding of the words and to make use of the distinctions can enhance the effect of our expression.So we should first make sure what synonyms are. Words or expressions with the same or similar meaning are said to be synonymous. In other words, synonyms are words or expressions that share common semantic features. 1 People hold that synonyms can be roughly divided into “complete synonyms” and “relative synonyms”. As Professor Yang puts it, true synonyms are rare. In most cases, synonyms may differ in origin, the shades of meaning, social-expressive meaning, stylistic meaning and collocation and distribution. 1 After understanding the definition of synonyms, how can we truly master the way to discriminate synonyms? As we know, different words have different rules of collocation. For example, the most regular modifiers for “impact” are “significant”, “major”, ”profound”, while “influence” is invariably modified by “major”, “powerful” and “strong”. However, such differences cannot be easily seen from our traditional way of synonym learning. Only through thorough research into the most active usages of different words in the corpora can we conclude the most typical concurrence in linguistic research.Ever since the 1960s, corpus linguistics has enjoyed a rapid development, and progressively become an important research method of linguistics. A corpus is “a collection of electronic text gathered by a certain sampling criterion and representative of the variant or genre of one language or some language” 2. The earliest computer corpus BROWN came into being in the early 1960s, with a capacity of one million English words and containing the typical American English linguistic data in the 1960s. Up to now, BROWN has always been regarded as the standard corpus. 3 On the whole, corpora are exerting considerable influence in the research of linguistics because of their advantages of huge capacity, authentic linguistic data and fast searching. During the process of English learning, we encounter the difficulty of synonym discrimination. The paraphrases from dictionaries and textbooks cannot explain precisely the subtle differences between the synonyms. Whats more, there is hardly any chance for us to be exposed to abundant example sentences, because our books are subject to the space arrangement. “This fails to provide comprehensive information for the learners. It also gives rise to a phenomenon that learners will replace casually what they want to say with similar-meaning words to avoid monotony while speaking, writing and translating, which will inevitably arise ambiguity.” 4 Therefore, we must turn to corpora for the rich usages of synonyms in the context.2. Discrimination of “dreary”, “dull” and “boring” based on COCA After participating in the TEM-4, which contains fifteen questions concerning synonym discrimination and requires the enhanced synonym-discrimination ability out of the English majors, I am still confused about the rules to discriminate synonyms. So I cited the sixty-seventh question from the exam paper in 2013 and did some research based on COCA. Here COCA denotes The Corpus of Contemporary American English, which embodies 450 million words from 1990 to 2012. The question from the exam paper is “He is fed up with the same old dreary routine, and wants to quit his job. The underlined part means_. A. dull B. boring C. long D. hard”. And the answer is “A”. Then whats the difference between the three words? Firstly, I referred to The Oxford Study Thesaurus for the entry “dreary”. In this dictionary, “dreary” has two synonyms, “boring” and “gloomy”. So I wanted to choose “B” as my answer. But later, I looked up the three words in Oxford Advanced Learners English-Chinese Dictionary (the seventh edition), which expounds as follows: Dreary: that makes you feel sad; dull and not interesting. Dull: 1) not interesting or exciting; 2) not bright or shiny; 3) not clear or loud; 4) not bright, with a lot of clouds; 5) not very severe, but continuous; 6) slow in understanding; 7) not busy; slow; 8) to become or be made weaker or less severe; 9) to make a person slower or less lively; 10) to become or to make something less bright ,clean or sharp. Boring: not interesting; making you feel tired and impatient. From the above explanation, we can see that “A” is presumably more suitable. So how can we decide which one is closer in meaning to “dreary”? Then I did a research based on COCA to find out how the native speakers of English will use the three words. I searched “dreary”, “dull” and “boring” respectively in COCA randomly and got 1, 000 examples in the context for every word. Next, I selected the top one hundred examples for every word and analyzed the rules of usage. To begin with, I made a comparison of the three words with respect to their differences in syntax, with a focus on the analysis of which constituents they serve as in the examples. The statistical data is shown in table 1.Table 1 Constituents of “dreary”, “dull” and “boring” in the top one hundred examples from COCAPremodifierPostmodifierComplementPredicatePredicativeDreary8413-12Dull62-41024Boring2833264From the above table, we can conclude that both “dreary” and “dull” are principally used as premodifiers, which is in sharp contrast to “boring” serving mainly as predicatives. This distinction can preliminarily explain why answer “A” is more suitable than “B” in the exam paper mentioned previously. In fact, there truly exists one out of the 100 examples containing the collocation of “dull” and “routine”. That is “CA is rather a dull, routine dramedy about a woman.” from COCA. Whats more, from the illustrating sentence “I could tell just by the names that they were all the same dreary, dull songs. If wasnt going to learn how to make music”, we can see that “dreary” and “dull” can be used simultaneously.Then I find out many detailed usages of these words while analyzing these examples more precisely. Firstly, among the one hundred examples of the word “dreary” , there are twenty-nine sentences in which “dreary” modifies locations or spaces, such as “basement”, “palace”, “room”, “diner”, “apartment”, “office”, “prison cell”, “kitchen”, “bus station”, “shopping mall”; nineteen examples in which “dreary” modifies time period, such as “night”, “morning”, “day”, “month”, “century”, “years”, “fall”; eight sentences in which “dreary” modifies weather condition, such as “climate”, “weather”, and four out of them are used together with the word “rainy”. Secondly, from the one hundred sentences, I find that the word “dull” can apply to many senses, such as sight, hearing and touch. In terms of the sense of sight, “dull” tends to describe the color and luster of some kinds of objects. For example, “dull beam of my fading headlamp”, “Hair can start to lose its luster and look dull and ashy now.” With respect to the sense of touch, the number of sentences in which “dull” modifies the feeling of pain amounts to eleven and almost every sentence embodies an invariable “dull ache”. Furthermore, the word “dull” can also be used as a verb. Among the ten sentences containing a verb “dull”, four usages of the word “dull” are in the form of the infinitive and six sentences are used accompanied by a modal verb. Thirdly, the word “bore” is a verb which means “drill”. Its metaphorical meaning can be applied widely. For example, “His slate-gray eyes are boring into her.” “Her eyes boring into Emma are like drills searching for oil.”After the research based on COCA, I get a better and more comprehensive understanding of the three words. The use of COCA extends my scope of knowledge and accelerates my accumulation of vocabulary. In future, I will pay special attention to corpora during my English learning.3. Conclusion Synonym discrimination plays an important part in our English learning. Nowadays, corpora are becoming an increasingly popular medium for linguistic research. With their remarkably abundant stock of linguistic data, corpora enable us to better understand the way how native English speakers use their mother tongue. As a college student, we should attach great significance to the use of corpora while discriminating synonyms, because the employment of corpora will not only enrich our way of vocabulary learning, but also cultivate our autonomous learning ability. References1 杨信彰. An Introduction to Linguistics Higher Education Press (2011)2 梁茂成，李文中，许家金. 语料库应用教程M. 外语教学与研究出版社（2010）.3 杨慧中. 语料库语言学导论M. 上海外语教育出版社（2002）.4 李响. 基于语料库的同义词辨析教学J. 长沙大学学报（2007）5 The Oxford Study Thesaurus6 Oxford Advanced Learners English-Chinese Dictionary (the seventh edition)