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Corpus-Based Study of Two Synonyms—Obtain and Gain
Bing-jie GU
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DOI:10.17265/1539-8072/2017.08.006
Ningbo Dahongying University, Ningbo, China
With the advancement and prevalence of computer engineering, corpus-based approach of language analysis is on the rise. In this study, corpus-based approach is being adopted to compare two verbal synonyms—obtain and gain in terms of genre, colligation, collocation, and semantic prosody. The online tools, such as Sketch Engine, BNC Web, and Just the Word, are been adopted. The differences of two synonyms are as following: Noun is more collocated with obtain and passive voice pattern with preposition is more widely used. The verb form gain is collocated with abstract noun and most of them are endowed with the positive semantic prosody. It is also found that Oxford Dictionary failed to add the semantic prosody and dropped the frequently used collocation such as “obtained by pretence”. For ESL (English as Second Language) teachers, they should be cautious in the traditional practice of explaining meaning to leaners by offering synonyms. Moreover, semantic prosody should be taken into account in translating English into Chinese.
synonyms, colligation, collocation, semantic prosody
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