A corpus-based study of English synonyms : advise, recommend, and suggest

Name: Watcharaporn Phitayakorn

keyword: Synonyms

; Corpus-based study

; Linguistics

; Grammatical patterns

; Collocations

Abstract: Knowledge of vocabulary is vital for effective English communication and “synonyms” should be used to avoid repeated usage. Most English synonyms are near-synonyms rather than strict synonyms. Near-synonyms cannot substitute for each other because of differences in meaning. This study examined the similarities and differences of three synonymous verbs, i.e. advise, recommend, and suggest, focusing on grammatical patterns and collocation usage within British English. The data was drawn from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 6th edition (2014) and one corpus, namely, the British National Corpus (BNC). Taking a corpus of 450 concordance lines from one corpus, the data was put into an Excel worksheet. It was searched and analyzed manually using the aforementioned two criteria. The results showed that three synonymous verbs cannot be used interchangeably in every context due to the differences in grammatical patterns and collocations. Therefore, they should be considered as near-synonyms. Furthermore, this study revealed that the dictionary does not provide all the possible patterns. As a result, concordance lines may be employed as a secondary source to provide supplementary patterns that are not given in the dictionary. L2 learners should not only investigate the meaning of each word in dictionaries but also use concordance lines as an additional source to learn how to use these synonymous verbs naturally

Thammasat University. Thammasat University Library

Address: BANGKOK

Email: preserv@tu.ac.th

Name: Supakorn Phoocharoensil

Role: advisor

Created: 2016

Modified: 2021-08-02

Issued: 2021-08-02

วิทยานิพนธ์/Thesis

application/pdf

DOI: 10.14457/TU.the.2016.1258

eng

DegreeName: Master of Arts

Level: Master's Degree

Descipline: English for Careers

Grantor: Thammasat University

©copyrights Thammasat University

ลำดับที่.	ชื่อแฟ้มข้อมูล	ขนาดแฟ้มข้อมูล	จำนวนเข้าถึง	วัน-เวลาเข้าถึงล่าสุด
1	3523watcharaporn.pdf	1.59 MB

ใช้เวลา

0.031833 วินาที