A Corpus-based Study On Differentiation Of Synonyms In Business English

English has a great many synonyms and learning English synonyms is an important part of second language acquisition.A good knowledge of synonym differentiation can help EFL(English as foreign language)learners to use the word correctly and appropriately in different contexts.Traditional way to differentiate synonyms relies on dictionaries that provide abstract definition and explanation of the vocabulary,which is obviously inadequate for language acquisition.Compared with traditional differentiation of synonyms,corpus has brought a brand-new perspective.Corpus can provide all the aspects of usage in a large number of authentic and reliable language materials,which makes synonym differentiation more scientific and comprehensive.Many studies have made use of corpus to differentiate synonyms in recent years and the majority of research analyzed the general English synonyms.However,there has been little work done on synonyms in the same register.With the widespread development of international business,the use of business English vocabulary is also increasing.Business English synonyms might be an interesting area for further investigation.For this reason,the present study mainly focuses on the business English synonyms.The present study selects three pairs of synonyms from PolyU Business English Corpus as case studies.They have different part of speech,namely,a pair of nominal synonyms company and firm,a pair of adjectival synonyms financial and economic,a pair of verbal synonyms provide and offer.With the research question as what kind of colligation,collocation,semantic preference and semantic prosody does a pair of synonyms have in business English contexts,the present study takes corpus-based approach as research approach and Sketch Engine as research tool,combining quantitative analysis with qualitative analysis.Base on the collocation theory of “you shall know a word by the company it keeps” proposed by the father of collocation Firth(1957),the present study differentiates synonyms from the perspectives of colligation,collocation,semantic preference as well as semantic prosody,so as to conclude the distinctions between a pair of synonyms in the same register.The results of the present study are as follows.(1)In business English,company has seven colligations,i.e.PREP+N,N+V,N1+N,N+PREP,ADJ+N,V+N,N+N1,whereas firm share all of the colligations except for N+N1.They have some sharing and typical collocates,of which some collocate more with company and some have a closer relationship with firm.company has five semantic preferences while firm only owns three.As for semantic prosody,both company and firm have neutral semantic meaning in business English contexts.(2)Secondly,the colligation of financial and economic are exactly the same,which are ADJ+N,ADJ+ADJ.financial and economic have sharing and typical collocates,in which some are more likely to collocate with financial while some are in closer combination with economic.There are four categories in the semantic preference of financial,whereas economic has one more semantic preference that is related to good effects.financial and economic have mixed semantic prosody,both of which can collocate with neutral and negative collocates and only economic can also collocate with positive collocates.(3)Thirdly,the colligation of provide are the same as offer,which are V+N,N+V,ADV+V,V+PREP.They have sharing and typical collocates,of which many are objects.With regard to semantic preference,provide has six categories of semantic preference,five of which are the same as offer.The difference lies in that provide tends to collocate with objects that are related to good effects or help.When it comes to semantic prosody,provide has a mixed prosody of positive and neutral prosody and offer has a neutral prosody.The research results indicate that a pair of synonyms in the same register has approximately same colligation.They have some sharing and typical collocates,of which some are more likely to collocate with one node and some have closer relationship with another.The semantic preference can generally be the same but there are also some differences.Concerning semantic prosody,they may be approximately the same,different or even opposite.The corpus-based approach can effectively differentiate a pair of synonyms from the perspectives of colligation,collocation,semantic preference as well as semantic prosody.It is a supplement to traditional way of synonym differentiation,which provides great implications on other synonym differentiation and language teaching and learning.