Corpus Study of Synonymy in English

Corpus Study of Synonymy in English PDF Author: Daniel Schroeder
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3656844518
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 19

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Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, University of Rostock (Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: English Lexicology, language: English, abstract: “Similarity of meaning is “the most important lexical relation” in the WordNet model, and, in philosophy, Quine has identified synonymy (along with analyticity) as “the primary business of the theory in meaning.” When writing a text about any topic, one does not want to use the same word every time. Imagine, the task is to write an article about young people. At first, they are called youth, but then the word adolescent is chosen. These two words are known to be synonyms, but it can be shown that words in English cannot have identical meaning and always are different in some way. The question in this example is, whether youth and adolescent are fully interchangeable. They are synonymous, because the OED, for example, defines synonyms as words that have the “same general sense[...]”, but they have “different shades of meaning or implications appropriate to different contexts[...]”. When thinking about the German erledigen, one finds a lot of words in English that should be considered in a translation, like to attend, to settle, to handle, to do, to finish, to dispatch etc. Some of them are used in different situations or have the same core meaning, but differ in “[...]minor ways, or in emotional and stylistic connotation.” This seminar paper will focus on the analysis of synonymous words and sentences. Based on the notion that identity means “oneness” , it must be understood that a perfectly identical meaning can therefore not exist between two or more synonymous words or sentences. This seminar paper does not aim to prove that words can have the same sense in some cases. It is rather based on the theory that they only have identical meaning, if it is similar in all contexts. This would be valid, if words like youth and adolescent differed only in form. The objective is to show, by using the British National Corpus (BNC) and other thesauruses, what distinctions random synonyms such as these may have and why they cannot be easily interchanged.

Corpus Study of Synonymy in English

Corpus Study of Synonymy in English PDF Author: Daniel Schroeder
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3656844518
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 19

Get Book Here

Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, University of Rostock (Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: English Lexicology, language: English, abstract: “Similarity of meaning is “the most important lexical relation” in the WordNet model, and, in philosophy, Quine has identified synonymy (along with analyticity) as “the primary business of the theory in meaning.” When writing a text about any topic, one does not want to use the same word every time. Imagine, the task is to write an article about young people. At first, they are called youth, but then the word adolescent is chosen. These two words are known to be synonyms, but it can be shown that words in English cannot have identical meaning and always are different in some way. The question in this example is, whether youth and adolescent are fully interchangeable. They are synonymous, because the OED, for example, defines synonyms as words that have the “same general sense[...]”, but they have “different shades of meaning or implications appropriate to different contexts[...]”. When thinking about the German erledigen, one finds a lot of words in English that should be considered in a translation, like to attend, to settle, to handle, to do, to finish, to dispatch etc. Some of them are used in different situations or have the same core meaning, but differ in “[...]minor ways, or in emotional and stylistic connotation.” This seminar paper will focus on the analysis of synonymous words and sentences. Based on the notion that identity means “oneness” , it must be understood that a perfectly identical meaning can therefore not exist between two or more synonymous words or sentences. This seminar paper does not aim to prove that words can have the same sense in some cases. It is rather based on the theory that they only have identical meaning, if it is similar in all contexts. This would be valid, if words like youth and adolescent differed only in form. The objective is to show, by using the British National Corpus (BNC) and other thesauruses, what distinctions random synonyms such as these may have and why they cannot be easily interchanged.

Corpus Methods for Semantics

Corpus Methods for Semantics PDF Author: Dylan Glynn
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027270333
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 555

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Book Description
This volume seeks to advance and popularise the use of corpus-driven quantitative methods in the study of semantics. The first part presents state-of-the-art research in polysemy and synonymy from a Cognitive Linguistic perspective. The second part presents and explains in a didactic manner each of the statistical techniques used in the first part of the volume. A handbook both for linguists working with statistics in corpus research and for linguists in the fields of polysemy and synonymy.

Synonymy and Register. A Corpus-based Study in American English

Synonymy and Register. A Corpus-based Study in American English PDF Author: Claus Arnold
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 365687719X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 54

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Book Description
Bachelor Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,7, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, course: English Language and Literature Studies, language: English, abstract: Die vorliegende Arbeit setzt sich aus einer pragmatischen Perspektive mit dem sprachlichen Phänomen der Synonymie im heutigen Amerikanischen Englisch auseinander. Mithilfe des Corpus of Contemporary American English, bekannt als COCA, sollen quantitative und qualitative Unterschiede zwischen Wörtern mit gleicher oder zumindest sehr ähnlicher denotativer Bedeutung im Sprachgebrauch untersucht werden. Dazu werden in einer synchronischen Studie, die den Zeitraum von 2005 bis 2009 zugrunde legt, elf Gruppen mit jeweils zwei bis drei Synonymen, z.B. maybe/perhaps, analysiert. Zum einen sollen die Synonyme einer Gruppe hinsichtlich ihrer Gesamthäufigkeit im Corpus miteinander verglichen werden, zum anderen hinsichtlich ihrer quantitativen Verteilung über fünf sprachliche Register: Gesprochene Sprache, Fiktion, Magazine, Tageszeitungen und akademische Texte. Im Anschluss an die einzelnen Analysen werden Analogien und Unterschiede zwischen den Ergebnissen der Gruppen im Hinblick auf die unten genannten zentralen Thesen der Arbeit interpretiert. Die Studie soll zum einen nachweisen, dass es in einer Gruppe von Synonymen in der Regel ein Lexem gibt, das viel häufiger verwendet wird als die anderen Lexeme und demnach als alltäglicher bzw. weniger formell angesehen werden kann. Weiterhin sollen die Ergebnisse Hinweise für einen Zusammenhang zwischen der angeblichen (In-)Formalität eines Wortes und seiner bevorzugten Verwendung in bestimmten Registern liefern. Dabei gehe ich davon aus, dass informellere Lexeme besonders in informelleren Registern gebraucht werden, formellere Lexeme dagegen in formelleren. Als untergeordneter Faktor wird der etymologische Ursprung der Synonyme hinzugezogen, wobei das Augenmerk auf der Opposition von germanischer und romanischer Abstammung liegt.

Corpora in Cognitive Linguistics

Corpora in Cognitive Linguistics PDF Author: Stefan Th. Gries
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110197707
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Cognitive Linguistics, the branch of linguistics that tries to "make one's account of human language accord with what is generally known about the mind and the brain," has become one of the most flourishing fields of contemporary linguistics. The chapters address many classic topics of Cognitive Linguistics. These topics include studies on the semantics of specific words (including polysemy and synonymy) as well as semantic characteristics of particular syntactic patterns / constructions (including constructional synonymy and the schematicity of constructions), the analysis of causatives, transitivity, and image-schematic aspects of posture verbs. The key characteristic of this volume is that all papers adopt the methodological perspective of Corpus Linguistics, the rapidly evolving branch of linguistics based on the computerized analysis of language used in authentic settings. Thus, the contributions do not only all provide various new insights in their respective fields, they also introduce new data as well as new corpus-based and quantitative methods of analysis. On the basis of their findings, the authors discuss both theoretical implications going well beyond the singular topics of the studies and show how the discipline of Cognitive Linguistics can benefit from the rigorous analysis of naturally-occurring language. The languages which are investigated are English, German, Dutch, and Russian, and the data come from a variety of different corpora. As such, the present volume will be of interest to a wide range of scholars with many different foci and interests and should pave the way for further integration of usage-based techniques of analysis within this exciting paradigm.

Patterns and Meanings

Patterns and Meanings PDF Author: Alan Partington
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027222701
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
Patterns and Meanings consists of case studies which make use of corpora and concordance technology. Each case study elaborates a problem area, makes reference to both the descriptive and applied literature thus far, and then suggests ways of exploiting corpus data to shed light on the problem. Language phenomena investigated include word sense, phraseology and syntax, metaphor and creative use, text reference, idiom, and translation. Emphasis is given to information that usually cannot be found in dictionaries, grammars, language textbooks or other resources, but which the study of corpus data makes available. This work is particularly important not only for its language description insights, but also for pedagogical application. Further useful suggestions are included on setting up a medium-sized corpus on a personal computer.

Semantic Relations and the Lexicon

Semantic Relations and the Lexicon PDF Author: M. Lynne Murphy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139437453
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Semantic Relations and the Lexicon explores the many paradigmatic semantic relations between words, such as synonymy, antonymy and hyponymy, and their relevance to the mental organization of our vocabularies. Drawing on a century's research in linguistics, psychology, philosophy, anthropology and computer science, M. Lynne Murphy proposes a pragmatic approach to these relations. Whereas traditional approaches have claimed that paradigmatic relations are part of our lexical knowledge, Dr Murphy argues that they constitute metalinguistic knowledge, which can be derived through a single relational principle, and may also be stored as part of our extra-lexical, conceptual representations of a word. Part I shows how this approach can account for the properties of lexical relations in ways that traditional approaches cannot, and Part II examines particular relations in detail. This book will serve as an informative handbook for all linguists and cognitive scientists interested in the mental representation of vocabulary.

Pattern Grammar

Pattern Grammar PDF Author: Susan Hunston
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027222732
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
This book describes an approach to lexis and grammar based on the concept of phraseology and of language patterning arising from work on large corpora. The notion of 'pattern' as a systematic way of dealing with the interface between lexis and grammar was used in Collins Cobuild English Dictionary (1995) and in the two books in the Collins Cobuild Grammar Patterns series (1996; 1998). This volume describes the research that led to these publications, and explores the theoretical and practical implications of the research. The first chapter sets the work in the context of work on phraseology. The next two chapters give several examples of patterns and how they are identified. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss and exemplify the association of pattern and meaning. Chapters 6, 7 and 8 relate the concept of pattern to traditional approaches to grammar and to discourse. Chapter 9 summarizes the book and adds to the theoretical discussion, as well as indicating the applications of this approach to language teaching. The volume is intended to contribute to the current debate concerning how corpora challenge existing linguistic theories, and as such will be of interest to researchers in the fields of grammar, lexis, discourse and corpus linguistics. It is written in an accessible style, however, and will be equally suitable for students taking courses in those areas.

Antonyms in English

Antonyms in English PDF Author: Steven Jones
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110737653X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
The study of antonyms (or 'opposites') in a language can provide important insight into word meaning and discourse structures. This book provides an extensive investigation of antonyms in English and offers an innovative model of how we mentally organize concepts and how we perceive contrasts between them. The authors use corpus and experimental methods to build a theoretical picture of the antonym relation, its status in the mind and its construal in context. Evidence is drawn from natural antonym use in speech and writing, first-language antonym acquisition, and controlled elicitation and judgements of antonym pairs by native speakers. The book also proposes ways in which a greater knowledge of how antonyms work can be applied to the fields of language technology and lexicography.

A Changing World of Words

A Changing World of Words PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004489347
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 632

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Book Description
From the contents: Maurizio GOTTI: The origin of 17th century canting terms. - Anne MCDERMOTT: Early dictionaries of English and historical corpora: in search of hard words. - Paivi KOIVISTO-ALANKO: Prototypes in semantic change: a diachronic perspective on abstract nouns. - Manuela ROMANO POZO: A morphodynamic interpretation of synonymy and polysemy in Old English."

Corpora and Lexis

Corpora and Lexis PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004361138
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
The contributions in this volume provide a kaleidoscope of state-of-the-art research in corpus linguistics on lexis and lexicogrammar. Central issues are the presentation of major corpus resources (both corpora and software tools), the findings (especially about frequency) which are simply not accessible without such resources, their theoretical implications relating to both lexical units and word meanings, and the practical – especially pedagogical – applications of corpus findings. This is complemented by a lexicographer’s view on the data structures implicit in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The volume, which has sprung from the 36th ICAME conference, held in at Trier University in May 2015, will be of relevance for theoretical and applied linguists interested in corpora, word usage, and the mental lexicon.