A Corpus-Based Study of English Synonyms: Normal, Regular, Common, Ordinary, and Usual
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Abstract
This study had two primary goals: 1) to compare and contrast the meanings, degrees of formality, collocations, and grammatical patterns of five English synonyms: normal, regular, common, ordinary, and usual; and 2) to compare and contrast data from learner's dictionaries and corpus. The following are the data sources used for this research: 1) Longman's Advanced American Dictionary 3rd edition (2013) 2) Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionaries 10th edition (2020). and 3) The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) comprising 500 sentences, analyzing the frequencies with AntConc Program. It was found that the five synonyms have the same underlying meaning but are varied in specific meanings, degrees of formality, collocations, and grammatical patterns. Therefore, the five terms cannot be used interchangeably in all contexts. In addition, it was discovered that the corpus includes information that is not included in the two dictionaries.
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References
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