Distinguishing the meanings of near synonyms always seems to be a challenging task for Chinese EFL learners,as is the case with bring about and give rise to be exemplified in the paper.I will use a corpus approach to ...Distinguishing the meanings of near synonyms always seems to be a challenging task for Chinese EFL learners,as is the case with bring about and give rise to be exemplified in the paper.I will use a corpus approach to unveil some implied semantic patterns and pragmatic features of the two phrases,and generalize their semantic prosodies as used by native English speakers by analyzing what kinds of nouns tend to co-occur with them,and also discuss whether there is a transfer of negative semantic prosody from the word cause to the two phrases under discussion.展开更多
Word similarity(WS)is a fundamental and critical task in natural language processing.Existing approaches to WS are mainly to calculate the similarity or relatedness of word pairs based on word embedding obtained by ma...Word similarity(WS)is a fundamental and critical task in natural language processing.Existing approaches to WS are mainly to calculate the similarity or relatedness of word pairs based on word embedding obtained by massive and high-quality corpus.However,it may suffer from poor performance for insufficient corpus in some specific fields,and cannot capture rich semantic and sentimental information.To address these above problems,we propose an enhancing embedding-based word similarity evaluation with character-word concepts and synonyms knowledge,namely EWS-CS model,which can provide extra semantic information to enhance word similarity evaluation.The core of our approach contains knowledge encoder and word encoder.In knowledge encoder,we incorporate the semantic knowledge extracted from knowledge resources,including character-word concepts,synonyms and sentiment lexicons,to obtain knowledge representation.Word encoder is to learn enhancing embedding-based word representation from pre-trained model and knowledge representation based on similarity task.Finally,compared with baseline models,the experiments on four similarity evaluation datasets validate the effectiveness of our EWS-CS model in WS task.展开更多
This paper investigates Chinese EFL learners＇ acquisition of completely, totally and absolutely through a contrastive analysis of their collocation, colligation, semantic preference and semantic prosody based on the ...This paper investigates Chinese EFL learners＇ acquisition of completely, totally and absolutely through a contrastive analysis of their collocation, colligation, semantic preference and semantic prosody based on the Ten-thousand English Compositions of Chinese Learners （TECCL Corpus） and Corpus of Contemporary American English （COCA）. The results show that adjective and verb are two major words frequently co-occurring with the group of synonyms, but only a few of them meet the default collocation criterion （frequency〉3, MI〉3）, and many co-occurring words used by Chinese learners don＇t appear in COCA. Besides, the co-occurring adjectives and verbs in TECCL are so diverse that they don＇t establish fixed semantic relations as in COCA, therefore, there is a big difference in semantic preference and semantic prosody between Chinese learners and native speakers. With the advance of English proficiency, more collocates are used by college learners than middle school learners, but there is no clear and significant improvement in semantic preference and semantic prosody.展开更多
In order to better apply the semantic prosody theory to distinguish synonyms,this article chooses to use analysis software and corpus to specifically compare and analyze the difference between“weichi(维持)”and“baoc...In order to better apply the semantic prosody theory to distinguish synonyms,this article chooses to use analysis software and corpus to specifically compare and analyze the difference between“weichi(维持)”and“baochi(保持)”.Although both“weichi(维持)”and“baochi(保持)”show neutral colors in the dictionary,through analysis of collocation words,it is found that“baochi(保持)”is often matched with positively colored words,so it has positive semantic characteristics,while“weichi(维持)”is more neutral and negative semantic prosody characteristics,and in the diachronic and synchronic word frequency survey,the word frequency of“baochi(保持)”is higher than that of“weichi(维持)”.展开更多
The discrimination of synonyms has always been one of the great challenges for English learners.Taking assessment and evaluation as examples,this study analyses the similarities and differences of the two words,as wel...The discrimination of synonyms has always been one of the great challenges for English learners.Taking assessment and evaluation as examples,this study analyses the similarities and differences of the two words,as well as their usage from the perspectives of frequency,stylistics,collocation and semantic prosody with the help of British National Corpus,and demonstrates the importance of corpus retrieval tools in synonyms discrimination.Furthermore,this paper will give some suggestions for English learners and teachers in English vocabulary teaching.展开更多
This paper first points out the deficiency of listing synonyms by some dictionaries,such as the Cobuild Dictionary and Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Synonyms,which,however,have actually failed in distinguishing bet...This paper first points out the deficiency of listing synonyms by some dictionaries,such as the Cobuild Dictionary and Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Synonyms,which,however,have actually failed in distinguishing between some synonyms.Then,the paper attempts to solve the problem by providing a brief review of relevant studies in the past few decades on near synonyms with a focus on differences in denotation,connotation and semantic prosody of words as well as various definitions of semantic prosody and related researches.By evaluating the relevant research and defintions of semantic prosody,the review concluded that the alleged dictionaries would be perfected with the provision of connotations or semantic prosodies for near synonyms before suggesting out the focus of future and further research into near synonyms.展开更多
The discrimination of synonyms has always been the key and difficult points in language learning.By using the British Na⁃tional Corpus(BNC)to retrieve the standard frequency,registers and collocations of the three com...The discrimination of synonyms has always been the key and difficult points in language learning.By using the British Na⁃tional Corpus(BNC)to retrieve the standard frequency,registers and collocations of the three common words,DESTORY,RUIN and DEMOLISH,this paper analyzes their similarities and differences.Besides,this paper demonstrates the strong ancillary func⁃tion of corpus in synonyms discrimination as well as in English teaching and learning.展开更多
Distinguishing synonyms is invariably an important and difficult point in language learning. The author analyzes the sens-es, colligation, grammar and collocation of a pair of synonyms, ill and sick, and explores thei...Distinguishing synonyms is invariably an important and difficult point in language learning. The author analyzes the sens-es, colligation, grammar and collocation of a pair of synonyms, ill and sick, and explores their differences by adopting the corpus-based approach. Language learners and teachers are suggested to realize the significance of using corpus widely as an effective wayof distinguishing synonyms so as to promote their learning and teaching.展开更多
The investigation of near-synonyms is of great significance to the study of English vocabulary and teaching . The British National Corpus (BNC) is chosen to analyze and distinguish synonyms for Chinese English learner...The investigation of near-synonyms is of great significance to the study of English vocabulary and teaching . The British National Corpus (BNC) is chosen to analyze and distinguish synonyms for Chinese English learners, which provide some implica- tions for English teaching, especially for lexical teaching. The results show that near synonyms differ in their collocational behavior and frequency.展开更多
Using British National Corpus(BNC)as the reference corpus and Chinese Learner's English Corpus(CLEC)as the observed corpus,this paper attempts to analyze synonyms in Chinese learners5 English based on"event&q...Using British National Corpus(BNC)as the reference corpus and Chinese Learner's English Corpus(CLEC)as the observed corpus,this paper attempts to analyze synonyms in Chinese learners5 English based on"event"and tcaffair.?,By comparing the frequency,colligation,collocates,and semantic prosody of the two words in BNC,it is found that"event"and“affaiT”differ from each other in terms of frequency and semantic prosody.The same comparison is made between BNC and CLEC.It is found that Chinese learnersJ English vocabulary is rather small,and there is no significant difference in the semantic prosody of the two words between English native speakers and Chinese English learners except that Chinese English learners have a misunderstanding about"love affair,which may be attributed to their negligence of semantic prosody in the process of learning.展开更多
Languages embody a lot of words that are considered as synonyms, and people just take it for granted that such words are identical in meaning without any discrimination. However, a corpus-based approach to the study o...Languages embody a lot of words that are considered as synonyms, and people just take it for granted that such words are identical in meaning without any discrimination. However, a corpus-based approach to the study of the collocational behavior of the two frequently-used pairs of synonyms （selection and option, ill and sick） reveals significant discrepancies in the use of these two pairs of synonyms by Chinese English learners and native speakers. According to the analysis, the major problems lie in the current ways of vocabulary teaching and learning. This paper aims to highlight the important role of the corpus-based collocational research in English vocabulary teaching and learning. In the end, some suggestions concerning vocabulary teaching and leaming are put forward on the basis of corpus-based research.展开更多
Synonym differentiation has always been a difficulty in English learning. Traditionally, definitions and examples from dictionaries are taken to illustrate shades of differences between synonyms, which fails to provid...Synonym differentiation has always been a difficulty in English learning. Traditionally, definitions and examples from dictionaries are taken to illustrate shades of differences between synonyms, which fails to provide a comprehensive description of these differences for students to differ synonyms. However, with the large volume, authentic materials, fast and convenient retrieval provided by corpus, the corpus-based synonym differentiation method can make a comprehensive description of synonyms in terms of their distinctive features in frequency distribution, collocation, colligation and semantic prosody. A corpus-based method will be employed to analyze the differences among the three English synonyms"conquer""overcome"and"surmount"based on the data collected from COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English), so as to throw new light on synonym differentiation, offering a new way to study synonyms, and to provide references for lexical teaching and second language acquisition.展开更多
The study of synonyms based on corpus has become a hot topic in recent years,and the task of differentiating synonyms has always been a complex issue.The current study made an attempt to investigate the differences am...The study of synonyms based on corpus has become a hot topic in recent years,and the task of differentiating synonyms has always been a complex issue.The current study made an attempt to investigate the differences among English noun synonyms“opposition”,“resistance”and“defiance”from the perspective of frequency distribution,collocation and semantic prosody based on COCA.This research shows that in terms of frequency distribution,“opposition”and“resistance”are more frequently used than“defiance”.Both of the two are most commonly used in academic journals while“defiance”is most frequently used in fiction.All of these three words rarely appear in TV and movie subtitles.Second,from the perspective of collocation,“opposition”often collocates with words about politics and personal state,“resistance”usually appears with words concerning politics and medicine,and“defiance”mainly shows up in the fields of military,medicine,personal state and others.Third,from the dimension of semantic prosody,“opposition”presents negative semantic prosody,“resistance”has neutral semantic prosody,and“defiance”indicates mixed semantic prosody.The present study is able to enrich the relevant study on synonym differentiation,and highlight the importance of understanding the subtle differences among synonyms.展开更多
This paper explores the differences between the near-synonyms“initially”and“firstly”using the Corpus of Contemporary American English(COCA)and the theory of extended units of meaning.The study analyzes the two wor...This paper explores the differences between the near-synonyms“initially”and“firstly”using the Corpus of Contemporary American English(COCA)and the theory of extended units of meaning.The study analyzes the two words from five perspectives:word frequency,collocation,colligation,semantic preference,and semantic prosody.Results show that“initially”is more frequent,especially in academic writing,while“firstly”is common in blogs and informal contexts.“Firstly”often collocates with nouns and expresses logical sequence,while“initially”collocates with adjectives and describes initial states or scientific processes,often with negative connotations.This study highlights the effectiveness of corpora in distinguishing near-synonyms and offers insights for English vocabulary learning.展开更多
The present work has compiled a total of 389 brachyuran crab species belonging to 188 genera and 38 families to be present in mangrove forests across 122 countries/territories in 10 sub-regions of two global hemispher...The present work has compiled a total of 389 brachyuran crab species belonging to 188 genera and 38 families to be present in mangrove forests across 122 countries/territories in 10 sub-regions of two global hemispheres viz.,Indo-West Pacific(IWP)and Atlantic East Pacific(AEP).The mangrove crabs are highly diverse in the IWP as compared to AEP.They exceed 100 species in nine countries of the IWP viz.,Indonesia,India,Japan,Thailand,Australia,Singapore,Philippines,Malaysia,and China.The least number of mangrove crab species(>10)are found to be present in 38 countries under the AEP.Four countries/territories do not have any record of mangrove crabs.Sesarmidae is the predominant family of mangrove crabs,followed by Ocypodidae and Portunidae.The present work also has brought out 818 synonyms,which otherwise interfere with the preparation of a checklist for an exact number of crab species.It is a matter of necessity to conserve the crabs,which are keystone species of the mangrove ecosystems.展开更多
文摘Distinguishing the meanings of near synonyms always seems to be a challenging task for Chinese EFL learners,as is the case with bring about and give rise to be exemplified in the paper.I will use a corpus approach to unveil some implied semantic patterns and pragmatic features of the two phrases,and generalize their semantic prosodies as used by native English speakers by analyzing what kinds of nouns tend to co-occur with them,and also discuss whether there is a transfer of negative semantic prosody from the word cause to the two phrases under discussion.
基金This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.61801440),the High-quality and Cutting-edge Disciplines Construction Project for Universities in Beijing(Internet Information,Communication University of China),State Key Laboratory of Media Convergence and Communication(Communication University of China),and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.
文摘Word similarity(WS)is a fundamental and critical task in natural language processing.Existing approaches to WS are mainly to calculate the similarity or relatedness of word pairs based on word embedding obtained by massive and high-quality corpus.However,it may suffer from poor performance for insufficient corpus in some specific fields,and cannot capture rich semantic and sentimental information.To address these above problems,we propose an enhancing embedding-based word similarity evaluation with character-word concepts and synonyms knowledge,namely EWS-CS model,which can provide extra semantic information to enhance word similarity evaluation.The core of our approach contains knowledge encoder and word encoder.In knowledge encoder,we incorporate the semantic knowledge extracted from knowledge resources,including character-word concepts,synonyms and sentiment lexicons,to obtain knowledge representation.Word encoder is to learn enhancing embedding-based word representation from pre-trained model and knowledge representation based on similarity task.Finally,compared with baseline models,the experiments on four similarity evaluation datasets validate the effectiveness of our EWS-CS model in WS task.
文摘This paper investigates Chinese EFL learners＇ acquisition of completely, totally and absolutely through a contrastive analysis of their collocation, colligation, semantic preference and semantic prosody based on the Ten-thousand English Compositions of Chinese Learners （TECCL Corpus） and Corpus of Contemporary American English （COCA）. The results show that adjective and verb are two major words frequently co-occurring with the group of synonyms, but only a few of them meet the default collocation criterion （frequency〉3, MI〉3）, and many co-occurring words used by Chinese learners don＇t appear in COCA. Besides, the co-occurring adjectives and verbs in TECCL are so diverse that they don＇t establish fixed semantic relations as in COCA, therefore, there is a big difference in semantic preference and semantic prosody between Chinese learners and native speakers. With the advance of English proficiency, more collocates are used by college learners than middle school learners, but there is no clear and significant improvement in semantic preference and semantic prosody.
文摘In order to better apply the semantic prosody theory to distinguish synonyms,this article chooses to use analysis software and corpus to specifically compare and analyze the difference between“weichi(维持)”and“baochi(保持)”.Although both“weichi(维持)”and“baochi(保持)”show neutral colors in the dictionary,through analysis of collocation words,it is found that“baochi(保持)”is often matched with positively colored words,so it has positive semantic characteristics,while“weichi(维持)”is more neutral and negative semantic prosody characteristics,and in the diachronic and synchronic word frequency survey,the word frequency of“baochi(保持)”is higher than that of“weichi(维持)”.
文摘The discrimination of synonyms has always been one of the great challenges for English learners.Taking assessment and evaluation as examples,this study analyses the similarities and differences of the two words,as well as their usage from the perspectives of frequency,stylistics,collocation and semantic prosody with the help of British National Corpus,and demonstrates the importance of corpus retrieval tools in synonyms discrimination.Furthermore,this paper will give some suggestions for English learners and teachers in English vocabulary teaching.
文摘This paper first points out the deficiency of listing synonyms by some dictionaries,such as the Cobuild Dictionary and Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Synonyms,which,however,have actually failed in distinguishing between some synonyms.Then,the paper attempts to solve the problem by providing a brief review of relevant studies in the past few decades on near synonyms with a focus on differences in denotation,connotation and semantic prosody of words as well as various definitions of semantic prosody and related researches.By evaluating the relevant research and defintions of semantic prosody,the review concluded that the alleged dictionaries would be perfected with the provision of connotations or semantic prosodies for near synonyms before suggesting out the focus of future and further research into near synonyms.
文摘The discrimination of synonyms has always been the key and difficult points in language learning.By using the British Na⁃tional Corpus(BNC)to retrieve the standard frequency,registers and collocations of the three common words,DESTORY,RUIN and DEMOLISH,this paper analyzes their similarities and differences.Besides,this paper demonstrates the strong ancillary func⁃tion of corpus in synonyms discrimination as well as in English teaching and learning.
文摘Distinguishing synonyms is invariably an important and difficult point in language learning. The author analyzes the sens-es, colligation, grammar and collocation of a pair of synonyms, ill and sick, and explores their differences by adopting the corpus-based approach. Language learners and teachers are suggested to realize the significance of using corpus widely as an effective wayof distinguishing synonyms so as to promote their learning and teaching.
文摘The investigation of near-synonyms is of great significance to the study of English vocabulary and teaching . The British National Corpus (BNC) is chosen to analyze and distinguish synonyms for Chinese English learners, which provide some implica- tions for English teaching, especially for lexical teaching. The results show that near synonyms differ in their collocational behavior and frequency.
文摘Using British National Corpus(BNC)as the reference corpus and Chinese Learner's English Corpus(CLEC)as the observed corpus,this paper attempts to analyze synonyms in Chinese learners5 English based on"event"and tcaffair.?,By comparing the frequency,colligation,collocates,and semantic prosody of the two words in BNC,it is found that"event"and“affaiT”differ from each other in terms of frequency and semantic prosody.The same comparison is made between BNC and CLEC.It is found that Chinese learnersJ English vocabulary is rather small,and there is no significant difference in the semantic prosody of the two words between English native speakers and Chinese English learners except that Chinese English learners have a misunderstanding about"love affair,which may be attributed to their negligence of semantic prosody in the process of learning.
文摘Languages embody a lot of words that are considered as synonyms, and people just take it for granted that such words are identical in meaning without any discrimination. However, a corpus-based approach to the study of the collocational behavior of the two frequently-used pairs of synonyms （selection and option, ill and sick） reveals significant discrepancies in the use of these two pairs of synonyms by Chinese English learners and native speakers. According to the analysis, the major problems lie in the current ways of vocabulary teaching and learning. This paper aims to highlight the important role of the corpus-based collocational research in English vocabulary teaching and learning. In the end, some suggestions concerning vocabulary teaching and leaming are put forward on the basis of corpus-based research.
文摘Synonym differentiation has always been a difficulty in English learning. Traditionally, definitions and examples from dictionaries are taken to illustrate shades of differences between synonyms, which fails to provide a comprehensive description of these differences for students to differ synonyms. However, with the large volume, authentic materials, fast and convenient retrieval provided by corpus, the corpus-based synonym differentiation method can make a comprehensive description of synonyms in terms of their distinctive features in frequency distribution, collocation, colligation and semantic prosody. A corpus-based method will be employed to analyze the differences among the three English synonyms"conquer""overcome"and"surmount"based on the data collected from COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English), so as to throw new light on synonym differentiation, offering a new way to study synonyms, and to provide references for lexical teaching and second language acquisition.
文摘The study of synonyms based on corpus has become a hot topic in recent years,and the task of differentiating synonyms has always been a complex issue.The current study made an attempt to investigate the differences among English noun synonyms“opposition”,“resistance”and“defiance”from the perspective of frequency distribution,collocation and semantic prosody based on COCA.This research shows that in terms of frequency distribution,“opposition”and“resistance”are more frequently used than“defiance”.Both of the two are most commonly used in academic journals while“defiance”is most frequently used in fiction.All of these three words rarely appear in TV and movie subtitles.Second,from the perspective of collocation,“opposition”often collocates with words about politics and personal state,“resistance”usually appears with words concerning politics and medicine,and“defiance”mainly shows up in the fields of military,medicine,personal state and others.Third,from the dimension of semantic prosody,“opposition”presents negative semantic prosody,“resistance”has neutral semantic prosody,and“defiance”indicates mixed semantic prosody.The present study is able to enrich the relevant study on synonym differentiation,and highlight the importance of understanding the subtle differences among synonyms.
文摘This paper explores the differences between the near-synonyms“initially”and“firstly”using the Corpus of Contemporary American English(COCA)and the theory of extended units of meaning.The study analyzes the two words from five perspectives:word frequency,collocation,colligation,semantic preference,and semantic prosody.Results show that“initially”is more frequent,especially in academic writing,while“firstly”is common in blogs and informal contexts.“Firstly”often collocates with nouns and expresses logical sequence,while“initially”collocates with adjectives and describes initial states or scientific processes,often with negative connotations.This study highlights the effectiveness of corpora in distinguishing near-synonyms and offers insights for English vocabulary learning.
基金DST-TWAS for Post-Doc.Fellowship(WWM,FR No.3240306336).
文摘The present work has compiled a total of 389 brachyuran crab species belonging to 188 genera and 38 families to be present in mangrove forests across 122 countries/territories in 10 sub-regions of two global hemispheres viz.,Indo-West Pacific(IWP)and Atlantic East Pacific(AEP).The mangrove crabs are highly diverse in the IWP as compared to AEP.They exceed 100 species in nine countries of the IWP viz.,Indonesia,India,Japan,Thailand,Australia,Singapore,Philippines,Malaysia,and China.The least number of mangrove crab species(>10)are found to be present in 38 countries under the AEP.Four countries/territories do not have any record of mangrove crabs.Sesarmidae is the predominant family of mangrove crabs,followed by Ocypodidae and Portunidae.The present work also has brought out 818 synonyms,which otherwise interfere with the preparation of a checklist for an exact number of crab species.It is a matter of necessity to conserve the crabs,which are keystone species of the mangrove ecosystems.
