A Corpus-based Study on English Synonyms Convention and Tradition

DOI

10.2991/sschd-16.2016.15How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Corpus, Collocation, Semantic Prosody, Tradition, Convention.

Abstract

For English learners, the discrimination of synonyms is a big problem, but corpus is an effective tool to clear the difference between them. It offers English learners an authentic, simple and straightforward way to overcome the difficulties within synonyms. In this paper, the researcher uses a corpus-based method to study the difference between two English words --- tradition and convention, by using the qualitative and quantitative analysis to analyze the collocation and semantic prosody of these two words. According to the analysis of the researcher, tradition is more frequently used in subjects related to religion and culture and more widely used in written English, especially in literary or academic works while convention is more frequently used in subjects related to politics and social life and more widely used in spoken English, but they all hold neutral semantic prosody. A corpus-based study is helpful to English teaching and learning.

Copyright

© 2016, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yuan-Fan Li
PY  - 2015/12
DA  - 2015/12
TI  - A Corpus-based Study on English Synonyms Convention and Tradition
BT  - Proceedings of the 2nd Annual International Conference on Social Science and Contemporary Humanity Development
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 76
EP  - 79
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/sschd-16.2016.15
DO  - 10.2991/sschd-16.2016.15
ID  - Li2015/12
ER  -