Abstract: Vocabulary, an essential part of English language learning, is one of the difficulties in grasping English language. English vocabulary is rich in synonyms. It is believed that English synonyms cover more than 60% of the total vocabulary. Therefore, to have a good command of English, it's imperative for learners to know the vocabulary well, demanding a full comprehension of the synonyms and the ability to differentiate them. This thesis, centering on the verb synonyms “suspect”, “doubt”, “question” and “distrust”, from the perspectives of register, collocation and semantic prosody, supported by Corpus of Contemporary American English, aims to expose the discrimination of synonyms from the analysis of the retrieval results, which helps to improve the comprehensive ability of English learners . 

Key words: synonyms; register; collocation; semantic prosody

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1.-Introduction-1

1.1-COCA-2

1.2-Synonyms Chosen in This Study-2

1.3 Perspectives Chosen in This Study-3

2. Register-4

2.1 The Overall Frequency Distribution-5

2.2 Synonyms in Different Registers-6

2.3 Findings-8

3. Collocation-8

3.1 Verb-Noun Collocation-10

3.2 Verb-Adverb Collocation-13

3.3 Verb- Preposition Collocation-17

3.4 Findings-19

4. Semantic Prosody-20

4.1 Semantic Prosody of These Four Words-21

4.2 Findings-25

5. Conclusion-25

References-27