Abstract：According to Advanced Learners’ English-Chinese Dictionary (2000: 1793), Synonym refers to a word or expression that has the same or nearly the same meaning. Synonym commonly exists in English, it is important to distinguish the features and usages of these synonyms. Corpus can be used for us to have a clearer understanding on synonyms.  

First of all, this article uses the Collins Dictionary to consolidate the meaning of a couple of synonym-“receive” and “accept”. And then consolidate and analyze the data searched from the corpus of English National Corpus (BNC). The investigation includes another 4 words except “receive” and “accept”, they are received, receiving, accepted, and accepting. Conclusions about the same and differences between them are made via the analysis, and we have found that although they have nearly the same meaning and similar usages, they also their special usages and meanings in specific context. The study will benefit for students’ learning of English synonyms. 

Key Words：corpus; BNC; synonym, “receive” and “accept”

CONTENTS

摘要

Abstract

1 Introduction-1

1.1 The Introduction of Synonyms-1

1.2 The Background of the Research-1

1.3 The Method of the Research-2

2 The Study of English Basic Synonyms—Receive and Accept-3

2.1 The Basic Concepts and Usages on “Receive” and “Accept”-3

2.1.1 Six Meanings of “Receive”-3

2.1.2 Six Meanings of “Accept”-3

2.2 Data Statistics and Multivariate Analysis on “Receive” and “Accept”-5

2.3The Syntactic construction model of “receive” and “accept”-6

2.3.1The Syntactic construction model of “receive”.-6

2.3.2The Syntactic construction model of “accept”-13

3 Conclusion-20

3.1 Major Findings of the Research-20

3.2 Limitations and Suggestions of the Research-20

Reference-21

Acknowledgement-22