earticle

영어

For many non-native speakers of English it can be challenging to distinguish the subtle differences between near-synonyms and know which word to use in a specific context. This study deals with the two synonymously used adjectives, perfect and absolute, and aims at exploring comprehensively 1) the stylistic and diachronic variation of them; 2) the semantic differences between them. For the first goal, the stylistic variation was investigated across the five different genres provided by the COCA and BNC, and the diachronic variation of them via COHA. The results showed that perfect was used more frequently than absolute in all the rest registers, except for Spoken and that the use of perfect became more prevalent compared with absolute after hitting the bottom in 1940s. To achieve the second goal, this study compared and analyzed the dictionary meanings of these adjectives via two online available dictionaries and the noun collocations measured by MI-score(>3) through BNC. The results of the study revealed that there was a clear difference between these two near-synonyms, a need to pay close attention to use them, and furthermore, a requirement to add a specific meaning to the dictionary definitions.