基于COCA语料库的近义词辨析——以Vague、Obscure和Ambiguous为例

Synonym Discrimination Based on COCA Corpus—Taking Vague, Obscure, and Ambiguous as Examples

摘要: 英语词汇中的近义词辨析一直是英语学习中的重中之重，而学生们通常采用死板的记忆方式而忽略了其本身的涵义，往往会导致不会用甚至错用的现象。近年来语料库的出现及应用为英语学习者们带来了很大的便利，尤其是对英语中近义词的辨析与学习。本文基于美国当代英语语料库，选取vague、obscure和ambiguous三个具有“模糊的”意义的形容词为研究对象，多方面多维度地对其词频、搭配及语义韵特征等进行对比性分析，希望为英语学习提供新的视角与帮助，阐释在教学中如何运用语料库能更准确地把握近义词的区别，帮助学生提高英语词汇学习的兴趣与水平。

Abstract: Synonyms discrimination in English vocabulary has always been the top priority in English learning, and students usually adopt a rigid way of memorizing but ignore its own meaning, which often leads to the phenomenon of unable to use or even wrong use. In recent years, the emergence and application of corpus have brought great convenience to English learners, especially the discrimi-nation and learning of synonyms in English. Based on the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), this paper selects vague, obscure and ambiguous as the object of study, which have the meaning of “模糊的”, and makes a comparative analysis of their word frequency, collocation and semantic prosody characteristics in many aspects, hoping to provide new perspectives and help for English learning and explain how to use corpus in teaching to grasp the difference of synonyms more accurately so as to help students improve their interest and level in English vocabulary learning.