基于COCA语料库的英语近义词Agitate和Incite辨析

A COCA-Based Study on Synonym Discrimination in English—Taking “Agitate” and “Incite” as an Example

词汇学习是学习英语的基础,而近义词辨析一直是英语词汇学习的难点,也是教学的难点。本研究基于COCA语料库从语域分布、类联接、搭配和语义韵四个方面分析近义词agitate和incite之间的异同,并得出以下结果:1) agitate和incite具有不同的语域分布。incite在博客、网络、口语、杂志、新闻和学术文章几个领域中使用较多,在电视电影和小说中agitate的使用频率则高于incite;2) agitate和incite的常见搭配共现词以及类联接均有差异。agitate与副词搭配共现的比例最高,incite则与名词搭配共现的比例最高;3) agitate中性语义韵十分明显,具有微弱的积极语义韵。而incite具有消极语义韵和中性语义韵,但其消极语义韵明显强于中性语义韵。基于以上研究结果,本文对英语近义词辨析教学提出了几点建议,以期促进语料库在近义词教学中的应用,也为英语词汇教学提供些许补充。

English vocabulary learning is the foundation of English learning, while synonym discrimination has been a trouble of English vocabulary learning and teaching for a long time. Based on the cor-pus of COCA, this study analyzes the similarities and differences between the synonyms “agitate” and “incite” from four aspects: register, colligation, collocation and semantic prosody. The following results are obtained: 1) The synonyms “agitate” and “incite” have different register distribution. “Incite” is more frequently used in BLOG, WEB, SPOK, MAG, NEWS and ACAD, while in TV/M and FIC, “agitate” is more frequently used than “incite”. 2) There are also differences between the synonyms “agitate” and “incite” in terms of colligation and collocation. “Agitate” has the highest proportion of collocations with adverbs, while “incite” has the highest proportion of collocations with nouns. 3) “Agitate” has very obvious neutral semantic prosody, with a weak positive semantic prosody. “Incite” has both negative semantic prosody and neutral semantic prosody, but its negative semantic prosody is significantly stronger than its neutral semantic prosody. On the basis of the above findings, this paper puts forward several suggestions for the teaching of English synonym discrimination, so as to promote the application of the corpus in the teaching of synonym discrimination and to provide some supplements for English vocabulary teaching.