A Corpus-based Behavioral Profile Study of Synonymous Expressions Meaning “to Start”

Abstract

Synonymy is an extremely significant component in language learning, and the usage of synonymy is rather flexible and difficult to distinguish. In this research, the author employs a corpus-based behavioral profile approach to study the usage of a set of English synonymous expressions meaning “to start”, namely, start, begin, commence, launch, set out. The author first searches in American Contemporary English Corpus to explore the overall usage frequency and specific genre of each synonymous expression, then randomly selects 500 sentences, and makes manual annotation with 12 ID tag and 46 ID tag levels. Later, hierarchical clustering analysis and correspondence analysis have been employed to examine the semantic differences and usage structures of this set of expressions.The results shows that: ① The overall usage frequency varies greatly—from the highest to the lowest are start, begin, launch, set out, commence. ② They are used in various genres. Start is mainly used in informal styles including blogs, while the other four are mainly used in formal styles, including fictions and magazines. ③ Begin and set out have the greatest semantic similarity; start, begin, and set out form one semantic branch, and commence and launch form another, and there is a huge difference between these two branches. ④ There are great differences between the five expressions and their morphological, syntactic and semantic changes.Quantitative analysis method has been used to reveal the different semantic features and usage of a set of synonymous expressions, which is conducive to both promote the study of synonymous relations, and verify the effectiveness and applicability of the behavioral profile approach in semantic study.