A Data-driven Study on the Semantic Prosody of Near-Synonyms

Longqiao College of Lanzhou University of Finance and Economics,Lanzhou,China Email:jwesther@126.com

[Abstract]In recent years,the study of semantic prosody has become a new study of linguistic phenomenon and also become the terminology of lexical collocation of corpus linguistics.According to the classification of semantic prosody,by using part of BNC and software-BFSU Collocator 1.0,this research aims to observe the semantic atmosphere of the significant collocates of“effect,impact and influence”in BNC,and then analyze the features of semantic prosody of them.The results show that these three near-synonyms all carry neutral semantic prosody.The result of this research is to differentiate these nouns that have the meaning of“effect”in terms of their respective features of semantic prosody and colligation and to make implication to English lexical teaching in college.

[Keywords]semantic prosody;semantic atmosphere;neutral;implication

Introduction

As most researchers agree that the lexical study is the basis of the English study.So,in order to have a good command of English,it is necessary to have a better knowledge of lexical study.During the lexical study,there appears a particular collocational phenomenon,which is called“semantic prosody”(it means that with the use of words,some words will have a tendency to attract certain types of words.And then,around these words there will form a kind of special semantic atmosphere)by most researchers.With the development of Corpus Linguistics,there are more and more scholars(Sinclair,1991,2003,2004;Louw,1993,2000;Stubbs,1995,1996;Partington,1998,2004;Hunston,2000,2006;Wei,2002,2006;Biber,2000;Flowerdew,2009)have been taking interest in doing the research into the collocation,especially this particular linguistic collocational phenomenon-semantic prosody.

The related studies of semantic prosody

Since Louw(1993,p.157)has formally proposed the concept of semantic prosody:“A consistent aura of meaning with which a form is imbued by its collocates is referred to as a semantic prosody”,the studies of semantic prosody have gained more and more attention.Stubbs(1996,p.182)proposes that semantic prosody may collocate with semantic sets,and then he classifies semantic prosody into three kinds:“negative prosody,positive prosody and neutral prosody”.

At the same time,Stubbs(1995)gives the further explanations of these three kinds and many researchers more related examples.Stubbs(1995)points:the item PROVIDE usually collocates with pleasant words like“support,assistance,help…”,and then it can be found that it carries positive semantic prosody.On the contrary,if collocates of the lexical item have formed an unpleasant semantic atmosphere,making this lexical item take on strong unfavorable semantic features,it means this lexical item has negative prosody.Just as Sinclair(1991,p.112)points out that the item HAPPEN collocates with unpleasant words like“accidents,war,death…”,so it carries negative semantic prosody.Louw(1993,p.171)shows that when BUILD UP is used as the transitive phrase,it collocates with pleasant words like“confidence,better understanding…”,it can be found that this phrase carries positive semantic prosody.But when BUILD UP is used as the intransitive phrase,it collocates with unpleasant words like“cholesterol,toxins,and armaments…”,it can be found that BUILD UP carries negative semantic prosody at the same time.So,BUILD UP carries neutral semantic prosody.

Kennedy(2000)proposes that with the combination of large number of corpora and many different kinds of concordance softwares,researchers can investigate lots of semantic prosodies of lexical items by using various tools.So,this paper aims to analyze the semantic prosodies of these three near-synonyms used by English native speakers by using the corpus of native speakers to try to find some implications to later English lexical learning and teaching.

Research design

Research questions

Collocation has close relationship with semantic prosody,and most of the studies of semantic prosody are based on the study of collocation.By analyzing the characteristics of collocates especially the significant collocates of node word,the characteristics of semantic prosody will be found out easily.The characteristics of semantic prosodies of lexical items can be observed by most of significant collocates of them.So,this study will try to answer the following questions:

(1)What are the characteristics of significant collocates of EFFECT,IMPACT and INFLUENCE used in BNC?

(2)What are semantic prosodies of EFFECT,IMPACT and INFLUENCE used in BNC?

(3)What are the similarities and differences of characteristics of their semantic prosodies in BNC?

Research items

For the reason that Xiao and McEnery(2006,p.108)in their research of semantic prosody and near-synonyms,they point:“near synonyms can also differ in semantic prosodies.”Thus,first and foremost,it is meaningful to do this research.However,it is impossible and unnecessary to observe all the English near-synonyms in this paper.So,it then needs to choose certain near-synonyms as the research samples.Most of the previous research samples are verbs,which indicates verbs have the various semantic prosodies for study.In order to make the differences,so in this study,it is these three near-synonyms —“effect,impact,influence”are chosen as an example when it is used as nouns to express the meaning of influence.So,the main task of this research is to do the research of semantic prosodies of three lexical items and compare various usages of collocations and colligations of these near-synonyms in the given corpus.

Research procedures

To begin with,this research will base on the British National Corpus(BNC)and take it as the standard English native speakers’corpus.The research randomly chose several texts from the fields of Imaginative,Natural Science,Applied Science,Belief & Thought,Commerce & Finance,Arts,Social Science,World Affairs and Leisure of BNC.And then,in this study,BFSU Collocator 1.0 will also be used.It is a tool for extract collocation.Different from the previous software-Excel and SPSS program,this software used the BNCweb calculating formula proposed by Stefan Evert.Lastly,this study will apply the data-driven approach,which is proposed by Wei(2002).This method is to try to evaluate the significant collocates by the concordance of“effect,impact,influence”to choose significant words with a span of-4/+4or-5/+5,calculating the Z-score or MI score of these collocates,finding out the significant collocates and their features.Hunston(2006,p.71)proposes that“an MI score of 3 or higher can be taken to be significant”.And then,it tries to analyze the semantic atmosphere of these significant collocates in the environments of lexical items,summarize the characteristics of semantic prosody of studied words.

Results and analysis

after careful observation,features of significant collocates of EFFECT in BNC can be summarized as follows.To begin with,there are altogether about 275 significant collocates(which excludes specific nouns concerning personal names,names of places,names of factories,names of army and numeral numbers)of EFFECT when it is used as nouns to express the meaning of influence.They can be classified as nouns,verbs,adjectives,adverbs and present forms and past forms of verbs.Among these six types,it can be seen significant adjectives are in a larger proportion,so they are the key points of this research.In order to analyze clearly,it needs to list the MI-score of 20 significant adjectives in the following Table 1.

Table 1.Significant collocates of effect

massive enormous main 48 59 369 1 1 5 3.6677 3.3700 3.0471

In the above result,according to the semantic atmosphere of these 20 significant collocates,it tries to analyze these collocates.It can be seen that there are three negative collocates-“detrimental,pernicious,devastating”,only accounting for 15%.4 are positive collocates-“miraculous,desired,sophisticated,significant”,accounting for 20%.The rest of collocates are neutral collocates,accounting for 65%.Thus,it can be seen that lots of significant collocates will form neutral semantic atmosphere.Then,it can be concluded that the item-EFFECT has formed neutral semantic atmosphere,having the neutral semantic prosody.

Taking the above-mentioned observation into consideration,there are mainly about 163 significant collocates(which excludes specific nouns concerning personal names,names of places,names of factories,names of army and numeral numbers)of IMPACT when it is used as the meaning of influence.By using the same method,in order to analyze clearly,it needs to list the MI-score of 20 significant adjectives in the following Table 2.

Table 2.Significant collocates of impact

negative full positive 95 334 135 1 3 1 4.1786 3.9497 3.6717

In the above result,it can be seen that there are four negative collocates-“destabilizing,uneven,dangerous,negative”,accounting for 20%.4 are positive collocates-“beneficial,greatest,sophisticated,positive”,also accounting for 20%.The rest of collocates are neutral collocates,accounting for 60%.Thus,it can be seen that lots of significant collocates will form neutral semantic atmosphere.Then,it can be concluded that the item-IMPACT has formed neutral semantic atmosphere,having the neutral semantic prosody.

Taking the above-mentioned observation into consideration,there are mainly about 183 significant collocates(which excludes specific nouns concerning personal names,names of places,names of factories,names of army and numeral numbers)of INFLUENCE when it is used as the meaning of influence.In the same way,it needs to list the MI-score of 20 significant adjectives in the following Table 3.

Table 3.Significant collocates of influence

growing greater 171 188 1 1 3.2365 3.0998

In the above result,it can be seen that there are five negative collocates-“corrupting,destructive,declining,reduced,bad”,accounting for 25%.4 are positive collocates-“greatest,powerful,active,positive”,also accounting for 20%.The rest of collocates are neutral collocates,accounting for 55%.Thus,it can be seen that lots of significant collocates will form neutral semantic atmosphere.Then,it can be concluded that the item-INFLUENCE has formed neutral semantic atmosphere,having the neutral semantic prosody.

according to the above research,it can be clearly found that various collocations and the similarities and differences of semantic prosody of these three near synonyms.It can be listed in the following.

It can be seen that the similarities are mainly about three points.Firstly,all of these three near synonyms can form many collocations with three words-“greatest,negative,positive”.Secondly,the distribution of collocates of these three near synonyms is more left than right.Thirdly,they all have same colligations:1)V+N,2)ADJ+N.Meanwhile,there are also lots of differences.Most importantly,although they all carry the neutral semantic prosody,according to overall observation,it can be seen the semantic atmosphere of these three items is slightly different-the neutral semantic prosody of EFFECT is stronger than the other two,and the neutral semantic prosody of INFLUENCE is the weakest.The typical collocates of EFFECT are these neutral words-“neutral,significant,tremendous,massive,enormous”and so on.The typical adjective collocates of IMPACT are“pervasive,cumulative,direct,negative,positive”;and the typical adjective collocates of INFLUENCE are“corrupting,destructive,declining,positive,bad”.Despite the fact that the neutral semantic prosody of these three near-synonyms takes the larger proportion,the neutral semantic prosody of INFLUENCE is obviously different from others.Thus,it should be observed differently.

Conclusion

This research is easy for the related study,such as the collocations and colligations of these synonyms.Therefore,it is a new breakthrough by using various corpus in teaching both in the cognitive vocabulary of students and in the process of vocabulary teaching.With the deepening reform of English teaching,the application of English corpus resources and techniques in foreign language lexical teaching has become the focus of English teaching in the future.According to this research,we can get the following implications:on the one hand,it will be helpful for teachers to optimize their existing teaching model and determine the key points of lexical teaching.On the other hand,teachers can also develop the autonomous learning model,it can not only be used as the supplement to teachers'classroom teaching,but also stimulate learners' interests in active learning,expand learners' thinking patterns,and help to cultivate students'ability to find and solve problems autonomously.It will surely open up a new way for students to acquire correct language knowledge.