Collocational Patterns of the Near-Synonyms Error, Fault, and Mistake

It is a daunting task for EFL learners to clearly distinguish and accurately use near-synonyms in English. This corpus-based study aims to make clear distinctions between the usage of three synonymous nouns, namely “error,” “fault,” and “mistake,” with the focus on the degree of formality and colloc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The international journal of communication and linguistic studies 2020, Vol.19 (1), p.1-17
Main Author: Phoocharoensil, Supakorn
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adjectives
American English
Collocations
Communication
Corpus analysis
Corpus linguistics
Dictionaries
English as a second language learning
Formality
Genre
Humanities
Language
Linguistics
Nouns
Semantics
Subtitles & subtitling
Synonyms
Verbs
Citations: Items that cite this one
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Summary:It is a daunting task for EFL learners to clearly distinguish and accurately use near-synonyms in English. This corpus-based study aims to make clear distinctions between the usage of three synonymous nouns, namely “error,” “fault,” and “mistake,” with the focus on the degree of formality and collocations. Having analyzed the synonym distribution across genres based on data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), the study discovered that “error” is common in formal contexts, e.g. academic texts, whereas “fault” and “mistake” prevail in informal genres, e.g. TV and movie subtitles. In terms of collocations, the top-thirty frequency lists of verb and adjective collocates whose MI score is ≥ 3 are presented. The collocates, categorized into themes according to their semantic preference, are shared by “error” and “mistake” to a certain extent, which confirms their high level of synonymy, while fault has its own exclusive set of collocates. Despite the overlapping themes and shared collocates among the three synonyms, each noun also strongly collocates with some different verbs and adjectives. Such variation in collocational patterns can shed light on the subtle usage of the three target synonyms.
ISSN:2327-7882
2327-8617
DOI:10.18848/2327-7882/CGP/v19i01/1-17