A Case Study in Verbs of Completion: "end" and "finish"

Mgr. Samah Salah Saker

Master's thesis

Abstract:

Synonymy is one of the major lexical relations in the linguistic field that has been the concern of many semanticists. This case study investigates the phenomenon of synonymy with its different types and places an emphasis on cognitive synonymy. The data analysis aims to discuss one pair of verbs, end and finish, by showing their possible meanings and indicating their collocational range in order to decide to which type of synonymy they belong. The question of whether absolute synonymy exists or not was addressed before and was usually answered by negation, however, some scholars claim that absolute synonyms do exist, but they are extremely rare. The current study assumes that the verbs are cognitive synonyms as they are usually used interchangeably. In order to prove this, the study incorporates two analytical methods, dictionaries and electronic corpora. Unexpectedly, the data analysis reveals that the verbs belong to the category of near-synonymy rather than cognitive synonymy due to major differences reflected in the results.

Abstract:

Synonymy is one of the major lexical relations in the linguistic field that has been the concern of many semanticists. This case study investigates the phenomenon of synonymy with its different types and places an emphasis on cognitive synonymy. The data analysis aims to discuss one pair of verbs, end and finish, by showing their possible meanings and indicating their collocational range in order to decide to which type of synonymy they belong. The question of whether absolute synonymy exists or not was addressed before and was usually answered by negation, however, some scholars claim that absolute synonyms do exist, but they are extremely rare. The current study assumes that the verbs are cognitive synonyms as they are usually used interchangeably. In order to prove this, the study incorporates two analytical methods, dictionaries and electronic corpora. Unexpectedly, the data analysis reveals that the verbs belong to the category of near-synonymy rather than cognitive synonymy due to major differences reflected in the results.

Keywords

synonymy, cognitive synonyms, collocations, corpus linguistics, meaning.

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 4. 6. 2021

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 29. 6. 2021
• Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Naděžda Kudrnáčová, CSc.
• Reader: doc. PhDr. Jana Chamonikolasová, Ph.D.

Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Master programme / field:
English Language and Literature / English Language and Literature