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

Mgr. Samah Salah Saker

Diplomová práce

Anotace:

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.

Jazyk práce: angličtina

Datum vytvoření / odevzdání či podání práce: 4. 6. 2021

Obhajoba závěrečné práce

• Obhajoba proběhla 29. 6. 2021
• Vedoucí: doc. PhDr. Naděžda Kudrnáčová, CSc.
• Oponent: doc. PhDr. Jana Chamonikolasová, Ph.D.

Masarykova univerzita

Filozofická fakulta

Magisterský studijní program / obor:
English Language and Literature / English Language and Literature