Developing a computer-facilitated tool for acquiring near-synonyms in Chinese and English
Shixiao Ouyang, Helena Hong Gao, Soo Ngee Koh · 2009
This paper is a multi-disciplinary study on cognitive linguistics, computational linguistics and language acquisition. It focuses on application issues of meaning, semantic structures and pragmatics to near-synonyms in Chinese and English languages. The near-synonyms of physical action verbs (PA Verbs) can be distinctive from each other in the way in which their actions are depicted, but in terms of language acquisition, it is not an easy task to identify the nuances among near-synonyms. Normal dictionaries do not explain the differentiae that are crucial for the choice among near-synonyms, and research on how to tackle the nuances among near-synonyms of PA Verbs has hardly been done. We aim to develop a computer-facilitated language-learning tool for L2 learners to master different sub-classes of PA Verbs in both Chinese and English.