How (dis)similar? Telling the difference between near-synonyms in a foreign language

Gesuato, Sara

doi:10.1163/9789401203906_012

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 10 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Also, two uses of corpora in language teaching, according to Hunston (2002), are as raw data in a corpus-based syllabus, and as a source of selected examples to teach targeted aspects of language. Gesuato (2007) describes using analysis of texts carefully selected from a language corpus to develop awareness of semantic distinctions among English near-synonyms. She found that foreign language students "can be sensitized to the context specificity of each near synonym, which may encourage their correct use of terms" (188).…”

Section: Corpus Studies and Language Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analyzing Use of “Thanks to You”: Insights for Language Teaching and Assessment in Second and Foreign Language Contexts

Lanteigne

Crompton

2011

RiL

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This investigation of thanks to you in British and American usage was precipitated by a situation at an American university, in which a native Arabic speaker said thanks to you in isolation, making his intended meaning unclear. The study analyzes use of thanks to you in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus to gain insights for English language instruction /assessment in the American context, as well as English-as-a-lingua-franca contexts where the majority of speakers are not native speakers of English or are speakers of different varieties of English but where American or British English are for educational purposes the standard varieties. Analysis of the two corpora revealed three functions for thanks to you common to British and American usage: expressing gratitude, communicating "because of you" positively, and communicating "because of you" negatively (as in sarcasm). A fourth use of thanks to you, thanking journalists/guests for being on news programs/talk shows, occurred in the American corpus only. Analysis indicates that felicitous use of thanks to you for each of these meanings depends on the presence of a range of factors, both linguistic and material, in the context of utterance.

show abstract

Section: Corpus Studies and Language Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%