Abstract
Synonymy is one of the complex linguistic features that learners of English face as a second language. This study investigates the similarities and differences among four English synonyms—small, little, tiny, and petite—in terms of their genres, usage comparisons, grammatical patterns, and collocations. The data is derived from both the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) as a native English corpus and the Cambridge Learner Corpus (CLC) as the non-native corpus. The results from both corpora show that small and little are frequently used, while petite is rarely used in COCA and not used at all in CLC. Additionally, little is mainly used in TV and fiction genres, whereas small, tiny, and petite are used in news and magazine genres. The grammatical patterns are similar across these synonyms, except for one distinct pattern associated with little in COCA. Furthermore, the outcomes revealed that there is no comparative form for petite in either corpus; however, little has two comparative forms that differ in meaning. The researchers suggested a few recommendations based on these findings.
Recommended Citation
Ammari, Raeda and Al-Ahmad, Wajed
(2023)
"A Corpus-Based Study of English Synonyms: Small, Little, Tiny and Petite,"
Jordan Journal of Applied Science-Humanities Series: Vol. 36:
Iss.
2, Article 1.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.aaru.edu.jo/jjoas-h/vol36/iss2/1