Effectiveness of Corpus in Distinguishing Two Near-Synonymous Verbs: Damage and Destroy

This study aims to explore how corpus-based approaches can be used address the distinctions of English near-synonyms effectively. Especially, it collected source data from British National Corpus (BNC) and adopted Sketch Engine (SkE) as an analyzing tool compare near synonymous pair damage destroy commonly misused by Chinese-speaking learners in terms frequencies, genre distribution, colligation collocation, differences meanings uses. It is found that are because they relevant words share most collocates but not fully intersubstitutable for certain contexts. Some related human body or physical health more collocated with some such military affairs one’s thought belief destroy. In addition, core meaning gives emphasis on something recovered does work well before, while offers senses no longer exists. Furthermore, tend collocate two same word create a build-up, endowed stronger degree destruction than damage. The ends suggesting analysis should promoted language teaching learning improve accurate use vocabulary learners.