Developing a Computer-facilitated Tool for Acquiring Near-synonyms in Chinese and English (short paper)

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. We believe that all the fractions of the arm movement and actions are perceptibly the base for linguistic expressions of human physical actions. By emphasizing the specifications of the manners of action as the crucial semantic components embedded in the verb roots, Gao [1] provided a demonstration of her decomposition method for the semantic properties of near-synonyms of PA Verbs (see Table 1). Differences between the members of each subclass are marked by different notions found in PA Verbs, such as Bodypart Contact, Instrument, Force, Motion Direction, Speed, Effect, and Intention. These are considered to be the most important ones in projecting the lexical semantic prominence in the classifications of a word’s meaning components among its near-synonyms. We assume that to thoroughly understand the nuances between the nearsynonyms of PA Verbs, the learners need to understand the perspectives from which the action is depicted linguistically. Gao’s [1] work on semantic decomposition of near-synonyms of PA Verbs provides a theoretical guideline and solid ground for designing an e-learning tool for L2 learners.