한국언어과학회

This study aims to explore usage differences among near-synonym verbs based on COHA and GloWbE through a diachronic and synchronic trend analysis and differentiate the subtle semantic similarities and differences in the authentic usage of COCA through two analysis tools like Wmatrix 5 and NetMiner 4.0. The former shows that the overall frequency of catch is higher than that of grasp and seize from both a diachronic and synchronic perspective, and that the frequency of all three near-synonym verbs could be higher in some countries using English as their second language. The latter mainly deals with two options like semantic domains shared with all near-synonym verbs and semantic domains exclusively shared with each near-synonym verb. The results shed light on the subtle semantic similarities and differences among three near-synonym verbs according to shared or unshared relationship with the noun collocates of the corresponding semantic domains, despite a gap in the frequency size of them.