A corpus-based study of English synonyms: produce, create, and manufacture

This study examines three English synonym, produce, create, and manufacture focusing on the similarities and differences in term of meanings, degree of formality, collocation, and grammatical pattern. Two online dictionaries (the Cambridge Advance Learner’s Dictionary and the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary) were used to help determine the meanings of the synonyms. Furthermore, the study explores 100 concordance lines to determine the similarities and differences between the studied words. The result show that the three synonyms in this study are loose synonym and cannot be used interchangeably in all contexts. Although the synonyms share the same core meaning, they all have their own unique traits in meanings, degree of formality, collocation, and grammatical patterns. Moreover, the corpora provide additional linguistic information that does not exist in online dictionaries such as collocation and grammatical pattern.