A corpus-based study of English synonyms: capacity, capability and competence

This study investigated three synonymous nouns capacity, capability and competence in terms of their usage in different genres and their collocations. Data were collected from Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online and Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The study was conducted to figure out the frequency of occurrence of each synonym in eight genres available in COCA and then search for the verb and adjective collocates of the synonyms. The findings revealed that through the eight genres, capacity is found to be more generally used than capability and competence. The frequency in genres also showed that all the three synonyms tend to be used in academic contexts. The results also revealed that the three synonyms shared some verb and adjective collocates. However, they also co-occur with particular verbs or adjectives. Each of them shows a tendency to occur with collocates in particular semantic themes.