A corpus-based study of English synonyms: tool, instrument, and device

Even though synonyms share core meanings, they differ in connotations and collocational patterns. Different synonymous words are often used in varying contexts, making their usage challenging for learners of English. This corpus-based study aims to investigate the degree of formality and distribution across eight different genres of the target nouns tool, instrument, and device, and to examine their adjective and verb collocates, which are classified into themes based on semantic preference. Data retrieved from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) were used to analyze the three selected synonymous nouns. The results of frequency and distribution across genres demonstrate that tool and instrument occur most frequently in academic texts, while device appears most commonly on webpages, particularly in instructional sections. It can therefore be concluded that tool and instrument are more formal than device. Regarding their collocates, the top thirty verb and adjective collocates with a significant Mutual Information (MI) score of ≥ 3 were ranked and categorized into semantically related themes. The findings indicate that the three target nouns are near- synonyms, as they share only a few identical adjective and verb collocates. Although these collocates can be grouped into similar semantic themes, the specific collocations provided by COCA differ. This variation in collocational patterns reveals that these synonyms are not always interchangeable in all contexts, highlighting the importance for learners to carefully consider the appropriate usage of each near-synonym.