A corpus-based analysis of English synonym verbs: obtain, gain, and receive

This corpus-based study investigates a set of synonymous verbs obtain, gain, and receive, concentrating on their grammatical patterns, degree of formality, and collocations. The data were derived from Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (online version) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). Regarding the grammatical patterns, although obtain, gain, and receive share the majority of the grammatical structures, some different patterns can be found. In terms of the degree of formality, the findings revealed that obtain, gain, and receive are commonly used in formal context. Nevertheless, when considering the frequency of occurrence, receive has the highest degree of formality followed by gain, and obtain. For noun collocations of obtain, gain, and receive, the results demonstrated a significant difference among the three synonymous verbs as they tend to share a small number of noun collocates. For these reasons obtain, gain, and receive are near-synonyms and they cannot be used to substitute for one another in every context.

本项基于语料库的研究以获得（obtain）、获取（gain）与接收（receive）这一组同义动词为研究对象，聚焦三者的语法模式、正式程度与搭配特征。研究数据源自《朗曼当代英语词典（在线版）》（Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English online version）与当代美国英语语料库（Corpus of Contemporary American English，简称COCA）。就语法模式而言，尽管获得、获取与接收共享绝大多数语法结构，但仍存在部分差异化模式。就正式程度而言，研究结果显示，三者均常用于正式语境中。不过，若结合出现频率维度考量，三者的正式程度由高到低依次为接收、获取与获得。针对三者的名词搭配情况，研究结果显示，这三个同义动词间存在显著差异：三者仅共享少量名词搭配语。基于上述结论，获得、获取与接收属于近义动词，无法在所有语境中互相替换使用。