An analysis of the near-synonyms: let, allow, and permit: a corpus-based approach

Near-synonyms might be a major problem for L2 learners because they can cause confusion in differentiating the meaning in appropriate contexts. This study, thus, aims to examine the distinction of three verbs synonyms: ‘let’, ‘allow’, ‘permit’ through a corpus-based approach in terms of degree of formality, grammatical patterns, and noun collocations alongside semantic preferences using the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). Since the three previously mentioned aspects were the focus of the analysis, the distribution across genres was investigated to respond to the degree of formality, and one hundred concordance lines of each verb from COCA were explored manually. Moreover, the twenty noun collocations were ranked by frequency and an MI value score over 3. The findings indicated that ‘permit’ has the highest degree of formality, followed by ‘allow’, and ‘let’ respectively as it was frequently discovered in academic genres. For the grammatical patterns analysis, the data reveal that the target verb synonyms were not totally identical because they share only one grammatical pattern. In terms of noun collocations and semantic preferences, the three synonymous verbs did not share common noun collocations, only the pair of ‘allow-permit’ shared a few collocates. As a result, the three verb synonyms could not be used interchangeably for each other in all contexts. In a pedagogical setting, this study might be beneficial for raising student’s awareness of how to use the synonyms in suitable settings.

近义词语或为第二语言（L2）学习者面临的一大棘手难题，因其会使学习者在适配语境中区分词义时产生混淆。因此，本研究旨在借助基于语料库的研究范式，依托当代美国英语语料库（Corpus of Contemporary American English，简称COCA），考察“let”、“allow”、“permit”这三个动词近义词的差异，分析维度涵盖正式程度、语法模式、名词搭配及语义偏好。
鉴于上述三个维度为本次分析的核心关注点，本研究同时考察了三个动词在不同语域中的分布情况，以佐证其正式程度差异；此外还从COCA语料库中手动提取了每个动词的100条索引行开展分析。此外，本研究按频率对20组名词搭配进行排序，并筛选出互信息（Mutual Information，MI）值大于3的搭配。
研究结果显示，“permit”的正式程度最高，其次为“allow”，最后是“let”；其中“permit”频繁出现于学术语域之中。在语法模式分析层面，数据表明这三个目标动词近义词并非完全等同，仅共享一种语法模式。就名词搭配与语义偏好而言，三个同义动词并无共用的名词搭配，仅“allow”与“permit”这一组存在少量重合搭配。
综上，这三个动词近义词无法在所有语境中互换使用。在教学场景中，本研究有助于提升学习者在适配语境中使用此类近义词的意识。