A corpus-based study on near-synonymous manner adverbs : “yiran” and “duanran”

Abstract

Manner adverb is one of the major groups of adverbs describing how an action is carried out. Although a number of near-synonymous manner adverbs are found in Chinese, most dictionaries use rather general or even circular definitions for these items which persistently confuse second language learners. The subtle yet important differences between near-synonymous manner adverbs are invisible by definitions but observable in collocational behaviors. Thus, this work aims to examine the semantic differences between a pair of near-synonymous manner adverbs 毅然 and 斷然 (resolutely). We propose that near-synonymous manner adverbs can be differentiated in terms of the event structures constructed by the collocated verbs, conjunctions, and nouns.