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Lexical Priming: Applications and advances
Edited by Michael Pace-Sigge and Katie J. Patterson
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 79] 2017
► pp. 121–139

Lexical priming and the selection and sequencing of synonyms

Detailed corpus-based research has identified factors that describe various reasons for the preference of one synonymous lexical item over another (or others). This paper continues along these descriptive lines while presenting the versatility of synonyms and their functions. In addition to statistical results, we also investigate the psychological reasons for our choices by exploring what is referred to in psycholinguistic priming tasks as the frequency effect. We will find that this psychological, subliminal effect can importantly add explanation to description for corpus-based studies, which finely dovetails with Hoey’s theory of Lexical Priming.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Semantic priming
    • 1.2Lexical priming
  • 2.The functions of synonyms
    • 2.1Collocation and colligation
    • 2.2Avoiding repetition
  • 3.Sequencing of synonyms: Use of the most frequent synonym first
    • 3.1Introduction
    • 3.2The frequency effect and spreading activation
    • 3.3The tsunami corpus
    • 3.4Other corpora and software used
    • 3.5Categorizing
    • 3.6The selection of candidate synonyms
    • 3.7Findings from the tsunami corpus
    • 3.8Probability measurement
      • 3.8.1One-tailed binomial test
      • 3.8.2Results of one-tailed binomial distribution test
      • 3.8.3Pragmatic association
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Software
Published online: 14 August 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.79.05baw
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