A corpus-based study on nearsynonymy: The concept PLEASANT SMELLING in 19th- and 20th-century American English

Abstract

This dissertation examines the distributional patterns of the five adjectival near-synonyms fragrant, perfumed, scented, sweet-scented, and sweet-smelling, which designate the concept PLEASANT SMELLING in American English by paying special attention to their diachronic development, as represented in the Corpus of Historical American English (1810-2009). The distribution of the selected adjectives is analyzed across a wide range of semantic, morphosyntactic, and stylistic contexts which function as a proxy for semantic similarity. Three separate analyses are conducted, focusing on different aspects of the semantic structure of the near-synonyms. Results indicate that the set is undergoing processes of convergence and substitution, possibly as a result of extralinguistic factors. Therefore, the analyses shed light on the diachronic development of lexical near-synonyms, a dimension that has up to now been relatively disregarded in the specialized literature.