MINISTRY OF SCIENCE AND EDUCATION OF UKRAINE

LVIV POLYTECHNIC NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

INSTITUTE OF COMPUTER SCIENCES AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

Department of Applied Linguistics

COURSE PAPER IN MODERN ENGLISH

Corpus-based diachronic study of the adjectives CHARMING and STUNNING

Presented by:
Student of the group FL-35
Snizhana Salamakha

Supervised by:
Olesya Saban

Lviv – 2022
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ABSTRACT
Our research is devoted to study and analysis of synonymous adjectives
CHARMING and STUNNING using corpus-based method of analysis. Corpus
linguistics is viewed by some linguists as a research tool or methodology and by
others as a discipline or theory in its own right.
The research aims to determine the special features of adjectives
CHARMING and STUNNING, to gather new insights into the semantic differences
of these adjectives by examining their most frequent collocations and their stylistic
variation.
The object of this research is the adjectives CHARMING and STUNNING in
diachrony.
The subject of this research is a corpus-based diachronic study of the
adjectives CHARMING and STUNNING.
Research material is compiled from various sources and supplemented by my
results, such as COCA (The Corpus of Contemporary American English), Oxford
Dictionary of Phrase (2010), Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (2010), Collins,
Longman's Dictionary of Modern English (2014), Longman's Advanced American
Dictionary (2013), Macmillan's Dictionary of Phrases (2010).
Linguistic data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English
consists of 825 collocations with the adjective STUNNING, and 974 collocations
with the adjective CHARMING.
The research paper considers the concept of adjective phrase, corpus and
collocation. This research paper presents how to study, research and analyze the
synonymous adjectives with methods of corpus linguistics. Collocations with
adjectives were classified into collocation models, like CHARMING/STUNNING +
noun, CHARMING/STUNNING+verb, CHARMING/STUNNING +ADVERB,
CHARMING/STUNNING+adjective and other.

Keywords: synonym, adjective, collocation, collocation model, corpus

linguistics, COCA
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………….3
CHAPTER 1. THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL BACKGROUND…...6
1.1. The concept of synonyms………………………………………………………6
1.2. Corpus linguistics and corpus-based studies…………………………………...7
1.3. Literature overview…………………………………………………………….9
1.4. Adjective as a part of speech………………………………………………….10
1.5. Data and methodology………………………………………………………..12
CHAPTER 2. PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF DATA……………………14
2.1. The general information about the adjectives CHARMING and
STUNNING…………………………………………………………………………14
2.2. The comparison of the concept of the adjectives CHARMING and STUNNING
in the period from the year 1990-1994 to the year 2015-2019………………………15
CONCLUSIONS………………………………………………………………….....27
REFERENCES……………………………………………………………..………..30
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INTRODUCTION
Corpus-based diachronic studies have been thriving over the last three decades
to such an extent that the validity of corpora in the enrichment of historical linguistic
research is now undeniable. Traditionally a corpus is a collection of language
examples: written or spoken examples of words, sentences, phrases, or texts.
Nowadays a corpus can be any collection of examples.
A corpus is collected to learn from it, i.e. to extract domain-specific
information. Examples can be analyzed and the rules and models behind them can be
discovered. Machine learning algorithms are used to extract relationships between
samples. Manual structuring (annotation) of such data allows the integration of
human preferences and knowledge into machine learning algorithms. One of the
focuses of modern applied language research is corpus linguistics.
Corpus linguistics is the study of language based on large collections of "real
life" language use stored in corpora (or corpora)—computerized databases created for
linguistic research. It is also known as corpus-based studies. Corpus-based research is
also useful for features that cannot be examined with automated computer programs.
Furthermore, this research makes it easier to examine multiple features of the
function, allowing us to gain a more complete picture of its purpose [1, p.12].
Research in the field of corpus linguistics concerns the creation of the first
electronic corpora and their gradual spread as an effective means of language
research, as well as the formation of corpus linguistics as an independent discipline.
Among the researchers who made a significant contribution to the development of
corpus linguistics, it is worth mentioning the names of H. Kucera (1979), D. Biber
(1990, 1992), J. Sinclair (1994), G. Kennedy (1998), N. Ide (2000), M. Basko (1996;
2003), T. Erjavec (2001), T. McEnery and A. Wilson (2001), and others.
Corpus linguistics is viewed by some linguists as a research tool or
methodology and by others as a discipline or theory in its own right. This research
analyzes adjectives CHARMING and STUNNING. It is a corpus-based and
diachronic study.
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The topicality of the research is the interest in the popularity of the word in
various sources of information, in the use of a word at this or that time, how the use
of the word has changed in certain years, and what it means. Furthermore, corpus-
based research is a new and interesting trend that can provide reliable results.
The object of this research is the adjectives CHARMING and STUNNING in
diachrony.
The subject of this research is a corpus-based diachronic study of the
adjectives CHARMING and STUNNING.
The research aims to determine the special features of adjectives
CHARMING and STUNNING, to gather new insights into the semantic differences
of these adjectives by examining their most frequent collocations and their stylistic
variation.
The research tasks include the following:
1. to study the concept of a diachronic corpus-based approach;
2. to research corpus-based and corpus-linguistic studies;
3. to reveal the etymology and definition of words CHARMING and
STUNNING;
4. to study and analyze the main information about the corpora COCA (The
Corpus of Contemporary American English);
5. to compare the adjective CHARMING in the specific period, to analyze
the obtained result;
6. to compare the adjective STUNNING in the specific periods, to analyze
the obtained result.
Research methods are:
1. analysis of definitions – to clarify the interpretation of terms;
2. distributional analysis – to identify the contextual environment, connecting
potential and properties of the studied units;
3. concordance analysis – for the analysis of a set of terminological units and
connections between language units;
4. comparative analysis of adjectives as synonyms;
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5. corpus method.
Research material is compiled from various sources and supplemented by my
results, such as COCA (The Corpus of Contemporary American English), Oxford
Dictionary of Phrase (2010), Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (2010), Collins,
Longman's Dictionary of Modern English (2014), Longman's Advanced American
Dictionary (2013), Macmillan's Dictionary of Phrases (2010).
Linguistic data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English
consists of 825 collocations with the adjective STUNNING, and 974 collocations
with the adjective CHARMING.
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CHAPTER 1. THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL BACKGROUND

1.1. The concept of synonyms

There is a section in lexicology called onomasiology. Onomasiology observes
what terms are used to refer to a particular concept. Synonyms, therefore, fall into
onomasiological variation because they are "formal variations of concept-function"
[2, p. 3].
Structuralists have already defined tokens as synonyms if replacing one with
another did not change the true semantic meaning of the statement. D. A. Cruse [9, p.
265] argues that there are sets of words or lexical units that indicate particular
similarities.
However, synonymy should not be viewed simply as the identity of a meaning,
because an analysis of an identical meaning is unnecessary and redundant [9, p. 154].
Divyak [12, p. 21] adds to the understanding of synonyms that if they describe “the
same situation, they call it differently; they represent it from different points of
view." To avoid the assumption that the meanings are identical, D. A. Cruse further
suggests that there are some groups of synonyms that have closer semantic similarity
than other sets.
The previous vague statements already indicate that the characterization of
synonyms presents certain difficulties. To address this problematic issue, D. A. Cruse
[9, p. 266] proposes the concepts of necessary similarities and acceptable differences.
The necessary similarity means that “synonyms must have a significant degree of
semantic overlap” [9, p. 266], and acceptable differences are defined as differences
that do not destroy the feeling of similarity [9, p. 154]. Moreover, D. A. Cruse [9, p.
266] argues that synonyms should also have low implicit contrast. Combining all
these aspects, he thus defines synonyms as "lexical units whose meanings are
identical concerning the" central "semantic features, but differ, if at all, only
concerning [...]" secondary "or" peripheral "features" [9, p. 267]. To summarize his
assumptions, synonyms can be described as lexical elements, the semantic similarity
of which is more noticeable than their differences [9, p. 154].
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D. A. Cruse [9, p. 268] establishes a scale of synonymy. On the one hand, there
is absolute synonymy, on the other, non-synonymy. Absolute synonyms can be
defined as lexical elements that can be used interchangeably in all contexts. However,
it is impossible to test all of these contextual relationships [9, 268), and therefore “if
they exist, they are extremely rare” [9, p. 270]. As mentioned above, the existence of
two lexical units with the same meaning is useless. Consequently, one of the words
becomes obsolete or takes on a different semantic function [9, p. 270] as the semantic
meaning of words is constantly being updated [9, p. 107].
Further, on the synonymy scale, D. A. Cruse [9, p. 270] reinforces cognitive
synonymy. He defines cognitive synonyms as lexical elements that have “certain
common semantic properties” [9, p. 270]. He calls these semantic properties a
semantic mode, which is divided into propositional and expressive [9, p. 271]. The
propositional way is expressed by the form of the sentence, namely, if the sentence
expresses a "statement, question, command, exclamation, etc." [9, p. 271]. While the
meaning of a propositional meaning is determined by the truth condition pronounced
in the sentence, the truth condition does not play a role in the expressive meaning of
the lexical element. As a consequence, words are defined as cognitive synonyms if
they share propositional meanings but differ in their way of expression [9, p. 273].

1.2. Corpus linguistics and corpus-based studies

In general, corpora as a source of empirical data play a significant role in
Lingvo didactics. It must be admitted that artificially created examples of the use of
linguistic units and phenomena are ineffective, since they may differ significantly
from their actual functioning in the language.
The most widely linguistic corpus is used to develop lexical-grammatical skills
within the framework of a problematic approach to learning when students analyze
language material to obtain information on the rules for the use of a particular lexical
unit or grammatical structure. Such tasks with the use of a linguistic case may, in
particular, consist in elucidating the semantics of the word, the features of the
polysemy of words, compatibility, verb management, the use of time forms, etc. Of
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course, at the initial stage, the teacher needs to teach students directly the principles
of work with the corpora, and in the future to control their independent research
activities on the detection of grammatical rules or linguistic laws, and each time in
advance to check the effectiveness of one or another corpus in solving the task [3,
p.7]. Among the most well-known cases of English in free access, it should be noted:
 British National Corpus (BNC);
 Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA).
Work with the corpus is carried out with the help of special search engines -
corpus managers – which represent the results of the search in the form of
concordance, that is, the list in which the search unit is presented in the context of
fragments of various texts (horizontal lines with a search word in the middle are
called KWIC – Key Word In Context) and in the form of statistical data such as the
frequency of word-forms, the frequency of lexemes, grammatical categories, the
feature of compatibility, management, etc.
The corpus analysis procedure includes three steps: the identification of
language data by categorical analysis, the correlation of speech data with statistical
methods, and the intellectual interpretation of results [2, p. 20]. The lexicological
studies of the corpus allow us to determine the frequency of the use of lexical units of
the language, the relationship between the meanings of words such as polysemy,
homonymy, synonymy, and antonymy, changes in the vocabulary of the language, as
well as reflection in the language of social, territorial, and professional
characteristics.
The main concept of corpus linguistics is the corpus, that is, the selection of
speech material, which is formed by certain requirements and topics. The corpora can
vary according to styles and genres, or be separated by a specific discursive area. The
corpus of texts is not just a collection of texts selected by a certain method and
presented in electronic form in certain areas of language use (many similar
collections are now known), but a collection that is categorized by the integral
characteristics of each text (e.g. genre) and from the specific characteristics of
different units of its organization (tokens, word forms, morphemes, etc.).
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The existence of corpora of texts makes it possible to significantly expand and

automate the analysis of language material, which is the most important basis of any
linguistic research. The more materials are analyzed, the higher the significance of
the conclusions and the level of their reliability.

1.3. Literature overview

D. Biber, S. Conrad, and R. Reppen [4] distinguish between big, large, and
great. Specifically, they sought to research these three adjectives in addition to their
frequency in both fiction and academic prose. The data was collected from the
Longman-Lancaster Corps. The researchers focused on the top ten colocations and
ruled out those that occur less than once in a million. They concluded that although
the three adjectives individually behaved as synonyms, their analysis showed that
they could be used with different types of words. In a wider set of close synonyms,
Inkpen, D., & Hirst, G. [15] conducted a corpus-based analysis, referring to the
word large and its synonyms: contemporary, modern, and new. In particular, he
examined these seven synonymous adjectives in terms of similarities and differences
in their meaning, use, collective words, and frequencies.
Data was collected from COCA. The study concluded that the adjective great
has become more common among other equivalents. Then what followed was
beautiful. Interestingly, over time, more and more amazing, fabulous and fantastic are
used. The results showed that the adverbs modifying these adjectives vary
significantly, and there is some degree of overlap between the nouns modified by
these adjectives.
Moreover, the results showed that these adjectives usually modify abstract
nouns. In addition, body behavior shown to be excellent is used to alter and describe
movements and events. Surprisingly, the data showed that this adjective is equally
distributed when concepts/ideas and movements/events change. A further conclusion
is that these adjectives are mainly used in colloquial speech. In another study,
K. Chanchotphattha [5] tried to compare and contrast the language information
profile of different, diverse, and different. In particular, the comparison was made in
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terms of various aspects, including meaning, dialect, formality, conversations, and

grammatical patterns. He also looked at information about these three adjectives in
the dictionary. The data for the study was collected from 300 correspondence lines
retrieved from the BNC and the eighth edition of Oxford Advanced Learner's
Dictionary 2010 Data analysis showed that the three adjectives are not completely
similar and cannot be substituted for each other in all contexts. That is, the adjective
is suitable in one context, but not suitable in another context for “dialect, formality,
layout and grammatical patterns” [5, p. 30]. It was observed that there were no
differences between dialects of different and varied. In addition, the combination of
verbs, adverbs, prepositions, and nouns are the main words usually attached to these
adjectives. However, no colocation containing "miscellaneous + preposition" was
found.
On a broader set of synonyms, T. Hoffmann [14] conducted corpus-based
research to examine six closely related synonyms, namely, pleasant, kind, sweet,
benevolent, wonderful, and enjoyable. To help achieve the objectives of the study,
the definition was taken from three online dictionaries, namely MacMillan
Dictionary, Collins American Dictionary, and Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
Then the similarities and differences between the dictionaries were examined
and noted. The upper nominal colocations of adjectives were classified by lexical
patterns after being calculated using COCA. In addition, the researcher investigated
the stylistic variations of the six mentioned adjectives in different genres. The results
of the analysis of the corpus of the appealed definition of adjectives are investigated.

1.4. Adjectives as a part of speech

The adjective is a part of speech that is characterized by the following
features:
1) lexico-grammatical meaning of properties of substances such as size, color,
position in space, material, psychic state of a person, etc.;
2) typical stem-building elements, cf. -able (capable), -al (formal), -ial
(presidential), -fold (manifold), -ful (beautiful);
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3) right-hand combinability with nouns or noun substitutes (nice-looking

lady/ симпатична дівчина) and left-hand combinability with link-verbs (she’s
beautiful/дитя було маленьким), adverbs (quite interesting/ досить цікавий);
4) functions of an attribute (a nice flower/ гарна квітка) and predicative
complement (she grew nervous/вона стала нервовою);
5) category of the degree of comparison [5].
Adjective phrases are one of the many kinds of phrases you use in your
speech and writing every day. With adjectives, you describe nouns. With adjective
phrases, you describe adjectives. Ultimately, adjective phrases provide more vivid
descriptions for nouns and create richer sentences. 
A phrase is a group of words that’s not quite a sentence but expresses a
coherent idea. They fit into sentences to provide context and clarity. Here are a few
quick examples of phrases: Up the hill and Without any toppings).
An adjective is a word that describes a noun (e.g. gray, small, hilarious).
An adjective phrase is a phrase that contains an adjective, but there’s more to it
than that—as a whole, an adjective phrase is a phrase that acts as an adjective by
describing a noun. Take a look at the bolded adjective phrases in these sentences:
 We didn’t believe our tour guide when he warned us about
the increasingly hostile goblins we’d encounter as we went deeper into the woods. 
 She was taller than her classmates. 
Examples of adjective phrases
Adjective phrases come in many 1) We experienced the decade’s most
different forms. Some destructive storm.
incorporate comparative and 2) They saw only the brightest stars through
superlative adjectives their telescope.
Compound adjectives are often part of 1) The movie, short and whitewashed, faced
adjective phrases criticism from historians. 
2) The playlist was too slow-paced for the
crowd that night. 
Adjective phrases can contain adverbs 1) It was a deliciously sensational play.
2) His hair, shockingly dyed pink, surprised
his parents.
3) The salesperson, who went abroad, took the
rest of the week off. 
Adjective phrases can contain 1) The kids, like popcorn, were bouncing all
incorporate prepositions over their trampoline. 
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2) My grandmother from New York makes a

delicious egg cream. 
3) Sometimes, an adjective phrase is just a
series of adjectives:
4) My old, slow, gas-guzzling minivan finally
died. 
5) They took an intense, time-
consuming physics course. 

Adjective clauses and adjective phrases largely play the same role: to describe
a noun. But while an adjective phrase is simply a few additional words that “bulk up”
an adjective, an adjective clause reiterates the noun. Often, an adjective clause does
this with a pronoun. 

1.5. Data and methodology

COCA is a large and balanced corpus of American English with 450 million
words. It was chosen as the most appropriate body because it is configured for the
type of search parameters required for this project, namely, a phrase limited to the
immediate combination of words that can be searched by genre and sorted by
frequency and mutual information evaluation.
In addition, the results can be grouped by lemma, so as not to exclude various
relevant forms of the search query. Nouns, which turned out to be often combined
with adjectives, were semantically classified using the WordNet database to achieve
both objectivity and consistency in classification. In the parameters of WordNet, it
was not always clear how to classify a particular noun by the way it is used in the
corpus data, which required a certain subjectivity and, perhaps, a certain degree of
inaccuracy.
The corpus chosen in this coursework is COCA. Contemporary American
English Corpus (COCA) is the only large genre-balanced corpus of American
English. COCA is probably the most widely used English corpus and is related to
many other English corpora that we have created. The corpus contains over one
billion words of text (25+ million words each year from 1990 to 2019) from eight
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genres: oral, fiction, popular magazines, newspapers, academic writing, and (updated
in March 2020): television and films. subtitles, blogs, and other web pages [33].
The definitions of the near-synonyms as employed in the qualitative analysis
rely on The Macmillan Dictionary (2014), The Collins American Dictionary (2014),
and The Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2014). All three dictionaries are online
available. Whereas The Macmillan Dictionary includes the British and American
varieties, The Collins American Dictionary and The Merriam-Webster Dictionary
specialized in the American variety.
The corpus used for the research was the Corpus of Contemporary American
English (COCA) provided by Mark Davies of the Birmingham Young University.
The corpus was chosen due to its large size since it contained approximately 450
million words when the study was conducted in 2014. Moreover, COCA compiles
contemporary data and its interface and search options are easily operated.
Furthermore, a corpus based on American text samples was selected due to the use of
American-based dictionaries for the qualitative analysis of the near-synonyms.
According to M. Stubbs, we used such steps in our corpus analysis of
adjectives CHARMING vs STUNNING:
1. Lexical level: learn a word by frequency, context, and adjacent phrase.
2. Syntactic level: quantitative analysis of various lexical combinations and
patterns of sentences.
Frequency is an indispensable theoretical concept in the study of lexical
phrases in linguistics. Word frequency statistics, both manual and computerized,
determine and analyze the occurrence of words to derive lexical rules. It is often used
to study lexical patterns, frequency of word use, learning, and so on.
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CHAPTER 2. PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF DATA

To avoid misunderstandings in the process of communication, it is important to
know the meaning of a word well. Especially when two or three words have similar
meanings and are often used interchangeably in sentences, such as the adjectives
CHARMING and STUNNING. Therefore, this study aimed to find and analyze the
collocational meaning of these three adjectives. In this study, data were collected
from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) by applying the
documentation method with the note-taking technique. The study uses corpus
analysis, which applies the theory of collocational meaning and supports the theory of
lexical collocation.

2.1. The general information about the adjectives CHARMING and STUNNING
There were two sources used for the collection of data in this study, the
Longman dictionary of contemporary English, 6 th edition (2014) and COCA. This
study aimed to understand the differences and similarities between the two selected
synonyms, and grammatical structure. Table 1. Meanings are the initial part of words
in a language. To get meaning Longman dictionary of contemporary English 6th
edition (2014) was used (see Table 2).
Table 2
1) extremely beautiful or attracti 1)They make a stunning couple.
ve: 2) a stunning victory
STUNNING - collocation with: a beautiful person,
painting, sight, etc.
2) shocking or very impressive;
1) pleasant and attractive: 1) We had dinner with our director and
2) used to describe people who his charming wife.
use their attractiveness to influe 2)He's very charming but I
nce people or to make wouldn't trust him.
CHARMING other people like them: 3)"Shut up, will you, I'm trying to
3) used to show that you do  watch TV!" "Oh, charming!"
not approve of what someone
has said or done:
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Figures 1 and 2 presented the contrastive analysis of near-synonymous

adjectives: CHARMING and STUNNING. As you see the most frequent near-
synonymous adjective in COCA is STUNNING.

Fig 1 Frequency of use of the adjective STUNNING in COCA

Fig 2 Frequency of use of the adjective CHARMING in COCA

They are all adjectives that describe good things about a person. Adjectives
CHARMING and STUNNING also used to describe attractive people or things.
CHARMING is used when a person is likable or very pleasant.
STUNNING is mostly used to describe a person who is so attractive that you
stop to stare at them. Or, they are so pretty that you become stunned! But all this can
mean the same as pretty, beautiful, and so on.
STUNNING is a stronger adjective and is used more specifically than
charming. For example, "That actress was stunning!" is specifically referring to her
beauty because she is very beautiful. Saying "That actress is charming" can imply
that she is very pretty, but also means that she is charismatic.

2.2. The comparison of the concept of the adjectives CHARMING and

STUNNING in the period from the year 1990-1994 to the year 2015-2019
The main research and study in our paper are to make the comparative analysis
of adjectives CHARMING and STUNNING in the period from the year 1990-1994 to
the year 2015-2019. At first, we found single words such as STUNNING and
CHARMING on the LIST display in COCA (see figures 3 – 4).
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The CHART option shows the total frequency in each section. (in COCA, the
genres and five-year blocks). It is also possible to see the frequency of words and
phrases by sub-genre and/or year.
In figures 3-4 we can see the frequency of adjectives by the year and make a
comparative analysis of them.

Fig. 3 Use of the adjective CHARMING in COCA

Fig. 4 Search of the adjective in COCA by the years

On figure 4 we can see how to search the adjective CHARMING in COCA by
the years.

Fig. 5 Results of the searching adjective CHARMING

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As we see from figure 5, the most frequent of use the adjective CHARMING in
the period of 1990-1995 is in sections of FICTION and NEWS.

Fig. 6 Adjective CHARMING in the period from the year 1990-1994 to the year
2015-2019 in COCA

Fig. 7 Results of the search adjective STUNNING

From figure 7, the most frequent use of the adjective STUNNING in the period
of 1990-1995 is in sections of MAGAZINE and NEWS.

Fig. 8 Adjective STUNNING in the period from the year 1990-1994 to the year
2015-2019 in COCA
You can find a wealth of information for the top 60,000 words in the corpus.
As the following examples with bread show, you can see:
 an overview of all of the information below
 related topics (words that co-occur anywhere on the web page)
 collocates (automatically grouped by part of speech)
 clusters (the most frequent 2, 3, and 4-word strings)
 a reportable Keyword in Context (concordance) display
 related words (synonyms and WordNet entries), and
 websites use that word the most (can use these to create Virtual Corpora).
In figures 9 and 10 you can see the information about adjectives –
CHARMING and STUNNING. We can see the use of adjectives in different types of
 19

texts, the list of synonyms for researched adjectives, collocations, and clusters with
them.

Fig. 9 General information about the adjective CHARMING

Fig. 10 General information about the adjective STUNNING

2.2.1. Collocations with adjective CHARMING in COCA

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F. R. Palmer (1997) stated that “synonyms, in their core meaning, may be same
but different in their collation”. In this study, the results manifest that beautiful,
handsome, and pretty co-occur with the same and different noun and adverb
collocates. These collocates were taken from COCA.

Fig. 9 List of collocations with the adjective STUNNING

Fig. 10 List of collocations with adjective STUNNING +NOUN by the years in

comparison
Figures 9-12 that the results are different, especially about the adjective
STUNNING. More frequent collocation words for STUNNING have a difference
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over the years. For example, in 1990-1994 the most frequent word collocates are
VICTORY, DEFEAT, SUCCESS, BEAUTY, VIEWS, WOMAN, and others. But in
2010-2014, the most frequent word collocates are VIEWS, VICTORY, WOMAN,
NEWS, DRESS, BEAUTY, and SUCCESS. We can conclude that the adjective
STUNNING has the same word collocates in 1990-1994 – 2010-2014.

Fig. 11 List of collocations with adjective CHARMING

Fig. 12 List of collocations with adjective CHARMING + NOUN by the years in

comparison
Figures 9-12 that the results are different, especially about the adjective
STUNNING. More frequent collocation words for CHARMING are similar over the
 22

years. For example, in 1990-1994 the most frequent word collocates are PRINCE,
MAN, WAY, WOMAN, GUY, PEOPLE, TOWN, CHILD, PLACE, and others.
But in 2010-2014, the most frequent word collocates are PRINCE, MAN, WAY,
WOMAN, GUY, PEOPLE, TOWN, TIME, and RESTAURANT. We can conclude
that the adjective STUNNING has the same word collocates in 1990-1994 – 2010-
2014.
The concept of collocation is one of the most essential in corpus linguistics.
The British linguist J.R. Firth discussed it as early as 1951 and first coined the term in
its modern linguistic sense along with the famous explanatory slogan: ‘you shall
judge a word by the company it keeps’ (1957).
The next step of the analysis concerns collocation. J.R. Firth (1957) states ‘you
shall know a word by the company it keeps, so the working hypothesis here is that
overlap in collocation may reveal which words have meanings or senses that are
closer to each other than others. On the other hand differences in collocation may also
indicate divergence among synonyms.
F. R. Palmer (1997) stated that “synonyms, in their core meaning, may be same
but different in their collocation”. In this study, the results manifest that beautiful,
handsome, and pretty co-occur with the same and different noun and adverb
collocates. These collocates were taken from COCA.
Linguistic data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English
consists of 825 collocations with the adjective STUNNING, and 974 collocations
with the adjective CHARMING.
Collocations of the adjective CHARMING have such collocation models in
COCA:
- CHARMING+NOUN: 401 collocates, the most frequent are following
+ NOUN  
956   prince
164   smile
120   town
86   lady
62   personality
51   village
47   hotel
 23

41   accent
38   restaurant
34   tale
33   inn
32   fellow
31   cottage
30   self
27   manner
26   host
26   gentleman
25   shop
25   princess
- CHARMING+ADJECTIVE: 401 collocates, the most frequent are
following
+ ADJ  
212   funny
181   little
161   handsome
160   young
113   beautiful
100   witty
88   sweet
81   smart
81   intelligent
48   attractive
47   lovely
46   cute
43   warm
43   charismatic
41   romantic
39   sexy
38   wonderful
38   friendly
36   quaint
35   delightful

- CHARMING+VERB: 61 collocates, the most frequent are following

+ VERB  
32   smile
12   flash
12   disarm
8   decorate
7   greet
7   articulate
6   charm
6   nestle
5   couple
 24

5   staff
4   dash
4   furnish
4   swoop
3   reassure
3   hint
3   situate
3   behold
3   dine
3   amaze
3   cherish

- CHARMING+ADVERB: 111 collocates, the most frequent are following

+ ADV  
558   very
304   most
114   quite
54   utterly
48   absolutely
47   incredibly
44   extremely
26   perfectly
17   somewhat
15   thoroughly
12   surprisingly
10   downtown
8   nonetheless
8   instantly
8   wonderfully
7   beautifully
7   oddly
6   effortlessly
6   irresistibly
6   devilishly
5   unusually
5   enormously

- VERB+CHARMING:
1) I think that's a charming idea. 
2) Well, I think you're pretty charming. 
3) Whoa, for the first time in my life, women find me charming

4) I find her charming, funny, beautiful and... if things go well, well, maybe...

5) I find you incredibly charming and intelligent and beautiful. 
 25

6) I know I'm a charming and fascinating animal, but I really don't like company.

7) That was what was, you know, so charming about the book. 
8)  They take about an hour and $1 of cotton thread apiece, and
really look charming in a window or on a tree.
9) They make charming companions for ferns and hostas, growing rapidly to
luxuriant two- to three-foot-tall clumps.
10) And just for today, with every sofa you buy,
you get this charming jacket, half-price! 

-ADVERB+CHARMING:
1) He's a very charming man and very gentlemanly and extremely observant
and smart, " Bloch said. "
2) Your cousin is a very charming young lady.
3) Denzel is so effortlessly charming and handsome 
4) Hey, who knew Oneonta had the most charming bed and breakfast in the
state? 
5)  I find autumn one the most charming season in Prague. 
6) I mean there was nobody bigger or more charming and those blue eyes and
that smile. 
7) And by the way, if your goal is to prove how charming and awesome you
are, as far as I'm concerned, you've already…
8) Today, stories about dabbling in drug use are now offered
up as charming personal anecdotes.
9) ... almost like an actress or a model, except she
is just naturally charming without a script…
10) …you could very easily give playwright Jenelle
Riley's quite charming romantic comedy…
Collocations of the adjective STUNNING have such collocation models in
COCA:
- STUNNING +NOUN: 401 collocates, the most frequent are following
 26

+ NOUN  
299   View
203   victory
129   success
125   image
116   result
112   beauty
105   photo
95   performance
94   development
87   loss
86   example
83   photograph
78   piece
77   display
77   revelation
72   dress
71   defeat
68   collection
65   color
60   video
59   reversal

- STUNNING +VERB: 60 collocates, the most frequent are following

+ VERB  
60   produce
47   feature
46   capture
45   reveal
43   deliver
20   display
19   score
12   upset
11   overlook
10   behold
6   preach
5   uncover
5   boast
5   hail
5   replicate
5   engineer
4   unveil
4   staff
4   surge
4   complement
4   cap
4   overshadow
 27

- STUNNING +ADJECTIVE: 316 collocates, the most frequent are following

+ ADJ  
98   upset
92   beautiful
37   visual
34   gorgeous
29   amazing
22   shocking
19   incredible
18   myocardial
15   lovely
13   blonde
12   brilliant
12   sexy
12   unexpected
12   alpine
12   breathtaking
11   artistic
11   electrical
11   electoral
11   blond
10   remarkable
10   purple

- STUNNING +ADVERB: 48 collocates, the most frequent are following

+ ADV  
337   most
291   absolutely
176   visually
93   quite
83   simply
77   pretty
69   truly
34   equally
10   frankly
9   beautifully
7   downright
7   architecturally
6   utterly
6   stunningly
3   appropriately
3   throughout
3   eg
3   graciously
3   singularly
2   admittedly
2   uniquely
 28

2   intellectually

- VERB+STUNNING:
1) Clary, you look absolutely stunning.
2) In the tasting area, giant windows look out on a stunning backdrop of
rolling hills, stone farmhouses and wide-mouthed barns. 
3) I think it was very stunning when the second dress started walking on the
catwalk because the letters float.
4) i think it's stunning citizens can hold any leader in such high esteem
without ever considering the many possibilities…
5) You know, the stunning visual of the satellite photo is something I always
think of, where North Korea
6) A dime a dozen at flea markets and antiques shops, cast-off
prisms make for stunning pendants. 
7) These colorful latkes make a stunning presentation when served on a
platter with toppings such as sour cream, diced tomatoes…
8) His ability to get on top of cornerbacks and make stunning adjustments on
take-off routes is reflected in his 30 receptions for 40 or more yards…
9) In the center of this blackened rock they see a stunning sight- a lake of
boiling lava.
10) What I find stunning from a political point of view is I don't hear any
outrage from Democrats…

-ADVERB+STUNNING:
1) It is one of the most visually stunning moments in cinema for me and also
an awesome song.
2) Your photos are absolutely stunning and make gorgeous wallpaper that I
enjoy all day long. 
3)  This is an absolutely stunning book! 
4) The violin's played by Tim Fain, who's just a stunning violinist. 
 29

5) Elisa, a french woman with a body so stunning and face just as beautiful. 

6)  At best, I was an Indian peafowl, fanning my tail in a visually stunning yet
physically insignificant performance of false confidence.
7) Finally, Danis expects to present one visually stunning staging every
season.
8) It was just really stunning to see that much water coming through our state
all at the same time.
9)  The Toronto 2-guard already looks stellar enough, but context makes his
work even more stunning.
10) The landscape is as physically stunning as it is tragic, with half-built
condo towers looming atop craggy bluffs, crumbling…
Collocations are considered to be a very important and frequent linguistic
phenomenon. The vocabulary of any language is full of such combinations of words,
the structure of which is marked by only certain words, or in which the words
are associated only with that (and not in some others) combination.
Each type of collocation may impose difficulty or confusion on learners of
English. This is because there is hardly a clear-cut guideline for non-native learners
to decide which combinations are exactly acceptable and whose co-occurrence is
highly predictable; which ones are possibly acceptable for creative purposes, or
which one are simply unacceptable.
The possibilities of the corpus approach contribute to its combination with
others in modern studies of collocations: syntactic and corpus, semantic-syntactic and
corpus, cognitive and corpus to study the metaphorical nature of the phenomenon
[12, p. 15], corpus and psycholinguistic - to study the mental lexicon, which includes
collocations.
 30

CONCLUSIONS
This paper proposes a corpus-based inspection of eight nouns using corpus
linguistic techniques, as well as a gradience analysis of similarities and differences
between two near-synonyms. Two questions were presented in this paper.
The first question was related to discerning the similarities and differences
between adjectives STUNNING and CHARMING while the second question focused
on whether the results from a corpus-based methodology could be represented in any
form in addition to displaying the percentages from the corpora. The answer we
provided for each question was positive.
This study aimed to investigate the two synonyms STUNNING and
CHARMING in terms of their meanings and collocation with the help of the
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 6th edition (2014) and COCA. This
study was also aimed at investigating the similarities and differences between the
three synonyms. The findings of this research declare that these synonyms are similar
in their core meaning but are different in their detailed meanings and collocation. The
results also clarify that the corpus provides more additional information that is not
part of dictionaries.
 The research paper is devoted to the corpus analysis of synonymous
adjectives STUNNING and CHARMING. First, the definitions of all six adjectives
are compared according to three dictionaries available on the Internet (The
Macmillan Dictionary, The Collins American Dictionary, and The Merriam-Webster
Dictionary) and the similarities and differences between the definitions are identified.
Second, the noun phrases of adjectives measured by raw frequency and MI count are
examined in the Corpus of Contemporary American English. The results of the top
list of noun phrases are grouped by lexical models. In addition, the stylistic variation
of six adjectives in five different genres represented by COCA (colloquial, fiction,
magazines, newspapers, and academic writing) is investigated. The results of the
study call into question some of the existing definitions of adjectives and, as a
consequence, suggest improvements in the description of closely related adjectives.
In addition to the three dictionaries, another important source of data was the
 31

Modern American English Corpus (COCA). Three hundred lines of correspondence

of each synonym are investigated. These matching lines were placed in AntConc, a
corpus analysis program. The program helped organize synonyms in contexts to
make them easier to analyze. Corpus-based data demonstrated information on word
frequency, degree of formality, phrases, and grammatical patterns.
At the end of the study, data from three dictionaries and the corpus were
compared. The corpus was expected to provide much more information than three
dictionaries. However, this does not mean that the corpus covers all the information
about these specific words. Because only 300 lines of matching each word were
used for this study, there may be some phrases and grammatical patterns that do
exist but cannot be found in those matching lines.
The corpus study proved to be a successful method of describing a new set of
adjectival close synonyms, and also revealed the semantic features of adjectival close
synonyms and revealed the semantic differential features of the words STUNNING
and CHARMING through the analysis of noun phrases and stylistic variation.
stylistic variation. The study showed that the existing dictionary definitions are
overly generalized and therefore insufficient to explain the semantic differences
between the two adjectives. In this regard, the study suggests ways to supplement the
dictionary entries with more commonly used expressions and phrases. It seems that
the reference books were compiled only based on the analysis of phrases of close
synonyms, measured by raw frequency since the results of this part of the study
reflect the picture presented in the dictionaries, namely that the two adjectives are
interchangeable and that they modify the same type of nouns.
In our research paper, we study and analyze that researched adjectives
CHARMING and STUNNING use to describe good things about a person.
Adjectives CHARMING and STUNNING also used to describe attractive people or
things.
The most frequent of use the adjective CHARMING in the period of 1990-
1995 is in sections of FICTION and NEWS, but the most frequent use of the
 32

adjective STUNNING in the period of 1990-1995 is in sections of MAGAZINE and

NEWS.
We can see the use of adjectives in different types of texts, the list of synonyms
for researched adjectives, collocations, and clusters with them. The results of analysis
of collocations with researched adjectives is next:
1) The adjectives are different, especially about the adjective STUNNING. More
frequent collocation words for STUNNING have a difference over the years.
For example, in 1990-1994 the most frequent word collocates are VICTORY,
DEFEAT, SUCCESS, BEAUTY, VIEWS, WOMAN, and others.
2) But in 2010-2014, the most frequent word collocates are VIEWS, VICTORY,
WOMAN, NEWS, DRESS, BEAUTY, and SUCCESS. We can conclude
that the adjective STUNNING has the same word collocates in 1990-1994 –
2010-2014.
3) The results are different, especially about the adjective STUNNING. More
frequent collocation words for CHARMING are similar over the years. For
example, in 1990-1994 the most frequent word collocates are PRINCE,
MAN, WAY, WOMAN, GUY, PEOPLE, TOWN, CHILD, PLACE, and
others. But in 2010-2014, the most frequent word collocates are PRINCE,
MAN, WAY, WOMAN, GUY, PEOPLE, TOWN, TIME, and
RESTAURANT. We can conclude that the adjective STUNNING has the
same word collocates in 1990-1994 – 2010-2014.
The more frequent collocation model for both adjectives is Adjective
(CHARMING or STUNNING) + NOUN, the less is Adjective (CHARMING or
STUNNING) + ADVERB.
 33

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