A Corpus-based Analysis of Four Near-synonymous English Verbs

The differences that exist among near-synonyms seem to be a thorny issue for native and non-native speakers of English. This study aims to highlight the similarities and differences between four near-synonymous verbs: investigate, explore, scrutinize, and examine, with a focus on their dialectal variations, frequencies, genre distributions, and colligational patterns. Data were gathered from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the British National Corpus (BNC). The findings reveal that while these verbs are often considered near-synonyms, they are not fully interchangeable across contexts. Explore and examine have scored the highest frequencies across both corpora, especially in academic genres in American English. In contrast, British English exhibits more variation, with investigate and explore appearing more frequently in non-academic texts. Conversely, scrutinize has scored the lowest in both dialects and is primarily confined to academic contexts. Additionally, these verbs are seldom found in spoken genres. The analysis of colligational behavior (i.e., grammatical patterns) demonstrates that these verbs share many grammatical patterns, though subtle differences in their usage prevent complete interchangeability. The COCA provides a wider range of grammatical patterns than those in the BNC. These findings underscore the complexity of near-synonymous verbs and the importance of context in their usage.