「生命、生活」英文釋義均為「Life」，以英語為母語的外籍學生極易因母語干擾而產生使用偏誤，因此有必要進一步辨析此組詞彙。前人對於「生命」、「生活」的探究多止於字辭典討論，至今未有語料庫相關的研究，因此本文以語料庫為本（Chinese Gigaword 2，British National Corpus），分析語料庫中「生命」、「生活」與「Life」語料的語義關係。 本文首先彙整「生命」、「 生活 」與「Life」在華文及英文辭典中的詞義，探究其詞義之異同，再進一步分析及描述「生命」、「 生活 」與「Life」抽樣語料在語料庫中的分佈情形，包括語料詞頻、詞類及搭配共現等分佈情形。結果顯示，「生命」、「生活」與「Life」華英詞義無法完全對應，「Life」語料詞義頻率最高的三項詞義皆可與「生命」和「生活」詞義對應，但對應的不完全是「生命」及「生活」語料詞義頻率最高的三項詞義。「生命」與「生活」詞義的主要差異在於「生命」詞義趨向抽象，比喻能力較強，通常指向時間及強調對象。而「生活」詞義趨向具體，通常指向狀態及強調形式。本研究接下來使用語料庫「詞彙特性素描」功能觀察「生命」、「生活」與「Life」在語料庫中整體搭配共現的頻率與詞類分佈，以及使用「詞彙對照素描」功能觀察「生活」與「生命」搭配詞的「共現模式」及「唯一模式」。「Life」與「生命」及「生活」的搭配共現分佈相似但種類較少，主要反映在名詞上，英文與華文搭配詞的語義大多可對應。　 最後，本論文以問卷實驗進一步探討以英語為母語的外籍學習者對「生活」與「生命」的習得和偏誤狀況，然後對比外籍學習者與華語母語者的差異。結果顯示，外籍學習者對「生命」與「生活」確有混淆的狀況，但對「生活」的掌握比「生命」較為嫻熟，而且會因英語出現而影響對「生命」與「生活」語義的認知，對「生命」與「生活」常用搭配詞的掌握能力也遠較母語者低落。 本論文的貢獻在於以語料庫為本，對英譯同是「Life」的華文易混淆近義詞「生命」與「生活」的語義進行了多面向綜合探究，包括華英詞義對比分析、語料庫的分佈情形、詞彙搭配的分佈及分類等。此外，也以問卷實驗探討外籍學習者對「生命」與「生活」這組詞彙的習得與偏誤狀況，並且與華語母語者做出對比，整理出其差異之處。上述結果證實語料庫對於近義詞研究有積極的作用，亦對華語文近義詞教學提供了參考作用。 / The Mandarin of sheng1 ming4 and sheng1 huo2 are both translated as 'life' in English. The native English-speaking students who study Mandarin often err in selecting the appropriate Mandarin term for ‘life’ due to cross-language interference. Hence, a more in-depth analysis of these two terms is necessary. Previous research for sheng1 ming4 and sheng1 huo2 were carried out mostly through the use of dictionaries. None of the research was corpus-based and supplemented by questionnaire. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to analyse the semantically relationship between sheng1 ming4, sheng1 huo2 and 'life' based on the Chinese Gigaword2 and British National Corpus. This thesis begins by summarizing the meanings of sheng1 ming4, sheng1 huo2, and ‘life’ based on their definitions as provided by Mandarin and English dictionaries. This thesis then expounds on the similarities and differences among the three words, and further analyses and describes the distribution of sheng1 ming4, sheng1 huo2 and ‘life’ in the corpus, including the distributions of frequency, senses and collocation. The results show that semantic of ‘life’ could not completely correspond with sheng1 ming4 and sheng1 huo2, however, the top 3 of highest semantic frequency of ‘life’ could correspond with sheng1 ming4 and sheng1 huo2, but not vice versa, the top 3 of highest semantic frequency of sheng1 ming4 and sheng1 huo2 are not completely correspond. The main difference between sheng1 ming4 and sheng1 huo2 is that sheng1 ming4 is more abstractive, with stronger metaphor ability, commonly directed to time or specific subject; while sheng1 huo2 is more concrete, commonly directed to status or form. Furthermore, this thesis utilizes the ‘word sketch’ function and observes the ‘common pattern’ and the ‘only pattern’ of sheng1 ming4 and sheng1 huo2 by ‘sketch difference’. The distribution of the collocation of ‘life’, sheng1 ming4 and sheng1 huo2 is similar but with less variations, mostly reflected in noun, and the collocation of English is commonly correspond with the meaning of Mandarin collocation. Lastly, this thesis surveys the acquisition of sheng1 ming4 and sheng1 huo2 by foreign students who are native speakers of English, and compares how these students perform in the questionnaire tasks. The results show that foreign students are confusing by selecting sheng1 ming4 or sheng1 huo2, but better at mastering sheng1 huo2 than sheng1 ming4, and that their interpretation of sheng1 ming4 and sheng1 huo2 are commonly affected by their command of English. In addition, their command of collocation between sheng1 ming4 and sheng1 huo2 is much lower than that of Mandarin native speakers. The findings of this thesis is obtained through conducts comprehensive inquiry from multiple perspectives method: including the contrastive analysis of Mandarin-English meaning, distribution and differentiation of word collocation for the Mandarin near synonyms sheng1 ming4, sheng1 huo2 and ‘life’. Furthermore, to survey acquisition of foreign students with regard to sheng1 ming4 and sheng1 huo2 via questionnaire, and compare the differences with Mandarin native speakers. The differences are then summarized. The above-mentioned results support the positive effect of corpus when researching near synonyms and serves as a reference for the teaching of Mandarin near synonyms.

For many non-native speakers of English it can be difficult to distinguish semantic differences between near-synonyms. In order to create idiomatically correct sentences in a language it is important to know which word to use in a specific context. This study deals with the emotion adjectives terrified, petrified and horrified, which all refer to an emotion of fear of something that can or will happen. The present research aims at exploring the meanings of these adjectives, in American English and British English, and to discover which words these adjectives tend to collocate with. To obtain data a British Corpus and an American corpus were used with fiction and newspaper as subcorpora. A quantitative method was used where the frequencies of terrified, petrified and horrified were counted. Secondly, the most frequent left- and right-hand collocates were studied. Due to the variety of collocations found, it was discovered that the meanings between the adjectives differ somewhat. The literal meaning of petrified is to be hard as a stone while the non-literal meaning is to be extremely afraid. The literal meanings of terrified and horrified are to be very afraid, but unlike terrified, horrified also seems to refer to being shocked. It can be stated that in accordance with how vague the adjective is in its meaning the more frequently it is used, i.e. terrified is the most frequent adjective in all subcorpora and in both varieties of English most frequently used while petrified is least frequently used.