A Corpus-based Study of Synonymous Epistemic Adverbs Perhaps, Probably, Maybe and Possibly

Bei Yang
Additional contact information
Bei Yang: Bei Yang, School of English Education, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou 510420, China

Research Journal of Education, 2020, vol. 6, issue 8, 158-168

Abstract: Epistemic adverbs perhaps, probably, maybe, and possibly are near-synonyms, which share similar denotational meanings but differ in their usages. Using the 100 million-word British National Corpus (BNC) as data and the software Sketch Engine (SkE) as the analyzing tool, this study examines the usage differences among epistemic adverbs by conducting the analysis of concordance, n-grams, and word sketch difference. The results show that different functions of SkE can make different contributions to the discrimination of epistemic adverbs. At the end of the paper, the pedagogical implications of this study are discussed.

Keywords: Epistemic adverb; British national corpus; Sketch engine (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.arpgweb.com/pdf-files/rje6(8)158-168.pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.arpgweb.com/journal/15/archive/12-2020/8/6 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arp:rjearp:2020:p:158-168

Access Statistics for this article

Research Journal of Education is currently edited by Dr. Waleed Al Abiky

More articles in Research Journal of Education from Academic Research Publishing Group Rahim Yar Khan 64200, Punjab, Pakistan.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Managing Editor ().