[Lexicog] Re: Synonymy

[John Roberts]

Rudy,

I have done some further investigation of my own and I think we are both
right! When I said I disagreed with your proposition that 'big' and 'large'
are stylistic synonyms, I was disagreeing on the point that they are
propositional synonyms (which I demonstrated). To follow up on what you said
I looked at some of my own published academic writings. I found firstly that
my usage of 'big' and 'large' is very limited. But I also found that
wherever the meaning is "great in size" I use 'large' instead of 'big'. A
couple of examples are 'two large rivers' and 'the largest language'. I also
have an instance of 'to a large extent'. But here I would say 'large' is
synonymous with 'great' and not 'big'. I would never say 'to a *big extent',
even in informal speech. In the documents I looked at I never use 'big' in
the text, but I do use it (exclusively) for a vernacular gloss.

This all demonstrates that I consider 'big' to be the "basic" synonym for
"great in size" and 'large' to be the more formal synonym in the context of
academic writing. However, it is interesting to me that I wasn't really
aware of this until I took a look at what I have written over many years.

So NODE and COBUILD are lacking on this point in their definitions and usage
descriptions of 'big' and 'large'. :-)

John Roberts




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