A Corpus-based Analysis of bear, stand, endure, and tolerate

Abstract

This paper is a corpus-based analysis of four English verbs bear, stand, endure, and tolerate, representing the same meaning 'put up with.' Quirk et al. (1985) explains that bear and stand are used in a negative form with can. Dictionary statements show semantic and syntactic aspects of the four verbs. From these statements, we draws a comparison of the verbs, based on a corpus analysis. The data are from The Times 1995 Corpus. They are analysed in terms of negative interpretation, positive interpretation, collocating auxiliaries, syntax of object forms, and collocation. The data analysis shows that these verbs have some semantic and syntactic aspects which are inconsistent with the dictionary statements. Such findings indicate that the dictionaries and grammar books do not describe these verbs sufficiently to reflect the speech aspect in real life. Thus, this suggests the need of dictionaries and grammar books derived from corpus analysis.