The Frequency of the Verb

50 62.35. Compared to the verb reject , it in the same forms like refuse occurred 64 times 37.65 Leech, et al ., 2001. Refuse had more 42 occurrences rather than reject . Table 4.4 presented the frequencies of the lemmas refuse and reject . According to Table 4.4, the lemma refuse occurred 22 times and the lemma reject occurred 15 times Leech, et al ., 2001. The percentage of the lemma refuse was 59.45 and the lemma reject was 40.54. It meant that refuse was used more than reject although the ratio was not really significant 18.91. The result in BNC showed that the verb refuse was used more than the verb reject . The findings showed that the verb refuse was commonly used rather than the verb reject to express denial. There were some dictionaries which did not list reject . Longman Dictionary of Common Errors did not have the verb reject in the list. The explanation of the verb reject was in the verb refuse section. In that dictionary, the use of reject was compared to refuse . In Dictionary of Word Origins , reject was not found in the list of words. In addition, there was an explanation of refuse . In Google , the occurrences frequency of refuse was higher than reject , which the words refuse and reject could be a verb and a noun. The word refuse occurred about 170.000.000 times in 0.19 second, while the word reject occurred about 93.200.000 times in 0.20 second. As a result, the percentage of the word refuse in Google was 64.59 and the percentage of the word reject was 35.41. The results showed that the word refuse as a verb and a noun had a higher occurrence than the word reject as a verb and a noun. 51 From the discussion, it could be concluded that the verb refuse had a higher frequency than reject . As stated by Biber, et al. 2002, it would be known the most common words by investigating the frequency of words. The verb refuse was commonly used to express denial rather than the verb reject .

B. The Collocations of the Verbs

Refuse and Reject The tokens in COCA gave the clear use of the verbs refuse and reject in their own utterances. There were 100 tokens from each verb to be investigated. Each verb had some meanings that would be explained one by one according to the certain meaning. As refuse and reject were transitive and intransitive verbs, the study of collocation was adjusted to each kind of verb. The transitive verbs focused on the right collocations. Biber, et al . 2002 wrote that the researchers could investigate the right collocation of a certain word. They added that to find some contexts of the word meaning, it could be looked at the right collocations only. It had explained about the definitions of the transitive verbs refuse and reject in Chapter II. Refuse and reject were followed by words which intended to express something that was being refused or rejected. To give a clear description, here were the tokens of the transitive forms of refuse and reject . 18 there were ladies who would travel miles in order to have a handsome young werewolf refuse to sell them a hat. He looked up to see Madame Lefoux. COCA: Timeless 19 too dangerous for vampires and humans alike. Which explained why Aileen thought I would refuse to set foot in any establishment that served the brew. But the truth COCA: Wicked City Zephyr