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
.