33 the collocations of the verbs refuse and reject. The result of the test shows that
lower and higher learners are still confused about the use of the verbs refuse and reject
. In conclusion, the understanding of syntactic and lexical collocations of the verbs refuse and reject of learners in general is the same.
The second study is conducted by Kayaoğlu 2013. Kayaoğlu 2013 uses
COCA to conduct his study. He examines the feasibility of using a corpus to help students differentiate between close synonyms which have similar meanings but
cannot be substituted one for another Kayaoğlu, 2013. He employs t-test
analysis to find the results of the study. He lists reject as the close synonym of refuse
besides deny, decline, and rebuff. Kayaoğlu 2013 gives a vocabularies test
about close synonyms for English learners. His study shows that the use of a corpus for deciding on close synonyms proved to be very effective. It is because
there is a statistically significant different result between the pre-test and the post- test.
In the research er‟s batch, there are four other researchers who conduct
corpus study. The first researcher is Samodra 2014. She examines the modal shall
in two registers. The second researcher is Krismaheryanti 2014. She studies collocation patterns of the words pupil and student which convey their
meanings. The third researcher is Duanaya 2014, in process, who investigates the syntactic patterns of the synonymous conjunctions, since and because. The
last researcher is Riski 2014, in process, who studies the collocations of the verbs suggest and advice. Having same basic idea, the researcher shares the
references and knowledge through doing the study.
34
B. Theoretical Framework
In order to conduct the study, the researcher should look for some theories which settle appropriately with the topic of the study. The theoretical framework
summarizes and synthesizes the relevant theories explained above. In this section, the researcher relates the study matter to the theories.
In order to answer the research problems, the researcher implements the theories which are appropriate with the topic of this study. The theory of
frequency is employed to answer the first research question. The frequencies of refuse
and reject will be analyzed to know the use of them. COCA, as the source of the data, shares the frequencies of the occurrences of the synonymous words.
The clear numbers of occurrences given by COCA will facilitate to understand more about the use of the verbs. COCA as a subsequent source has enabled the
automatic measurement
of statistically
significant co-occurrences
“Collocations”. Knowing the frequency of the occurrence of the synonymous words, inform which verb is common used in the daily life context.
The second research question deals with the collocations of the verbs refuse
and reject. The researcher takes theory of word classes which contains verb as the aspect deliberated. The words refuse and reject themselves have some
senses according to word classes. They can be a noun and a verb. In this study, refuse
and reject refer to the word class verb, which indicates actions or something to do by subjects. Each verb has certain meanings which describe the
use of it in the language.
35 According to theory of meanings, refuse and reject can be examined using
collocative meaning and denotative meaning. Collocative meaning underlies the analysis of the verbs refuse and reject. To obtain rich interpretation of the use of
the verbs refuse and reject, it is given the definitions of each verb. They will support the discussion in this study. The dictionaries mention that refuse and
reject are counted as synonyms that share similar ideas of the senses. Denotative
meaning is used to distinguish the definition of the synonymous words. O‟Grady,
et al . 2010 say that denotative meaning is one of the parts of semantics study
which endeavors to equate the meaning of a word or a phrase with the units to which it refers. However, the similar words are not able to substitute one to
another. Thus, this study takes theory of synonyms which gives a clear description of the synonym degree of refuse and reject.
The analysis of the verbs is employed by corpus linguistics approach, especially semantics,
which refers to “an approach to studying language in which observational data from large text collections are used as the main evidence for
the uses and the meaning of words and phrases” Stubbs, 2001, p.23. Therefore, this study needs a corpus which provides the data of the verbs refuse and reject.
The tokens of the verbs refuse and reject are obtained from COCA that offers some options to the study matter. The tokens will show the occurrences of the
combination of words McEnery Wilson, 2001. Combination of words signifies the collocation of the synonymous verbs. To investigate the senses of
words, it can be looked at their collocates collocation Biber, et al., 2002. They add that
“there is a strong tendency for each collocate of a word to be associated