Contextual Considerations in the Use of Synonymous Verbs: The Case of Cease, End, Finish and Stop

Abstract

This corpus-based study endeavors to explore the semantic differences among the verbs cease, finish, end and stop when used in different contexts. The author analyzed a set of data that comprised 500 contextualized instances in which these verbs are used. The data were culled from different sources including BNC, novels and spontaneous speech. In addition to the syntactic constraints that govern the use of these verbs, the findings of the study reveal a number of contextual features that distinguish them from one another, including completeness, finality, conclusiveness, animacy, abruptness, gradualness, among others. .