Abstract This paper investigates the ways English speakers employ the predicates like, similar, and resemble to express similarity in natural speech. A corpus of 450 instances was created and manually coded, and an acceptability rating experiment was conducted. Converging evidence from the corpus analysis and the experiment shows that the three predicates occur with the same range of uses, but differ in their propensities to occur with particular dimensions of similarity. Specifically, like is associated with metaphorical comparisons, and resemble is associated with visual comparisons. A synchronic account of these findings is developed, based on a distinction between conventionally encoded meaning and prototypical usage. A diachronic account is also proposed, highlighting the commonality in the predicates’ conceptual origins and the differences in their historical usage. This work has theoretical and methodological implications for the study of similarity. In particular, it raises the possibility that previous findings may be distorted due to a reliance on certain similarity predicates in the phrasing of experimental instructions and stimuli. It also ties into debates on synonymy, suggesting a shift in attention from a distinction between denotational and associative meaning, to the aforementioned distinction between conventional and prototypical meaning.

中文翻译：

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英语相似性谓词解释相似性的特定维度

摘要本文研究了英语使用者在自然语言中使用像，相似和相似谓词来表达相似性的方式。创建了450个实例的语料库并进行了手动编码，并进行了可接受性等级实验。来自语料库分析和实验的综合证据表明，这三个谓词的使用范围相同，但在具有特定相似性的维度上，它们的出现倾向不同。具体来说，like与隐喻比较相关，而like与视觉比较相关。基于常规编码含义和原型用法之间的区别，开发了这些发现的同步说明。还提出了历时帐户，强调谓词概念起源的共性及其历史用法的差异。这项工作对相似性的研究具有理论和方法上的意义。尤其是，这增加了先前的发现可能由于对实验指导和刺激措词的依赖而依赖某些相似性谓词而被扭曲的可能性。它还涉及到同义词的辩论，这表明人们的注意力已从名词意义和联想意义之间的区别转移到上述传统意义和原型意义之间的区别。这就增加了以前的发现可能由于对实验指导和刺激措辞的依赖而依赖某些相似性谓词而失真的可能性。它还涉及到同义词的辩论，这表明人们的注意力已从名词意义和联想意义之间的区别转移到上述传统意义和原型意义之间的区别。这就增加了以前的发现可能由于对实验指导和刺激措辞的依赖而依赖某些相似性谓词而失真的可能性。它还涉及到同义词的辩论，表明人们的注意力已从名词意义和联想意义之间的区别转移到了前述传统意义和原型意义之间的区别。