Evaluation in a cross-linguistic perspective: Investigating semantic prosody across English and German near-synonyms

The present study follows in the path of previous research on semantic prosody, shifting its focus to the domain of near-synonymy analysed from a cross-linguistic perspective. The targeted items are English and German near-synonymous schemata expressing a sense of persuasion. The aim is to assess whether there are notable differences and/or overlaps in their evaluative behaviour and pragmatic function. Results highlight an “evaluative gap” existing between the English and German patterns, reflected in subtle differences in meaning nuances not always picked up by dictionary definitions. These results are discussed in the light of their relevance for translation and contrastive studies, as well as their practical implications for corpus-assisted lexicography.