Ibérica (Apr 2002)
The usage of amount, quantity and body in a corpus of biology
Abstract
Grammars and dictionaries usually offer relevant and accurate information to students of a second language. However, the meaning of a textual element is often dynamic and that information is not always based on real usage patterns. New occurrences on the object level in new contexts can introduce novel semantic potentials, so that existing interpretations may be superseded by new ones. Concordancing has been shown to be one of the most important tools to facilitate the understanding of the usage patterns of a language. In this paper we examine the differences between amount, quantity and body as terms expressing magnitude, sum and size in a corpus of Biology. According to some popular dictionaries and grammars, the terms amount and quantity have always been considered synonymous terms for expressing magnitude, size and sum. We demonstrate that, according to our records, they cannot be always used as synonymous terms since they have different patterns of usage. On the other hand there are other forms, such as body, that appear in our Corpus, implying magnitude, size and sum, that are not usually described as having such meanings in dictionaries.
