Visualizing distances in a set of near-synonyms

What is it about?

I compare four English intensifiers using corpus-based exploratory statistical techniques. These intensifiers are: rather, quite, fairly and pretty. The corpus that I use is the Corpus of Contemporary American English. Similarities and differences between these intensifiers are represented graphically using correspondence analysis.

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Why is it important?

I present a corpus-based methodology that relies on frequency data. It can be applied to any set of near-synonyms.