The use of arise and rise in present-day British & American English : A corpus based analysis of two verbs

Abstract: This corpus based investigation deals with the present-day usage of and the semantic relation between the two verbs rise and arise. Concordance lines containing various forms of the two verbs in question have been taken from six different (sub)corpora and were examined in view of their collocational and semantic characteristics. The basic aims were to investigate the nowadays status of the verbs rise and arise and whether they (still) can be regarded as synonyms. The results show that both verbs can sometimes be used synonymously. Their general semantic relation appeared to be near-synonymy. Furthermore, both verbs seem to have developed a semantic specialisation, which is regarded a counterargument for the thesis that the verb arise is on the verge of dying out.