Corpus-based analysis of the english names of months

The aims of this paper are to provide analysis of the English names of months according to the frequency, distribution across registers as well as to analyze the most common collocates that go with the names of months. Additionally, the paper presents issue of cultural aspects of these words and connotations. The scope is the analysis of twelve English names of months. Results are based on data from British National Corpus. This course paper consists of two major parts. Data for theoretical part mainly is based on previous research and various findings and ideas of different authors are presented. Practical part includes results taken from British National Corpus. The main findings of this work are the following: frequency of the names of months shows the most frequent name of months to be March and the least common is August. May is not taken into analysis because of its homonymous meaning. Names of months that are of summer and spring seasons are more commonly used in a language than those of winter and autumn seasons. Another question discussed is how the words distribute across registers. The results show that in fiction the names of months are not so frequent compared to non-academic register. Usually the names of months go as the indicators of time, particularly in magazines, newspapers and in non-academic registers. In spoken and fiction registers collocations that include name of the month usually are used for a connotative purpose, or to create certain mood and setting. What regards collocations, they can be separated into several semantic groups: collocations referring to natural disasters, other disasters, time, weather, sales promotions and events. The sets of collocates that refer to events and time are larger in term of frequency compared to other semantic groups. Finally, some collocations were discussed as having negative, neutral and positive connotations. Neutral connotations were the most popular..