According to evident sentences provided by VLC concordancer, both large and big describe extent. However, large is often used to describe quantity; while big is used to describe greatness of something.
For instance, we can find "a large amounts of ~" more often than "a big ammount of ~ ". Meanwhile, we find big used to describe a business, businessman, brother, or chance to show their greatness. This explanation could be reliable because we can hardly find a collocation of "a large brother", "a large businessman" or "a large chance."
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I don't quite understand your second rule--big is used to describe greatness of something. Could you be more specific about that, Eva?
ReplyDeleteWhen we try to show the importance or maturity, which here I used greatness instead, of something, we use big instead of large.
ReplyDeleteFor instance, a big brother, a big businessman, a big deal, or a big business.