what's the difference between "big" and "large"

When I was asked the question about the difference between Big and Large, the first idea coming into my mind is that big is used to describe concrete things, such as company, dog..etc,while large is for abstract concept. However, after doing a little research by virtue of different concordancer, which is something like a large database of vocabulary, I found out that I was totally wrong. Actually, both big and large can be used to describe concrete things or abstract concept. There is no such rule about which goes by which. It is a matter of "habit". Even native speakers can't tell the different. Even so, we can still differentiate these two words by their conventional usage.

here is research results:

Big:

a big controversy(abstract concept)
a big book(concrete thing)
a big amount of money

Large:

a large bird(concrete thing)
a large gap(abstract concept)
a large amount of
a large number of
a large part of
a large proportion of
a large sum of
a large volumn of

The search result above shows that Large is usually used to describe "quantity", while big is not. However, with the rapid development of population of English users, more and more novelty and innovative words are added into English word bank. "Long time no see" has already become popular in the English language, why can't "a big amount of?"

Reference:
NTNU Web Concordancer
VLC Concordancer