Introduction -- Collocations, units of meaning and formulaic language -- Collocations and second language learning -- Methodology -- The first and second reflective cycles -- The third and fourth reflective cycles -- Discussion and conclusion.

Many philosophers accept the view that, when one object constitutes a second, the two objects can be entirely in the same place at the same time. But what of two objects such that neither constitutes the other? Can they be collocated? If there can be such a pair of objects, they would have to share the same material constituents. To show that there are two collocated objects and not just one object at a specific time and place, one has to (...) show that one of the objects has some property that the other fails to have. I claim that the properties I use in my example are legitimate substitution instances in the Law of the Indiscernibility of Identicals. I offer a metaphysically possible example that illustrates such collocation, a possible case from ‘raw nature’, two trees. (shrink)

All aspects of the concept of collocation – the phenomenon whereby words naturally tend to occur in the company of a restricted set of other words – are covered in this book. It deals in detail with the history of the word collocation, the concepts associated with it and its use in a linguistic context. The authors show the practical means by which the collocational behavior of words can be explored using illustrative computer programs and examine applications in (...) teaching, lexicography and natural language processing that use collocation in formation. The book investigates the place that collocation occupies in theories of language and provides a thoroughly comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the current position of collocation in language studies and applied linguistics. (shrink)

This edited collection presents the state of the art in research related to lexical combinations and their restrictions in Spanish from a variety of theoretical approaches, ranging from Explanatory Combinatorial Lexicology to Distributed Morphology and Generative Lexicon Theory. Section 1 offers a presentation of the main theoretical and descriptive approaches to collocation. Section 2 explores collocation from the point of view of its lexicographical representation, while Section 3 offers a pedagogical perspective. Section 4 surveys current research on (...) class='Hi'>collocation in Catalan, Galician and Basque. Collocations and other lexical combinations in Spanish will be of interest to students of Hispanic linguistics. ". (shrink)

This volume deals with collocations from a lexicographic perspective by addressing, in detail, the boundaries between collocations and other word combinations, the possibility of adapting the definition of collocation to the objectives of specific dictionaries, and approaches towards collocation extraction for lexicographic purposes.

Cette étude se propose de vérifier l’efficacité des collocations en tant qu’indice pour distinguer les genres textuels. De plus, elle a le double objectif d’aborder l’exploration de la variabilité de l’italien en utilisant des méthodologies computationnelles, et de vérifier l’efficacité d’une nouvelle mesure d’association dans l’étude des collocations.Quatre typologies de collocations ont été analysées (verbe-nom, nom-adjectif, nom-nom et nom-préposition-nom) dans six genres textuels différents, dont trois sont écrits (textes littéraires, textes académiques et compositions scolaires) et trois sont oraux (conversations, discours (...) et dialogues filmiques).La fréquence des collocations dans les différents genres montre que chaque typologie de texte a des préférences spécifiques pour des typologies de collocations spécifiques; la seule fréquence et la seule distinction entre textes écrits et oraux, toutefois, ne réussit pas à interpréter cette différente distribution selon un modèle cohérent. A cet effet, la mesure statistique de la gravité lexicale semble posséder une efficacité majeure, comme nous essayerons de démontrer. (shrink)

Cette étude se propose de vérifier l’efficacité des collocations en tant qu’indice pour distinguer les genres textuels. De plus, elle a le double objectif d’aborder l’exploration de la variabilité de l’italien en utilisant des méthodologies computationnelles, et de vérifier l’efficacité d’une nouvelle mesure d’association dans l’étude des collocations.Quatre typologies de collocations ont été analysées (verbe-nom, nom-adjectif, nom-nom et nom-préposition-nom) dans six genres textuels différents, dont trois sont écrits (textes littéraires, textes académiques et compositions scolaires) et trois sont oraux (conversations, discours (...) et dialogues filmiques).La fréquence des collocations dans les différents genres montre que chaque typologie de texte a des préférences spécifiques pour des typologies de collocations spécifiques; la seule fréquence et la seule distinction entre textes écrits et oraux, toutefois, ne réussit pas à interpréter cette différente distribution selon un modèle cohérent. A cet effet, la mesure statistique de la gravité lexicale semble posséder une efficacité majeure, comme nous essayerons de démontrer. (shrink)

The investigation of learners’ interlanguage could greatly contribute to the teaching of English as a foreign language and the development of teaching materials. The present study investigates the collocational profiles of large-scale written production by English learners with varied L1 backgrounds and different proficiency levels. Using the British National Corpus as reference corpus, learners’ collocation use was extracted by corpus query language and further identified by t-score via Python programming language. The collocation list consists of 2,501 make/take + (...) noun collocations. Findings show that proficient learners tend to use collocations containing more semantically complicated and abstract noun elements for varied communication tasks. Moreover, advanced learners are inclined to use collocations comprised of more difficult and longer noun elements. (shrink)

Synonymic Collocations in the Tipitaka: a study. M.G.Dhadphale. Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona 1980. xiii + 267pp. Rs 50.

The present study investigates the collocation-induced semiosis of the linguistic sign AFRICA as being used in the academic section of the Corpus of Contemporary American English (known as COCA) (Davies, Mark. 2008. The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): one billion words, 1990-present. Available online at https://corpus.byu.edu/coca/). Drawing on a hybrid theoretical framework, the study utilizes Charles Peirce’s (1931–58) semiotic model of the sign and Roman Jakobson’s theory of “markedness” (Jakobson, Roman. 1972. Verbal communication. Scientific American (Special Issue, September (...) 1). 73–80) as well as Stuart Hall’s treatment of “code” (Hall, Stuart. 1980. Encoding/decoding. In Stuart Hall, Doothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe, & Paul Willis (eds.), Culture, media, language: Working papers in cultural studies, 1972–79, 117–127. New York: Routledge) and John Swales’ notion of “discourse community” (Swales, John M. 1990. Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). The study empirically tests the hypothesis that, in a given discourse domain, the relevant interpretant can decode a linguistic sign (representamen) in the co-text of its marked collocates in a way that is collocationally used via the two modes of iconic and indexical signification. The concordance-based analysis conducted in the present study offers two findings, theoretical and practical. First, the study proposes the theoretical concept of collocational semiosis as one way of methodologically integrating the study of collocation into a structural-linguistic analytic framework that richly intersects with the genre-based notion of “discourse community.” Second, in the academic discourse community of the COCA, to the expert interpretant, the representamen AFRICA has been decoded due to its marked collocates which have been technically used in two modes of signification, viz. iconic and indexical. (shrink)

Negative polarity is one of the more elusive aspects of linguistics and a subject which has been gaining in importance in recent years. Written from within the well-defined theoretical framework of Generalized Quantifiers, the three main areas considered in this study are collocations, polarity items and multiple negations. In this mature piece of research, van der Wouden takes into account, not only semantic and syntactic considerations, but also to a large extent, pragmatic ones illustrating a wide array of linguistic approaches.

This Element explores relationships between collocations, writing quality, and learner and contextual variables in a first-year composition (FYC) programme. Comprising three studies, this Element is anchored in understanding phraseological complexity and its sub-constructs of sophistication and diversity. First, the authors look at sophistication through association measures. They tap into how these measures may tell us different types of information about collocation via a cluster analysis. Selected measures from this clustering are used in a cumulative links model to establish relationships (...) between these measures, measures of diversity and task, the language background of the writer and individual writer variation, and writing quality scores. A third qualitative study of the statistically significant predictors helps understand how writers use collocations and why they might be favoured or downgraded by raters. This Element concludes by considering the implications of this modelling for assessment. (shrink)

Collocations are recurrent combinations of words where one lexical item occurs near another lexical item with a frequency far greater than chance. Collocations can be used to study meaning. I argue that the collocational phrase ‘really know’, in conjunction with some reasonable interpretive conclusions, provides us with evidence that the verb ‘know’ has an infallibilist sense. I make my case, first, by arguing that ‘really’ when part of the phrase ‘really know’ is best understood as synonymous with ‘truly’. I then (...) argue that there are two plausible interpretations of the function that ‘really’ plays in the phrase ‘really know’. On the first interpretation, ‘really’ helps distinguish claims about genuine infallibilist knowing from loose talk about ‘knowing’. On the second interpretation, ‘really’ is often used to disambiguate an infallibilist sense of ‘know’ from a fallibilist sense of ‘know’. On either interpretation, there is an infallibilist sense of ‘know’. (shrink)

This paper describes an exploratory comparative study of knowledge workers and their challenges in high tech global project teams. More specifically we focus on the tension between perceived collocation and actual geographical distributed project work as a function of: (1) the demand to distribute and shift attention in multi-teaming, (2) virtuality i.e. number of virtual teams participants engage in, (3) the continuous adjustment and re-adjustment to new places they perform their activity, and (4) the collaboration technologies they use. We (...) present the methodology for data collection that included semi-structured interviews, surveys, and on site shadowing of the project participants, and discuss the findings from the data analysis. The study is based on the bricks-bits-interaction framework. It is at the intersection of the design of physical spaces, i.e., bricks; rich digital information and collaboration technology (ICT) content, mobile devices and network infrastructures, i.e., bits, and emergent work practices, process, and new ways people behave in communicative events using the affordances of ICT augmented physical, virtual spaces and digital content, i.e., interaction. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce a system, Sentence Planning Using Description, which generates collocations within the paradigm of sentence planning. SPUD simultaneously constructs the semantics and syntax of a sentence using a Lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammar (LTAG). This approach captures naturally and elegantly the interaction between pragmatic and syntactic constraints on descriptions in a sentence, and the inferential and lexical interactions between multiple descriptions in a sentence. At the same time, it exploits linguistically motivated, declarative speci- fications of the discourse (...) functions of syntactic constructions to make contextually appropriate syntactic choices. (shrink)

There appear to be multifunctional artefacts of a type such that none of their functions can be attributed only to some proper part of the artefact. I use two examples of allegedly multifunctional artefacts of this kind in what follows, one due to Lynne Rudder Baker (aspirin) and another of my own (a spork). The two examples are meant to make the same point. I discuss her aspirin example, since its discussion has entered the literature, but without its being dealt (...) with satisfactorily. My example is, I believe, more intuitive than that of aspirin, which Baker introduced in her response to a challenge to her views, and so I will mostly rely on my example of a spork, especially at the end of the paper, to make my case. -/- I argue that in at least those two cases, if the standard arguments for distinguishing between an object and what constitutes it are sound, an argument showing that what we might have taken to be a single multifunctional object is in fact a case of multiple single-function artefacts which collocate. Or almost. There is one further assumption needed for these cases, beyond what the constitution cases require, and I produce reasons for accepting that assumption. (shrink)

The article deals with the comparison of key terminology in the field of copyright in the Polish, English, Japanese and German languages. The research material consists of copyright acts binding in Poland, Great Britain, the United States of America, Japan and Germany. The terminology has been compared in order to reveal similarities and differences in the meaning. Firstly, statutory terms from the Polish, English, German and Japanese acts will be presented and discussed. Also, a list of functional equivalents will be (...) presented. The task was to search for functional equivalents, and if there is partial equivalence or no equivalence, an equivalent was provided according to techniques of providing equivalents for non-equivalent terms. They were made in such a way that equivalents will correspond with the reality of the laws in the above mentioned languages. The terms have been extracted with the usage of AntConc. The method of analysis of comparable texts has been applied as well as the one based on three categories of equivalence by Šarčević : “near equivalence”, “partial equivalence” and “non-equivalence”. Special attention has been paid to system-bound terminology existing in those five legal systems. To sum up, it should be borne in mind that the copyright law has been unified almost world-wide. As a result many countries have adopted similar or almost identical principles in this respect. Therefore, there is a significant convergence of meanings of analysed copyright terms with only slight differences resulting from deeply ingrained local and national legal traditions. (shrink)

The present study investigated the effects of L1-L2 congruency, collocation type, and restriction on L2 collocational processing. Advanced Chinese learners of English and native English-speaking controls performed an online acceptability judgment task to investigate how advanced L2 learners processed congruent (sharing the same meaning and structure in L1 language) collocations and English-only (not equivalent in L1 construction) collocations with the same node (right) word and a different collocate (left). The experimental materials included verb-noun (VN), adjective-noun (AN) collocations, free (less (...) fixed), and restricted (more fixed) collocations chosen from BNC. The results revealed that (i) The non-native speakers were sensitive to L1-L2 congruency, but the native speakers were not. (ii) The native speakers were sensitive to collocation restriction, whereas the non-native speakers were not. These results lend initial support to the mapping hypothesis and open choice principle of L2 collocational processing for Chinese English learners. (shrink)

This article presents empirical evidence of the high referential specificity of sound-symbolic words, based on a FrameNet-aided analysis of collocational data of Japanese mimetics. The definition of mimetics, particularly their semantic definition, has been crosslinguistically the most challenging problem in the literature, and different researchers have used different adjectives (most notably, “vivid,” since Doke 1935) to describe their semantic peculiarity. The present study approaches this longstanding issue from a frame-semantic point of view combined with a quantitative method. It was found (...) that mimetic manner adverbials generally form a frame-semantically restricted range of verbal/nominal collocations than non-mimetic ones. Each mimetic can thus be considered to evoke a highly specific frame, which elaborates the general frame evoked by its typical host predicate and contains a highly limited set of frame elements, which correlate and constrain one another. This conclusion serves as a unified account of previously reported phenomena concerning mimetics, including the lack of hyponymy, the one-mimetic-per-clause restriction, and unparaphrasability. This study can be also viewed as a methodological proposal for the measurement of frame specificity, which supplements bottom-up linguistic tests. (shrink)

This is an exploration of the importance of the collocation approach in investigating language. It underpins a new conception of grammar that is: (i) intrinsically connected with lexis; (ii) investigates the language as it is naturally used in life; (iii) can be developed as a corpus-driven grammar. The collocation approach in language exploration is also examined from the perspective of some recent developments in the philosophy of language. In conclusion, I defend the identity between philosophical ontology, linguistic ontology (...) and computational ontology. (shrink)

More recently, grammaticalization theorists have become increasingly aware of the role of collocations in grammatical development. One of these roles is to define phonetic reductions and fusion in frequent collocations as constructionalization. Based on frequency of occurrences, the present study explores the implications of high-frequency collocations in Turkish Sign Language for grammaticalization and offers a novel account of constructional change of değİl ‘not’ on usage-based grounds. Specifically, the study suggests that (i) the chunking process is not language-specific within the spoken (...) modality, as noted previously in the literature, (ii) the frequency of collocations is strongly correlated with phonetic reduction and duration, (iii) the fusional characteristics of [sign + değİl] collocations can be classified under four reduced constructional schemas, (iv) the monosyllabicity of a scheme appears to be criterion for it to be productive in signed modality and (v) the semantic changes of frequent [sign + değİl] collocations are related to the notion of subjectification in TİD. (shrink)

I argue that relations between non-collocated spatial entities, between non-identical topological spaces, and between non-identical basic building blocks of space, do not exist. If any spatially located entities are not at the same spatial location, or if any topological spaces or basic building blocks of space are non-identical, I will argue that there are no relations between or among them. The arguments I present are arguments that I have not seen in the literature.

We report an eye movement experiment that investigates the effects of collocation strength and contextual predictability on the reading of collocative phrases by L2 English readers. Thirty-eight Chinese English as foreign language learners read 40 sentences, each including a specific two-word phrase that was either a strong or weak adjective-noun collocation and was either highly predictable or unpredictable from the previous sentence context. Eye movement measures showed that L2 reading times for the collocative phrases were sensitive to both (...) collocation strength and contextual predictability. However, an interaction effect between these factors, which appeared relatively late in the eye movement record, additionally revealed that contextual predictability more strongly influenced time spent reading weak compared with strong collocations. This was most likely because the greater familiarity of strong collocations facilitated their integration, even in the absence of strong contextual constraint. We discuss the findings in terms of the value of collocations in second language learning. (shrink)

Cet article discute de la notion de colligation et de ses rapports avec la collocation grammaticale. En faisant référence à Bally, Jespersen et Firth, il s’agit de souligner les différences entre collocation et colligation et de contextualiser ces différences dans les perspectives contemporaines en phraséologie. L’article s’intéresse également à quelques « incarnations » des unités collocationnelles ou/et colligationnelles : les cadres collocationnels d’A. Renouf et J. Sinclair, et les « motifs » grammaticaux. Ces derniers forment une catégorie dont (...) l’article illustre la pertinence par un ensemble d’exemples, parmi lesquels certains motifs spécifiques du genre poétique, dont on souligne les fonctions intertextuelles. (shrink)

Cet article discute de la notion de colligation et de ses rapports avec la collocation grammaticale. En faisant référence à Bally, Jespersen et Firth, il s’agit de souligner les différences entre collocation et colligation et de contextualiser ces différences dans les perspectives contemporaines en phraséologie. L’article s’intéresse également à quelques « incarnations » des unités collocationnelles ou/et colligationnelles : les cadres collocationnels d’A. Renouf et J. Sinclair, et les « motifs » grammaticaux. Ces derniers forment une catégorie dont (...) l’article illustre la pertinence par un ensemble d’exemples, parmi lesquels certains motifs spécifiques du genre poétique, dont on souligne les fonctions intertextuelles. (shrink)

ABB words in Chinese, e.g., hēi-qīqī ‘pitch black’, have been studied for a long time. Most traditional studies analyze these words through derivational rules involving empty suffixes. However, this is problematic, as they are better seen as compounds involving a prosaic A and an ideophonic BB part. By treating ABB as a schema sanctioned by collocate–ideophonic constructions, it is possible to investigate other similar patterns. A corpus study (more than 5,000 tokens) revealed that on the level of schemas, ABB truly (...) acts as a prototype of such constructions, but that it is far from the only pattern to be identified. A second corpus-based study on the level of exemplars showed there are different pockets of salience and non-uniformity in the data from four angles: cue validity, frequency, dispersion, and constructional preference. This paper provides evidence that the traditional ABB narrative needs to be complemented with usage-based data, and grapple with the lexical salience effects this brings along for words involving iconicity. (shrink)

Unremarkable earlier draft of "Sleeping Beauty: A Critical Survey".

There is ample evidence that speakers’ linguistic knowledge extends well beyond what can be described in terms of rules of compositional interpretation stated over combinations of single words. We explore a range of multiword constructions to get a handle both on the extent of the phenomenon and on the grammatical constraints that may govern it. We consider idioms of various sorts, collocations, compounds, light verbs, syntactic nuts, and assorted other constructions, as well as morphology. Our conclusion is that MWCs highlight (...) the central role that grammar plays in licensing MWCs in the lexicon and the creation of novel MWCs, and they help to clarify how the lexicon articulates with the rest of the grammar. (shrink)

This paper examines how gender is represented within conspiracy theories by drawing on data from a corpus composed of conspiracy theory documents. It presents an analysis of the collocates of gendered nouns, highlighting the ways that conspiracy theorists use language to reinforce connections between religiosity and masculinity and understandings of femininity that rely on biological gender essentialism. Further, this paper highlights the overlap in values between religious masculinity and hegemonic masculinity that occur within this discourse. It also argues that the (...) ways in which gender is represented in conspiracy theory discourse shares links to far-right ideology, even when the conspiracies in question do not have direct or overt connections to the far-right. (shrink)

This research aimed to show the political stance of the Muslim majority represented by the Ministry of Religious Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia (MoRA RI) towards non-Muslim leadership through the translation of the Qur’an. It examined the differences in the translation of the Qur’an based on the theory of translation as a political act. A total of 19 phrases or collocated words ittahaza awliya were found in the corpus of the Qur’an. The researchers approached the study with a critical (...) discourse analysis approach, and conducted contrastive analysis on translations of these collocated words in four editions of translations of the Qur’an published officially by MoRA RI from 1965 to 2019. The results proved that interference in translation of the collocation ittaḥaẓa awliya is caused by the influence of the source text, and that the political situation and ideology influenced the translation of the Qur’an in Indonesia. The political direction of the Indonesian government, especially MoRA RI, tended to provide more opportunities for non-Muslims to become leaders today, as seen in the 2019 edition. While the translation edition published before tended to close the possibility of non-Muslims becoming leaders. This finding shows the government’s stance on democracy for non-Muslims, which according to previous research findings has declined with the rise of Islamic populism in Indonesia.Contribution: This article provides an explanation of one side of the difficulty of translating collocation [ittaḥaẓa awliya] in the Qur’an and at the same time shows the political direction of the government of the Republic of Indonesia regarding the politics of non-Muslim leadership. (shrink)

Memrise is an educational tool available both online and for mobile devices. Memrise uses flashcards and mnemonic techniques to aid in teaching foreign languages and memorizing information from other subjects, e.g. geography, law or mathematics. Memrise courses are created by its users through the process of crowdsourcing; therefore they are tailored to the individual needs of the users and may focus on the specific content of a particular coursebook or classes. The paper will attempt to present possibilities of using memrise (...) in teaching and learning legal English vocabulary during a tertiary course leading to TOLES certificate examination. The paper will look at various types of exercises which facilitate memorizing vocabulary, learning collocations, prepositional phrases, develop the skill of paraphrasing and defining legal terms of art in plain English. Application of the crowdsourcing method enables the learners to participate in the process of the course creation and constitutes for them a supplementary, out of class exposure to the target language. The second part of the paper will discuss the results of the research conducted by the author among her law students. The aim of the research was to investigate the students′ opinions about memrise as a tool which might facilitate individual learning of the specialist language, as well as to assess whether memrise may influence the test results achieved by the students during the legal English course. The paper will contrastively analyse the progress tests results achieved by the students who have used memrise to revise and recycle language material and those who have chosen traditional methods of learning. The research also attempted to address the question whether the students who had been the contributors to the content of memrise courses had performed better in tests than those who had only been the users. (shrink)