Abstract
The importance of phraseological information in lexicographic resources is experiencing an exponential growth. This is evident in the publication in recent years of a wide variety of combinatorial or collocation dictionaries. This paper describes and compares the main monolingual collocation dictionaries for English and Spanish in regards to the following: (i) types of collocation encoded; (ii) kinds of collocational information offered; (iii) place for collocations in the micro or macrostructure of the dictionary. The objective of this analysis is to study the usefulness of these resources for translators.
Highlights
The Function Theory of Lexicography (Bergenholtz & Tarp 2010) highlights the need to take specific user needs into account in the design of a lexicographic resource
As Rundell states (2010: vii), collocations are as important as grammar, and they are what makes speakers sound natural and fluent: Why is collocation so important? Firstly, it is a central feature of language, and – whether you are speaking or writing – it is just as important as grammar
This is in vivid contrast to the general tendency of traditional collocation dictionaries in other languages, where the noun is the primary focus of attention (Barrios 2007: 1): Redes, el primer diccionario combinatorio del español, obra innovadora en su enfoque pues en ella los predicados se convertían en núcleo y principal objeto de estudio
Summary
The Function Theory of Lexicography (Bergenholtz & Tarp 2010) highlights the need to take specific user needs into account in the design of a lexicographic resource. There is a general consensus among translators that phraseological information in lexicographic resources is crucial, especially in the final production of the target language text. The most representative English and Spanish collocation dictionaries for general language are described and compared in order to evaluate their potential usefulness for translators. According to Mel’þuk (1996: 39), a lexical function f is a correspondence that associates a given lexical unit (L) (the argument or keyword, i.e. the base of the collocation) with a set of lexical items (L1) (the collocate) which express a specific meaning associated with f It can be represented by the following formula: f (L) = L1. It should be highlighted that lexical functions are not lexical units of the language, but rather correspond to metalexies
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