Collocation Dictionary Research Articles

VERBALIZATION OF THE CONCEPT DOUBT BY MEANS OF EPISTEMIC MODALITY

The article considers verbalization of the DOUBT concept by means of epistemic modality, namely epistemically marked words and phrases. The relevance of the study is due to the tendency to study epistemic modality (Palmer F., Halliday M.), epistemic words (Biber D., Wierzbicka A.), phrases of harmonious / disharmonious type (Aijmer K., Hoye L.) and intensifier words (Quirk R.). However, the verbalization of the DOUBT concept by these units has not yet been studied. The object of research is the ways of verbalization of the DOUBT concept by means of epistemic modality, and the subject of research is the meaning of epistemic words and phrases Adv + V / V + Adv, Modal V + Adv, Adv + Adj, Adj + N, where the main words are epistemically marked words, and adverbs and adjectives act as modifiers and intensifiers of meaning. Material of the research ‒ dictionary definitions of epistemic words, word combinations of epistemic words with adverbs-intensifiers in the Oxford Collocations Dictionary, modern English fiction from the 90s of the XX century until now. The research methodology consists in using component analysis of epistemic words to determine words with the “uncertain” seme, lexical-semantic analysis to distinguish verbalizing words of the DOUBT concept, in analyzing the compatibility of epistemic words with intensifier words and pragmatic analysis of epistemic words and phrases. The results of the study are the identification of the semantic features that are inherent in the words verbalizing the concept DOUBT and their grouping by semantic features. Studies of harmonic / disharmonious type phrases allow to refer to the phrases-verbalizers of the DOUBT concept those that contain units that express a weak force of modality (e.g. could possibly), and those whose meaning is modified by intensifier words in the direction of intensification of uncertainty (e.g. will possibly). In the phrases Adv + V / V + Adv, Adv + Adj, Adj + N the influence of the adverb of degree on the meaning of the phrase was traced. The compatibility of epistemic words to denote the DOUBT concept and epistemic words of confidence and probability with amplifiers, emphasizers and downtoners (Quirk R. terms) has been studied. It has been found that the use of epistemic words of confidence and probability with downtoners mitigates the confidence of such a phrase and contributes to its attribution (e.g. hardly believe) to the traditional verbalizers of the DOUBT concept.

A dictionary of legal English collocations as an aid for mastering the legal English genre

The article begins with a brief overview of collocations and their features as being central to legal language and, as such, worth studying, especially in view of the fact that legal language studies tend to be mostly interested in terminology rather than phraseology. To bridge this gap, the article offers a tool for legal English learners, i.e. the dictionary of legal English collocations based on judgments of the UK Supreme Court. Our dictionary project is aimed at analysing the corpus we created, using Sketch Engine software, a cutting-edge lexicographic tool which enables the uploading and exploration of users’ own corpora. The project will focus on analysing bipartite legal English collocations appearing in the corpus. The next stage of the project will be the preparation of the final product of our research, i.e. a dictionary of legal English collocations. We believe that such a dictionary will prove a useful aid for mastering the conceptual structure of legal English.

Collocations in Letters to the Editor of Die Zeit

In the field of phraseology collocations have been less extensively researched than idioms. Because of their lower degree of idiomaticity collocations do not normally cause receptive problems in foreign language learning but need to be paid attention to when producing texts. We therefore argue that collocations are an important part of phraseology.The purpose of this paper is to investigate the syntactic structure, use and functions of collocations in 243 Letters to the Editor published in the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit. After consulting two dictionaries of collocations and some more universal sources a total of 278 collocations were identified and their respective bases and collocates were determined. The results show that nouns make up the majority of the bases (97%), while adjectives and verbs prevail among the collocates (96%). This is contradictory to the distribution of parts of speech in one of the two most comprehensive German dictionaries of collocations. A closer analysis of the empirical material reveals that the bases seem to reflect the subjects discussed in the letters, whereas the collocates provide the means for expressing the authors’ attitudes and values.

Методы машинного обучения применительно к задаче выделения глагольных и атрибутивных коллокаций

В статье представлены результаты применения алгоритмов машинного обучения к задаче автоматического выявления глагольных и атрибутивных коллокаций . Изучение сочетаемости показало, что дистрибуционные модели могут быть успешно использованы для моделирования отношений внутри словосочетаний. Словосочетание признается значимым, если его векторное представление близко к векторному представлению заглавного слова. Нами были использованы следующие методы оценки коллокаций на основе машинного обучения и векторных представлений текстов: базовый метод, метод аналогии и линейного преобразования. Автоматически выделенные словосочетания сравнивались с данными, приведенными в лексикографических источниках (в толковых словарях и словарях сочетаемости, всего было рассмотрено пять источников), которые образовали так называемый золотой стандарт. Результаты показали, что рассматриваемые методы успешно используются для извлечения словосочетаний, в том числе находят те, которые не отражены в словарях. Данные примеры могут претендовать на лексикографическоое описание, хотя и не приведены в источниках и нуждаются в дополнительной экспертной проверке. Поэтому необходимо дополнительно провести сравнение использованных алгоритмов с другими статистическими метриками и увеличить количество словосочетаний, которые привлечены в качестве золотого стандарта.

Modern Russian Studies in Kazakhstan: Professor E.D. Suleimenova (Devoted to 75th Birth Anniversary)

The article is timed to coincide with 75th anniversary of Eleonora Dyusenovna Suleimenova, who is a famous scientist of Kazakhstan, Doctor of Philology, academic of International Higher Education Academy. The contribution of E.D. Suleimenova to the development of modern linguistics is considered in the context of her basic multifaceted scientific, educational and social activities. A special attention is paid to the academic’s fundamental works in General and Contrastive Semantics, Sociolinguistics and Theory of Second Language Acquisition. In the present article some practical research results of Suleimenova have been discussed, those of theoretical foundation of lexicographic principles of metalinguistic units and their realization in two language dictionaries, compiled by her guidance (“Glossary in Linguistics”, Languages of peoples of Kazakhstan” Reference book, “Business Language: Kazakh-Russian Dictionary of collocations”, “Glossary of Sociolinguistic terms”). Some other linguistic and educational ideas of the scientist that have been reflected in the textbooks for both school and university students have also been viewed.

КОЛОКАЦІЯ ЯК МІНІМАЛЬНА ОДИНИЦЯ ПОБУДОВИ СЛОВНИКОВОГО ЗАПАСУ В ПРОЦЕСІ ВИВЧЕННЯ АНГЛІЙСЬКОЇ МОВИ

This paper presents an academic research primarily focuses on defining collocation as a minimal unit in vocabulary acquisition building, on its importance for English Learners during English Learning Process and finally on its main role in practical usage of the English language. The main objectives were realized through various materials exploration of general English vocabulary acquisition building in Canadian English (CE), American English (AE), and British English (BE). The research area was original Canadian, American, and British informational sources with special emphasis on different scholars’ ideas as forEnglish spoken language and vocabulary load in written texts. The research highlighted the significance of collocations through their necessary and completely right usage in English Teaching and Learning Processes. The investigation made it possible to specify the definition of ’collocation’ and provide background information about collocations by gathering and analyzing Contemporary Linguistics scientists’ works and expressed their opinions. General scientific methods include deduction and induction, observation and generalization. Major linguistic methods employed in this paper are the structural (adefinitive and distributional analysis) and contrastive (based on three variants of English) ones. The methodology used for this academic research is simple being profound and scientifically approved. The notion of ’collocation’ refers to the frequent co-occurrence and mutual expectation of some words which appear more often than by chance. In this sense, collocation can be called ’a restricted combination’, which exists between a free combination and anidiom and has semantic transparency. The study of collocations was scanned through modern international researchers of CE / AE / BE. On having specified the definition of collocation and then shown the importance of collocations usage, we could finally provide some recommendations for the teaching and learning processes of collocations in order to improve and refresh modern English studies for students of linguistics / philology departments. These recommendations are as follows: teach / learn English via modern CE / AE / BE sources; emphasize on collocations structure and meaning during English Teaching and Learning vocabulary; pay a special attention to difference in similar collocations among various variants of English (for instance, as presented for CE / AE / BE in this paper);give preference to teaching / learning materials in native English; encourage students to read and listen to genuine CE / AE / BE written by native speakers; make use of online dictionaries, free corpora, and the Internet rich materials on a regular basis. Nowadays, there are many excellent dictionaries of CE / AE / BE collocations which are free and easy to be accessible. The prospects for further study may cover building of a digital dictionary of most frequent collocations in Canadian English, American English, and British English.

Dictionary of Modern Slovene

The ability to process language data has become fundamental to the development of technologies in various areas of human life in the digital world. The development of digitally readable linguistic resources, methods, and tools is, therefore, also a key challenge for the contemporary Slovene language. This challenge has been recognized in the Slovene language community both at the professional and state level and has been the subject of many activities over the past ten years, which will be presented in this paper. The idea of a comprehensive dictionary database covering all levels of linguistic description in modern Slovene, from the morphological and lexical levels to the syntactic level, has already formulated within the framework of the European Social Fund’s Communication in Slovene (2008-2013) project; the Slovene Lexical Database was also created within the framework of this project. Two goals were pursued in designing the Slovene Lexical Database (SLD): creating linguistic descriptions of Slovene intended for human users that would also be useful for the machine processing of Slovene. Ever since the construction of the first Slovene corpus, it has become evident that there is a need for a description of modern Slovene based on real language data, and that it is necessary to understand the needs of language users to create useful language reference works. It also became apparent that only the digital medium enables the comprehensiveness of language description and that the design of the database must be adapted to it from the start. Also, the description must follow best practices as closely as possible in terms of formats and international standards, as this enables the inclusion of Slovene into a wider network of resources, such as Open Linked Data, babelNet and ELExIS. Due to time pressures and trends in lexicography, procedures to automate the extraction of linguistic data from corpora and the inclusion of crowdsourcing into the lexicographic process were taken into consideration. Following the essential idea of creating an all-inclusive digital dictionary database for Slovene, a few independent databases have been created over the past two years: the Collocations Dictionary of Modern Slovene, and the automatically generated Thesaurus of Modern Slovene, both of which also exist as independent online dictionary portals. One of the novelties that we put forward together with both dictionaries is the ‘responsive dictionary’ concept, which includes crowdsourcing methods. Ultimately, the Digital Dictionary Database provides all (other) levels of linguistic description: the morphological level with the Sloleks database upgrade, the phraseological level with the construction of a multi-word expressions lexicon, and the syntactic level with the formalization of Slovene verb valency patterns. Each of these databases contains its specific language data that will ultimately be included in the comprehensive Slovene Digital Dictionary Database, which will represent basic linguistic descriptions of Slovene both for the human and machine user.

Kłopotliwe kwalifikatory chronologiczne w słownikach języka polskiego

The subject of the article constitutes a survey of the techniques of labelling the lexical resources which are chronologically marked in early and contemporary general-purpose and phraseological dictionaries (dictionaries of collocations) of the Polish language. Despite a tradition which spans some centuries (starting from the 17th century), the system of the chronological labelling of language units is quite inconsistent. Lexica feature various types of indication of archaic/anachronic nature of words and lexical combinations, cf. inter alia non-literal status labels (*), literal status labels (which appear in an abbreviated form, e.g.: arch., daw., przestarz., histor., rec. or in a non-abbreviated form, e.g.: dawny, wychodzący z użycia), information about the antiquity of words contained in the definitions of headwords (e.g.: w dawnej Polsce [in early Poland], w starożytności [in antiquity]). The chronological marking of words is also indicated by other status labels, i.e. the frequency-related label (rzad.) and the style and usage labels (książk., podn.). The article demonstrates the fundamental problems associated with the evaluation of the extent of the currency of dictionary units.

The attitude of dictionary users towards automatically extracted collocation data: A user study

The paper is based on a survey conducted within the framework of the basic research project Collocations as a Basis for Language Description: Semantic and Temporal Perspectives (KOLOS; J6-8255). It presents a qualitative analysis of a user evaluation of the interface of the Collocations Dictionary of Modern Slovene (CDS). It discusses an alternative perspective—the user's point of view—on problematic aspects of individual dictionary features, which require further lexicographic analysis and discussion. The collocations user study presents a model of the process of user evaluation; its findings are significant primarily for determining problems encountered by users. They also serve as a useful basis for methodology improvements in future, comparable lexicographic user studies and analyses.

The Politics of Naming in Unusual Collocations Used by Trump in November and December 2020

Collocations have been approached differently by different linguists, and a plethora of books have been written about this term. Since neologisms are intruding into English language, it is time now to look at some terminologies that hourly appear in English. The parameters by which linguists can judge whether a combination of newly formed bundle of words is classified as a collocation are made easier by the support of AntConc. Software which shows the MI score and the frequency of co-occurrence of these items in a specific context by a specific user. The present study may yield some results for lexicographers who are interested in creating new dictionaries of collocations. Further, teaching students these combinations in writing will extensively and effectively add to their authenticity in writing.

Frazy przyimkowe i ich opis leksykograficzny w słownikach niemieckich i niemiecko-polskich – spojrzenie glottodydaktyczne

Przedmiotem analizy są temporalne frazy przyimkowe, tj. typowe, najczęściej binarne połączenia wyrazowe o statusie kolokacji, składające się z przyimka i rzeczownika, np. auf Dauer, auf die Dauer, bei längerer Dauer. Ustalona łączliwość tych połączeń kolokacyjnych, uwarunkowanych gramatycznie i funkcjonalnie, stanowi w procesie dydaktycznym dla nienatywnych użytkowników języka niemieckiego jeden z największych problemów językowych. W referacie przedstawione zostaną wyniki analiz zarówno słowników ogólnych i dwujęzycznych w odniesieniu do wybranych syntagm przyimkowych, jak i autentycznych tekstów w Narodowym Korpusie Języka Czeskiego oraz wyniki ankiety. Ponadto przedstawiony zostanie wzorcowy artykuł słownikowy dla fraz przyimkowych w powstającym niemiecko-polskim słowniku kolokacji oraz omówiony problem ekwiwalencji analizowanych fraz.

Interpreting collocations: An analysis of collocation dictionaries of: English, German and Russian

Abstract Unless online collocation tools have not become common yet, printed collocation dictionaries are still one of the few sources of checking collocative possibilities of a lexical unit. The aim of this paper is to analyse one printed collocation dictionary in each of the 3 languages: English, German and Russian and see which interpretation of collocation was focused on and what user groups were targeted. Also, it was attempted to see whether the morphological specificity of the languages was taken consideration of as compared to the structure of these dictionaries, and further determine whether inclusion or exclusion of certain language-specific information aims at a particular group of target users.

Observing Grammatical Collocation in Students’ Writings

This research aimed to describe the types of grammatical collocation errors produced by English learners in their writings. The writers used a qualitative method for collecting and analyzing the data. The data were taken from first-year students’ essays. Collocations from fifteen essays were collected and analyzed. As the standard for the collocations being analyzed, The Oxford Collocation Dictionary and The BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English were used by the writers. The results showed that the students made grammatical collocation errors in their writings, with a total of 35 grammatical collocations. It was also found that verb-noun collocation is the most dominant error made, which indicated that the students faced difficulties in using proper verbs in collocations.Keywords: Collocation error, grammatical collocation, students’ writings

Exploring Collocations with The Prime Machine

One of the greatest impacts of corpus linguistics on language teaching has been in the recognition of the importance of collocation. A very influential guide for language teachers with regard to teaching collocation has been the Lexical Approach. Activities pointing students to rich collocational information in monolingual dictionaries, in texts and specifically in collocation dictionaries provided ways for language learners to engage with collocation information: to notice, to remember and to acquire. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in Data Driven Learning and new tools are now available to allow students to access collocation information from corpora for themselves. After introducing some pedagogic considerations, this article presents some of the features of The Prime Machine which were developed to support DDL activities focussed on collocation.

Effect of Persian and English colour collocations on L2 learners' proficiency

Collocations play an important role in L2 teaching and learning. The present study investigated the effect of color collocations in L2 learning. This study was done in 2 phases: In the first phase, the frequency of color collocations was calculated in English and Persian. Two lists of English and Persian color collocations were chosen. Each list included 100 color collocations. The English collocations were chosen from English collocation dictionaries, but the Persian color collocations were chosen by the Persian native speakers. Chi-square results indicated that there were some differences between the 2 languages, but the differences were not statistically significant. In the second phase, the (possible) effect of color collocations on upper-intermediate and advanced L2 learners� proficiency was investigated. Sixty upper-intermediate and advanced L2 learners, both male and female, were chosen from a private language institute in Isfahan, Iran. The minimum and maximum ages of the participants were about 15-38, and their homogeneity was tested by the OPT. Participants were given a pretest in order to measure their color collocational knowledge. Then, after the treatment, a posttest was administered. Results revealed that teaching collocations had a significant effect on the participants� proficiency.

Macmillan Collocations Dictionary for Learners of English

Reviewed by Pedro A. Fuertes-OliveraUniversidad de Valladolid, Spain
 
 1. INTRODUCTION
 The Macmillan Collocations Dictionary for Learners of English (MCD) is a monolingual print dictionary aimed primarily at helping upper-intermediate to advanced students in productive use situations, such as taking English exams (especially the IELTS exams) and working in academic or professional environments. It has over 121,000 collocational phrases, a figure that leads Coffey to claim that the MCD attaches more collocates to each headword than competing dictionaries, for example, the Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English (OCD) (Coffey 2011: 329).

The academic English collocation list

Abstract The use of collocations plays an important role for the proficiency of ESL/EFL learners. Hence, educators and researchers have long tried to identify collocations typical of either academic or general English and the challenges involved in learning them. This paper proposes a comprehensive and type-balanced academic English collocation list (AECL). AECL is based on a large corpus of academic English and was created to cover the types of collocations that will be most useful to ESL/EFL learners. AECL is the result of an innovative research-based procedure that involves a five-step selection method. A comparison of the collocations on AECL with those found in well-known collocation dictionaries of general English and on three existing academic English collocation lists indicates that AECL indeed contains mainly academic rather than general English collocations. In addition, AECL is more comprehensive with regard to the types of collocations that are relevant to learners.

Language teachers’ perceptions on the use of OER language processing technologies in MALL

ABSTRACTCombined with the ubiquity and constant connectivity of mobile devices, and with innovative approaches such as Data-Driven Learning (DDL), Natural Language Processing Technologies (NLPTs) as Open Educational Resources (OERs) could become a powerful tool for language learning as they promote individual and personalized learning. Using a questionnaire that was answered by language teachers (n = 230) in Spain and the UK, this research explores the extent to which OER NLPTs are currently known and used in adult foreign language learning. Our results suggest that teachers’ familiarity and use of OER NLPTs are very low. Although online dictionaries, collocation dictionaries and spell checkers are widely known, NLPTs appear to be generally underused in foreign language teaching. It was found that teachers prefer computer-based environments over mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets and that teachers’ qualification determines their familiarity with a wider range of OER NLPTs. This research offers insight into future applications of Language Processing Technologies as OERs in language learning.

Improving academic literacy by teaching collocations

This study explores the effect of teaching collocations on building academic vocabulary and hence improving academic writing abilities. A pre-/post-test experimental design was used to analyse collocations produced in two tasks completed by the study’s participants, English majors at a university in Burundi. They were presented with a completion task and an essay-writing task before and after being exposed to a collocation-based syllabus. The syllabus was designed by selecting target words from the Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead 2000) and collocations from the Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English (Crowther, Dignen, and Lea 2002). The awareness-raising approach (cf. Barfield 2009) and an adapted version of McCarthy and O’Dell’s (2005) collocation web model were the techniques adopted for teaching collocations. The results show that participants performed significantly better on the post-test than on the pre-test in their production of collocations in both tasks. This suggests that an intervention contributes towards building students’ productive use of collocations in both cued recall and essay writing, supporting earlier findings (cf. Barfield 2009, Seesink 2007). In light of these findings, pedagogical consequences and avenues for improving higher education students’ use of collocations in writing are discussed.

"Minimum Input, Maximum Output, Indeed!" Teaching Collocations Through Collocation Dictionary Skills Development

This study examined the teachability of collocations through cultivating EFL learners' collocation dictionary skills. Fifty-nine EFL college students participated in the study, and they received two 75-minute instructions between pre- and post-tests: one on the definition of collocation and its importance, and the other on the skill of looking up collocational information in the Naver Dictionary — an English–Korean online dictionary. During the second instruction, the students were trained to consult the dictionary for collocation production in the order of node word selection, word sense distinction, collocate type location, and feasible collocate identification. A comparison of collocation production test scores through a paired-samples t-test indicated that teaching collocation dictionary skills substantially improves learners' ability to produce natural collocations regardless of proficiency differences. In addition, the survey data collected at the end of the semester suggested that the participants perceive the instruction as necessary and helpful in gaining collocational competence and that their dictionary consultation behaviors have changed after receiving the instruction. Equipping EFL learners with collocation dictionary skills was also found to help them raise a sense of learner autonomy.